Prepared as an op-ed for Glenn Kramon's Winning Writing at Stanford Graduate School of Business
Last year, Mexican workers in the United States sent home $63 billion in remittances, more than Mexico earns from oil exports. Yet the worker who framed your house, picked your strawberries, or cared for your aging parent likely did so while living in fear of deportation, unable to visit family for years, trapped in a system that treats labor mobility as a crisis rather than the economic engine it actually is.
This isn't about compassion. It's about strategy. And right now, we're getting the strategy catastrophically wrong.
The Natural Model
For millennia, the monarch butterfly has undertaken one of nature's most extraordinary migrations, traveling thousands of miles from Canada and the United States to the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico. The monarchs journey north for nourishment, then return to their ancestral habitat: a circular migration that sustains ecosystems across the continent. No single generation completes the full cycle. It takes four generations working in succession, each playing its role in a pattern of movement that benefits every region the butterflies touch.
The metaphor is almost too obvious: while "irrational" butterflies create value through migration, we supposedly rational humans have convinced ourselves that restricting movement makes us stronger.
But here's what makes the monarch's migration truly instructive: it's not chaotic. It follows established routes, seasonal patterns, and natural cycles. The butterflies don't abandon their origins; they maintain connection to both their northern feeding grounds and their southern overwintering sites. This circular pattern creates value everywhere the monarchs travel, pollinating plants and supporting ecosystems across an entire continent.
This is the model we've rejected in favor of walls and enforcement theater.
The Strategic Reality
As competition with China intensifies, American policymakers obsess over supply chain security while overlooking the United States' greatest advantage: two neighbors with deeply integrated economies, shared democratic values, and complementary labor forces.
There are few regions on earth with such natural synergies. Our histories are intertwined. Our markets are deeply connected. Our supply chains already span the continent. This should be an overwhelming strategic asset.
Instead, we're squandering it.
My father, as chief architect of NAFTA for Mexico, worked with Republicans and Democrats to dismantle trade barriers and create shared prosperity. He envisioned a North America where economic integration would strengthen all three nations. Thirty years later, we've achieved remarkable progress on goods and capital. Our supply chains are intertwined, our markets deeply connected.
But when it comes to labor, we've moved backward, building walls and militarizing borders as if human migration were an aberration rather than an economic necessity. The very spirit of regional partnership that guided NAFTA's creation has been abandoned in favor of political theater.
And it is theater. Republicans fear-monger about "caravans" while Democrats push blanket amnesty without addressing practical concerns. Both approaches miss what's actually happening on the ground, and neither offers a functional path forward.
What's Actually Happening
In my seventh year living in the United States, studying at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, I see daily how immigration policy constrains economic potential. The disconnect between political rhetoric and economic reality couldn't be starker.
When I worked at Bitso, Latin America's largest cryptocurrency exchange, we powered five percent of all remittances flowing from the U.S. to Mexico. I watched these financial flows transform lives: construction workers supporting families back home, agricultural workers building houses in their pueblos, service workers putting children through school.
But I also saw how broken immigration policy trapped people in impossible situations. Workers who wanted to migrate seasonally (to work in the U.S., then return home with resources to invest in their communities) had no legal pathway to do so. Our enforcement-first approach paradoxically traps people in the U.S. permanently. Once they're here without documentation, going home becomes too risky. We've turned what could be circular migration into permanent settlement by making the border impossible to cross legally and dangerous to cross repeatedly.
The perverse incentive is obvious: our policy creates the exact outcome we claim to want to prevent.
The Circular Migration Solution
This is where the monarch butterfly's circular migration offers more than metaphor - it offers policy insight.
The U.S. has severe labor shortages in construction, agriculture, hospitality, and elder care: sectors where immigrant workers are already essential but often work in legal limbo. Mexico and Central America have workers who want these jobs. The demand and supply exist. What's missing is the legal framework.
Creating legal pathways for circular migration would formalize existing economic reality, bring workers out of the shadows, ensure labor protections, and allow for security screening. It would also relieve pressure on asylum systems overwhelmed by economic migrants who have no other legal option.
Seasonal and circular migration programs allow workers to contribute where labor is needed while maintaining ties to home communities. Workers could come legally, work openly, pay taxes, and return home regularly. Employers could hire workers without legal risk. Communities could plan for labor needs rather than relying on gray markets.
This isn't theoretical. Agricultural guest worker programs, despite their significant flaws and need for reform, prove that temporary legal migration can work. The question is whether we have the political courage to expand and improve these frameworks rather than treating all migration as permanent and therefore threatening.
The strategic case is equally compelling. As the United States seeks to nearshore manufacturing and build resilient supply chains, labor mobility across North America becomes a competitive advantage. China's Belt and Road Initiative works partly because it integrates economies across borders. North America has natural integration that China needs to create — but only if we actually use it.
Enabling Mexican and Central American workers to move legally for projects in the U.S., then return home with skills and capital, strengthens the entire region's industrial capacity. It creates a flexible, continent-wide labor market that can respond to economic shifts. It builds goodwill and cooperation that pays dividends in trade negotiations, security partnerships, and diplomatic alignment.
This is the kind of strategic thinking that should dominate policy discussions in Washington. Instead, we get walls and talking points.
The Real Concerns
I understand the objections, and they deserve serious answers.
Won't this depress wages for American workers? Not if programs are properly designed with wage floors and labor protections that prevent undercutting. The current system (where undocumented workers can be exploited because they have no legal recourse) is what actually suppresses wages.
Won't security suffer? Legal pathways with screening are far more secure than the current system where millions cross illegally because no legal option exists. When people can enter legally, border enforcement can focus on actual threats rather than economic migrants.
Won't this encourage more migration? People are already migrating. The question is whether we manage it rationally or pretend we can stop it with enforcement alone. Legal pathways allow us to actually manage flows, screen participants, and respond to changing economic conditions.
The Choice
The monarch butterfly population in Mexico's forests has declined by 90 percent in recent years due to habitat loss and climate change. But conservation efforts (protecting migration corridors, preserving forest habitats, connecting ecosystems across borders) are beginning to reverse this decline.
The monarchs survive when we recognize that their migration isn't a problem to solve but a pattern to protect. They thrive when we work across borders to maintain the conditions that make their journey possible.
We face a similar choice. We're at a crossroads where we can continue severing continental ties and undermining our strategic position, or we can embrace regional interdependence as the competitive advantage it actually is.
My father spent years building economic bridges across North America. I've spent my career watching how migration creates value when given legal channels and destroys lives when forced into shadows. The potential is enormous. The cost of our current approach is staggering.
The monarchs are still flying, following routes established over millennia, creating value across an entire continent through their circular migration. They offer us a lesson in interconnection, in the strength that comes from embracing rather than resisting natural patterns of movement.
The question is whether we're wise enough to learn from them.