Mexico has dispatched foreign relations secretary Luis Videgaray to California and Washington, D.C. to help Mexicans avoid deportation...to Mexico.  That's right.  Apparently, having to live in that country is so bad that even its officials are trying to help Mexicans escape that grim, grim fate.

Don't imagine that the Mexicans on either side of the border, let alone the media, notice the irony.  But it says something that Mexico is so determined to keep its citizens here instead of "benefiting" from their own country.

At the same time Videgaray's helping Mexicans avoid deportation – paying for lawyers for potential deportees from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, for one thing – he's browbeating Americans at rubber-chicken dinners with the warning that if DACA is ended and its now protected illegal aliens are sent back to Mexico, Mexico will be the great beneficiary.  According to the Sacramento Bee:

If the 600,000 Mexican-born recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program – or DACA – are deported by the Trump administration, "America's loss will be Mexico's gain," Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Dr. Luis Videgaray Caso said Monday at a press conference in Sacramento.

Apparently, we aren't supposed to want that, so we must keep DACA.

It all amounts to bravado, not reality.

The reality of the situation is, Mexico is terrified of DACA ending.  It not only fears the loss of some of its $28 billion in remittances, which are most often sent by the most recent immigrants, but also fears vast numbers of people unhappily returning to Mexico and calling for Mexico clean up its act.

"If it's one or 100,000 or 600,000, this will be a big gift to Mexico," [Videgaray] said. "They are college-educated, law-abiding, talented young people full of energy and creativity."

Apparently, people like that are more likely to question cultural customs such as mordida, and why anyone with a spark of entrepreneurship gets kidnapped and has to pay ransom, losing his entire life work to kidnappers, who walk off scot-free with no fear of prosecution, often due to corrupt payoffs to Mexican officials, among other things.

This calls to mind that Mexico has always used emigration as a pressure valve to prevent discontent from boiling over and forcing its government to enact rule of law and free-market reforms.  It's content with its duopolies and monopolies run by the same dozen billionaires year after year to give the appearance of modernity, and its rule of law is what it is – badly written, extremely cumbersome, and shot through with payoffs and corruption.  Its resistance to improvements on these matters is what keeps it from spreading wealth and creating jobs as the U.S. does, as it prioritizes protecting bureaucrats' rice bowls.  It's a cynical, inhuman policy of people-dumping, and it's been Mexico's response to the prospect of change ever since the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1993 and enacted in 1994.  Those years coincide with the years when illegal immigration began to take off in its largest numbers, leaving Mexico with a population bust.  Prior to that, Mexico considered nationals who left its borders "traitors."

If there are any further doubts, just look at what the press coverage pre-Videgaray has been on Mexico with increased U.S. border enforcement and DACA being rescinded.  Here were a few the headlines:

Plan to cancel DACA program puts Mexico on alert

Mexico Worried about Economic Impact of Illegal Immigrants Deported from the U.S.

Mexico Preparing for Uptick in Deportations

Mexico Bracing for Deportations

This doesn't sound like the attitude of a nation that would gladly welcome the returning migrants "with open arms," as Videgaray insists.  Based on its actions, Mexico doesn't see any benefit.  The Mexicans in charge are scrambling as hard as they can to avoid any exodus back into the country despite needing the people.  Videgaray's claim aside, the idea that Mexico would welcome DACA deportees, some 400,000 of whom are Mexican, back is something no one believes.