by Lillian Rose
C-SPAN recently aired a Judiciary hearing on the topic of immigration. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-Fla.) asked Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and the Director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, what were the reasons for the overflowing recent immigration? By recent we assume he meant in the past 10 or so years. Both Gutierrez and Chertoff agreed that there was a market demand for foreign labor due to the shortage of labor here in the United States. In reality, the answer is more complicated. Policy makers and citizens still think that immigrant workers from countries such as Mexico come because of low wages in their countries and high wages here. Wage differentials by themselves do not explain completely the overwhelming growth of international migration. According to a news article by Octavio Ruiz in the Minnesota Star-Tribune on April 21, 2006, “Immigrant surge is tied to the failure of NAFTA.” He goes further to state that those coming across the border are the same people who “were promised the possibilities of a decent living with NAFTA.” The North American Free Trade Agreement was signed on Jan. 1, 1994, and the agreement covered Canada, the United States and Mexico in a free trade zone. Free trade means opening markets by eliminating taxes and tariffs on products being imported and exported, creating one large economy where everyone competes. On the one hand NAFTA advocated a continental-wide free trade zone for goods, capital and information. On the other hand, it never intended to create a labor movement. But the market mechanisms that were put in place served to replace older ones and in the process replaced workers from their former livelihoods and threw them into uncertain labor markets. NAFTA was a radical experiment that was great theory, but in truth launched a race to decrease wages, destroyed hundreds of jobs here in the United States and in Mexico, and undermined control of domestic policy-making that to this day threatens health, food and environment standards.
Douglas S. Massey, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, has published extensively on the U.S.-Mexico migration and he points out that in ratifying NAFTA, the United States was agreeing with an economic model “ that would unleash social, political and economic transformations.” Government bureaucracies shed urban workers in record numbers. So did state-owned firms and private companies; all in the name of globalization and downsizing. In the rural areas, subsistence farmers were wiped out by privatization, land consolidation and mechanization. The Mexican Revolution had called for land reform, taking large tracts of land from the rich landowners and handing them over to disadvantaged farmers to work it for themselves so they could eke out a living. With mega-international farming companies coming into their areas of production, free of tariffs and free of taxes, the little farmer could not compete. They also could not compete because farmers here in the U.S. were subsidized, so their corn was imported or “dumped” on Mexico, undercutting the value of local crops. Some researchers claim that 1.5 million rural families in Mexico were driven out of business. In the last 10 years unemployment has risen in Mexico due to NAFTA and according to the Pew Hispanic Center, “the annual number of immigrants from Mexico increased by more than 61 percent.” Following in the footsteps of NAFTA Congress signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2005. The idea was to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the talks on the Andean Free Trade Agreement have not yet reached a conclusion. The countries involved are Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. These trade agreements are on shaky ground. The American Continent is not the European Union, the countries in these trade agreements are not in the same levels of development. If policy makers really want to address immigration they should think twice before giving in to big business lobbies that have driven these agreements. More than trade agreements they are investment agreements allowing large corporations, under the guise of foreign investment, to go into a country free of restrictions and with powerful mechanisms undermine local government laws on the environment, privatize forests, deplete marine resources, under value local agricultural crops and race wages to the bottom, while reaping large corporate profits. Rather than destroying people's livelihoods here in the United States and in Mexico, Canada, the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic, policymakers should engage not in building fences at the border but in implementing trade policies that raise the standard of living for all nations. Hopefully the days of unfettered free trade agreements are coming to a close. Otherwise, the yellow brick road to the north will continue to beckon.
C-SPAN recently aired a Judiciary hearing on the topic of immigration. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-Fla.) asked Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and the Director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, what were the reasons for the overflowing recent immigration? By recent we assume he meant in the past 10 or so years. Both Gutierrez and Chertoff agreed that there was a market demand for foreign labor due to the shortage of labor here in the United States. In reality, the answer is more complicated. Policy makers and citizens still think that immigrant workers from countries such as Mexico come because of low wages in their countries and high wages here. Wage differentials by themselves do not explain completely the overwhelming growth of international migration. According to a news article by Octavio Ruiz in the Minnesota Star-Tribune on April 21, 2006, “Immigrant surge is tied to the failure of NAFTA.” He goes further to state that those coming across the border are the same people who “were promised the possibilities of a decent living with NAFTA.” The North American Free Trade Agreement was signed on Jan. 1, 1994, and the agreement covered Canada, the United States and Mexico in a free trade zone. Free trade means opening markets by eliminating taxes and tariffs on products being imported and exported, creating one large economy where everyone competes. On the one hand NAFTA advocated a continental-wide free trade zone for goods, capital and information. On the other hand, it never intended to create a labor movement. But the market mechanisms that were put in place served to replace older ones and in the process replaced workers from their former livelihoods and threw them into uncertain labor markets. NAFTA was a radical experiment that was great theory, but in truth launched a race to decrease wages, destroyed hundreds of jobs here in the United States and in Mexico, and undermined control of domestic policy-making that to this day threatens health, food and environment standards.
Douglas S. Massey, professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, has published extensively on the U.S.-Mexico migration and he points out that in ratifying NAFTA, the United States was agreeing with an economic model “ that would unleash social, political and economic transformations.” Government bureaucracies shed urban workers in record numbers. So did state-owned firms and private companies; all in the name of globalization and downsizing. In the rural areas, subsistence farmers were wiped out by privatization, land consolidation and mechanization. The Mexican Revolution had called for land reform, taking large tracts of land from the rich landowners and handing them over to disadvantaged farmers to work it for themselves so they could eke out a living. With mega-international farming companies coming into their areas of production, free of tariffs and free of taxes, the little farmer could not compete. They also could not compete because farmers here in the U.S. were subsidized, so their corn was imported or “dumped” on Mexico, undercutting the value of local crops. Some researchers claim that 1.5 million rural families in Mexico were driven out of business. In the last 10 years unemployment has risen in Mexico due to NAFTA and according to the Pew Hispanic Center, “the annual number of immigrants from Mexico increased by more than 61 percent.” Following in the footsteps of NAFTA Congress signed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2005. The idea was to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the talks on the Andean Free Trade Agreement have not yet reached a conclusion. The countries involved are Peru, Colombia and Ecuador. These trade agreements are on shaky ground. The American Continent is not the European Union, the countries in these trade agreements are not in the same levels of development. If policy makers really want to address immigration they should think twice before giving in to big business lobbies that have driven these agreements. More than trade agreements they are investment agreements allowing large corporations, under the guise of foreign investment, to go into a country free of restrictions and with powerful mechanisms undermine local government laws on the environment, privatize forests, deplete marine resources, under value local agricultural crops and race wages to the bottom, while reaping large corporate profits. Rather than destroying people's livelihoods here in the United States and in Mexico, Canada, the countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic, policymakers should engage not in building fences at the border but in implementing trade policies that raise the standard of living for all nations. Hopefully the days of unfettered free trade agreements are coming to a close. Otherwise, the yellow brick road to the north will continue to beckon.
No comments:
Post a Comment