The bigger picture on remote workers in Mexico City

Who can cross borders and who cannot

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In my corner of the world, one story has been hanging around for quite a while: the digital nomad invasion of Mexico City. Since another piece ran about it last weekend – this one written by El Pais’ inimitable economics reporter Isabella Cota – I thought I’d share one main thought about the issue that is being overlooked.

A very brief summary

It is unmissable if you walk around Mexico City’s trendy neighborhoods Condesa and Roma: there are so many foreigners here. Remote workers (I really loathe the term digital nomad so let’s dismiss it now) from the U.S. mostly, but also Europe and other “western” countries, have descended on Mexico City for its low cost of living and fantastic food and culture and lifestyle. Hip cafés spawn exponentially. Almost all of them are packed with foreigners working on laptops, speaking loudly in English on Zoom calls. English is heard around here like I’ve never experienced before. Menus are often in English by default. Fliers selling “Been living here for 6 months and still can’t order coffee in Spanish?” classes are abundant. The anecdotes or overheards of foreigners sneering at a barista or waiter who doesn’t speak impeccable English are piling up. Families are being evicted from their apartments, traditional eateries and shops are being run out of the neighborhood. Although there is still a dearth of hard data, rents are skyrocketing, not just in Condesa and Roma but in peripheral neighborhoods like Santa Maria La Ribera, Escandón, and Cuauhtémoc. Airbnb is a plague. Don’t even think about going out for brunch on weekends. 

I Know, I Know

I’m part of the problem too. I’ve lived in Mexico City since 2012, which is my way of subtly saying, “But I’m one of the good, old gringos, not a new, bad one!” Mostly earning in dollars since I’ve lived here, my individual effect on Mexico City is roughly the same as any one of the new batch of remote workers: gentrifying, displacing, and price-inflating, not because I’m special or I’m hellbent on driving locals out, but because of the employment, currency, and migration inequalities that exist between Mexico and the U.S. (or between any countries so far from one another in per capita income levels). We’re all part of it. While they exist, the foreigners who come and work for a Mexican company and earn on Mexican pay scale, and are theoretically exempt from being part of these economic pressures, are rare.

The difference now: the number of remote workers coming here is much larger (difficult to get an exact number, though) so they are having a more marked economic impact. Same for cultural impact: if you live here long term, you have an incentive to speak Spanish and adapt to a different culture. If you’re coming through for a few months before moving to Lisbon, why bother?

Is This The Immigration Future We Want?

Here’s my main point: beyond the importance for Mexican people who have been displaced by the remote worker boom in Mexico City, this story asks important questions about larger global migration trends and the future we want. This is a story about who is allowed to cross borders and who is not. With a US passport, I’m allowed to cross most borders without pre-applying for a visa. That’s the case for any American or Canadian or European coming to Mexico. They can live here and work remotely almost indefinitely, save for a bit of cracking down by Mexican immigration authorities on remote workers overstaying their tourist visa. It’s rare the punishment is more than a fine. 

Compare that to: Mexican immigration authorities detained 330,000 people from Latin America and the Caribbean so far in 2022. My reporting over the years suggests many of them were Central American, Venezuelan, Cuban, and Haitian asylum seekers being illegally detained. The conditions in immigration jails in Mexico are unsurprisingly degrading and barbaric. Tens of thousands of Mexican National Guardsmen are deployed at any one time to detain migrants. The violence and abuse suffered by migrants at the hands of Mexican authorities and organized crime are common, approaching universal.

This, you will not be surprised to learn, is all done at the behest of the United States and, you may be more surprised to learn, is carried out enthusiastically by the Mexican government, the same one that recently signed an agreement with Airbnb to increase its presence in Mexico City, where it’s already been highly distorting of the real estate market. (To be clear, immigration authority is a federal matter and the Airbnb deal is a Mexico City one, but president AMLO’s Morena party firmly controls both.)

Looking beyond the Americas, this same imbalance happens between the EU and countries like Libya and Turkey, or Australia and the immigration prison on Nauru. Developed countries are so eager to stop migrants from developing countries to come that they pay third countries to keep them out. This “border externalization” has been happening for a long time, and given the number of people still trying to make deadly journeys, it’s clearly not effective. It’s also blatantly cruel and kills many thousands of people fleeing war and persecution and starvation every year.

Our world’s border policies are vile and unsustainable, particularly when we turn our gaze back to the wealthy “westerners” able to go just about anywhere they want in the world, take up space, drive up cost of living and then leave when they get bored. My distinction between “migrant/asylum seekers” and “remote worker” is part of the problem, as Harsha Walia explains well.

I understand and sympathize with Mexicans saying things like “go home gringo” to remote workers. The history of degrading, exploiting, and abusing Mexicans in the U.S. is long and continues today. The immigration imbalances between our countries are vast. Just one mundane, bureaucratic example: the wait time for family-based green cards from Mexico is more than 20 years, meaning you may have had to apply as early as 1999 to be approved today (👋 to the “come the right way” anti-immigration crowd). In contrast, I got a temporary residency visa in Mexico in 2013 with little more than a letter from my employer (guidelines are a bit stricter now, but not much). In 2017, I was automatically granted permanent residence in Mexico. 

But I can’t see “Go home gringo” as anything more than a cathartic counterpunch to the transitory wave of oblivious remote workers here. A world where we all go “home” sucks. More people should be free to migrate and relocate, not fewer, especially as the planet’s climate changes.

Migration – moving from one place to another, permanently or temporarily – is much older and central to human civilization than borders. The policies required to realign ourselves to this reality across the globe are overwhelming, no doubt. But to me, it’s clear which direction we should move.

USians and Europeans coming to Mexico City isn’t the problem, if we take step back. It’s that decades and centuries of inequality created by violent borders means Mexicans can’t do the same.