San Diego, CA (special) -- If the United States wants to stop illegal drug traffic, it really has only two choices: try to reduce the demand for narcotics in America, or make drug use legal.

That was the suggestion of Mexico's consul-general in San Diego, Rudolfo Figueroa, during a meeting Sept. 6 with the local board of the American Jewish Committee at the group's La Jolla offices.

Figueroa, whose diplomatic career has included stints as Mexico's consul general in San Francisco and Houston as well as his country's ambassador to Colombia, said that the United States has only 5 percent of the population of the world, but consumes approximately 95 percent of the illegal drugs.

"As long as you have consumption...there will be a problem," he said.

Having served in Colombia, he said, he recognizes that the forces of organized crime can be more powerful than some governments that the United States wants to fight the drug lords.  It is pointless to expect a country like El Salvador to be able to do so, if the United States can't.

In his view, the "only way to get rid of it is to legalize it."

Figueroa discussed with the American Jewish Committee three major issues affecting binational relations between his country and the United States.  Besides the transport of drugs across the border, he focused on issues of immigration and the interdependence of the Mexican and American economies.

He asked the members of the American Jewish Committee to imagine themselves living in La Jolla - where some of them in fact live - and having a neighbor whose home was without running water and who couldn't afford to send his children to school.

One strategy for dealing with such a neighbor, he said, would be to build a high wall between the two properties, to try to shut that neighbor out.  Another strategy would be to try to help that neighbor.

The European Union faced just such a problem with Spain, Figueroa said.  

It used to be if you found someone working in a restaurant kitchen almost anywhere in Europe, it was a Spaniard.   Europe decided to invest in Spain, and today "The Spaniards no longer work as domestics in Europe...They're in Spain."

The same would be true of Mexicans who come to the United States to take jobs that pay minimum wage or less here.  These workers live partially marginalized lives in Mexico, where the economy is poor.  Without rights and speaking a different language in the United States, their lives are fully marginalized, Figueroa said.

"They are here because we haven't created the jobs in Mexico and there are jobs here," he said.  Create the jobs in Mexico and they will stay put, with their families, he suggested.

Figueroa said Mexicans in this country illegally would go home for a few months every year to be with their families in the era prior to the establishment of Operation Gatekeeper. 

"Operation Gatekeeper" was the name given by the U.S. Border Patrol to a staffing plan in which agents concentrated along the urbanized portion of the U.S. border, forcing Mexicans to try to avoid American authorities by crossing in remote desert or mountain areas.  This has caused numerous deaths among immigrants who were unprepared for the extremes of temperatures.

Because Gatekeeper makes repeated crossings too risky, Mexicans gamble that they can get the rest of their families into the United States-thereby adding to the permanent population, the diplomat said.

Figueroa suggested that Mexicans keep coming to the United States because the American economy demands them.  As Americans seemingly are not interested in taking low-paying jobs based on manual labor, he recommended that the United States institute a guest worker program which would enable Mexicans to earn money here for 10 months a year, then return to their families in Mexico.

Among the missions of the American Jewish Committee is the fostering of good relations between the Jewish community and communities of other religious, ethnic or national groups.  For the local chapter, the meeting with Figueroa was one step towards better understanding the Mexican perspective on border issues.