NAFTA Gives Mexicans New Reasons to Leave Home

San Francisco Chronicls ^ | 10.15.98 | Robert Collier

[Coleus]

When the North American Free Trade Agreement was being debated in 1993, the rhetoric from both the U.S. and Mexican governments was similarly emphatic.

NAFTA would help deter migration by creating new jobs and prosperity in Mexico, they said.

Several years later, NAFTA appears to have done just the opposite. While many Mexicans appreciate the elevated diplomatic status it has conferred upon their country, the trade pact has driven large numbers of farmers, small-business owners and laborers out of work. These people are left with few options but to seek a better life in the United States.

NAFTA has helped part of the Mexican economy -- large industry, agribusiness and the average consumer -- by accelerating capital investment, boosting trade and lowering prices. Industrial productivity has increased, Internet use is becoming more common and store shelves are packed with the latest consumer goods from all over the world.

However, although the Mexican government does not keep reliable statistics on unemployment, experts say the jobs created by NAFTA are not as numerous as the jobs eliminated.

FARMING WOES In Tlacuitapa, farming has never looked worse, and local farmers blame foreign trade.

As part of NAFTA, corn and dairy tariffs were cut, bringing floods of cheaper U.S. corn. Tlacuitapa farmers, whose two main products are corn and milk, found the prices offered by local distributors slashed to the bone.

The region, where farm machines are few, the land is rocky and rainfall is erratic, simply could not compete with the mechanized, nature-blessed bounty of U.S. agriculture. Those who had the misfortune to live in the Tlacuitapa region -- and in many other regions throughout Mexico -- had no way of making a decent living.

At around the same time that NAFTA took effect, the Mexican government eliminated farm subsidy payments,

[hedgetrimmer]

For a "free trader" you know little about the WTO and the GATT which are the basis for the NAFTA agreement.

"free movement of persons" is a stipulation that is included in these trade agreements. Different countries are given different timetables for enacting them. They were negotiated at Uruguay and will be negotiated at Doha. It is the reason the H1B visa cap keeps getting lifted for Indian engineers to come to this country. It is why the African nations are getting together at Doha to make the USA accept their "excess labor". It is the reason that Mexico encourages their "excess labor" to illegally enter the United States. That and the billions of dollars in remittances they send home, which help to keep their corrupt government in power.

[hedgetrimmer]

is the politicians from both parties who refuse to build a wall and deport illegals

Because the committed the United States to "trade agreements" that make it a "barrier to trade" to block illegal immigration. But you know that because you are an expert "free trader".

[Toddsterpatriot]

"free movement of persons" is a stipulation that is included in these trade agreements.

Not to put too fine a point on it but you are full of crap.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Because the committed the United States to "trade agreements" that make it a "barrier to trade" to block illegal immigration.

Link? Or are you making stuff up again?

[bayourod]

Abraham Lincoln speaking about July 4TH<

We have besides these men---descended by blood from our ancestors---among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe---German, Irish, French and Scandinavian---men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things.

If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration [loud and long continued applause], and so they are.

[hedgetrimmer]

A "free trader" who doesn't know what they are planning for the Doha round? Hmmmmm.

[hedgetrimmer]

Chapter 11 of the agreement, which stipulates that, “Cross-border trade in services or cross-border supply of services means the supply of a service…by a national of a party in the territory of another party.” The agreement goes on to say that the U.S. must ensure that, “measures relating to qualification requirements and procedures, technical standards and licensing requirements do not constitute unnecessary barriers to trade in services,” and are “not in themselves a restriction on the supply of the service.”

“This agreement will allow foreign companies to challenge our immigration policies in international CAFTA tribunals and argue that the laws impede their ability to access the U.S. service sector,” said Tancredo. “That would force Congress to change our immigration laws, or subject our businesses to trade sanctions.”

[John Filson]

Your unsolicited and uncontextual quote of Lincoln aside, I seriously doubt your commitment to equality. If you truly believed in equality, you wouldn't show such an overwhelming desire to see foreigners entering this country at the expense of the current citizens. You wouldn't continue advocating foreign interests over American interests. In effect, you're prejudiced against native-born Americans. If you loved your fellow Americans, you'd change your tune. But you don't. Your political preferences simply reveal your preference for exploiting the unfortunate at the expense of the gullible. You're a whore for oppression, pure and simple.

[Dat]

Uhh, I'm not the one who wants to force millions of people to buy from only the people I want. You isolationists continuosly turn the truth upsidedown and accuse others of what you are doing, just like liberals.

[Nowhere Man]

Whether America makes or loses money, is not as important as losing independence.

Excellent point. Although losing a lot of our jobs is losing independence on a personal level, that being, if there are no good jobs available or a few and many low paying jobs, you will end up making more people dependent on society to help support them. Which is worse is we will lose independence on a national level when we cannot make the things we need for a war anymore or just having to depend on a whole slew of others, an iffy supply chain if you will for our economy. When we do that, we lose our sovereignty and independence.

[Toddsterpatriot]

“This agreement will allow foreign companies to challenge our immigration policies in international CAFTA tribunals and argue that the laws impede their ability to access the U.S. service sector,” said Tancredo. “That would force Congress to change our immigration laws, or subject our businesses to trade sanctions.”

And this has zero to do with illegal immigration. Like I said earlier, you are full of crap.

[1rudeboy]

Do you remember any of the threads here that concerned NAFTA and Mexican trucking? There were people here arguing with a straight face (presumably) that these Mexican trucks were to enjoy a sort of quasi-hybrid rolling diplomatic immunity. It must be the same with these hypothetical illegal immigrants claiming legal residency status under NAFTA. Some people have the tinfoil wrapped so tightly that it's cut-off the blood supply to their brain.

[John Filson]

I'll have to ask you what you think US equities are currently worth and where you got the absurd idea that foreigners own more than 50%?

I briefly looked around and didn't find anything difinitive to support my assertion, so I may be wrong about that, yes.

Do you have any numbers to show otherwise? It's an interesting statistic.

One issue is bond ownership, and I did find this discussion at a WSJ blog that assumes that 53% of U.S. Treasurys are held by non-residents, with 29% of them officially held by foreign central banks (unofficially, a much larger fraction) (Nouriel Roubini).

There's no denying that Asian, European, and Arab investors own equity on Wall Street. How much do they own? What is the impact?

[Nowhere Man]

So now you're blaming the Depression on protectionism in a pathetic effort to keep us from protecting our industries today.



Being a "child of the 1970's" (I'll be 39 this week) and general 1970's era enthusiast, I figure a little visual presentation is in order.

Well, it looks like the buggy whip maker and cheap sugar argument songs are wearing thin so they decided to "Hit the Plunger" on their endless 8-Track of Free Trade arguments.



Dynomite!!!!!

This time in our history has no precedent. We are losing our country in new, much more interesting ways. All you need to do is count the Mexican flags to figure that out.

Seriously, we are headed into new territory here and what you said, I do agree with and more yet they do not see due to their intellectual blinders or they drunk the Kool-Aid.

At the rate we are going, this will be the mobile workforce of the 21st Century:



Maybe if I'm lucky, I can put an 8-Track in it. B-) B-P

[A. Pole]

Y'alls hatred of President Bush must run deep.

Your sentiment is monarchical - you evaluate persons by their loyalty to the head of the state.

[A. Pole]

For some, deciding to have children is a selfish act. Others decide not to have children because they worry about not being able to provide health care, education, AND time for them.

This is a receipe for the death of a nation. Most of people over the history were poor, still they had children.

Societies wich put affluence before children cannot reproduce themselves and have to be replaced by people from outside.

[bayourod]

Do you agree with iconoclast that the War in Iraq is "an irrational, unexplainable war in the ME ?"

The only people I know of who say things like that are the extreme Bush haters.

But since you apparently have a different explanation perhaps you would be willing to share it with everyone.

[Mase]

"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." -Thomas Jefferson

This quote is invoked regularly by protectionists in their not so subtle, yet feeble, attempt to impugn proponents of freer trade as traitors. The following quotes were pulled from another thread and, unfortunately, I don't remember who researched this to offer the proper attribution.

Is it convenience or ignorance that causes these other quotes to go unnoticed? Or, are protectionists as bad at history as they are at math?

"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1785. ME 5:48, Papers 8:332

"It [is] for our interest, as for that also of all the world, that every port of France, and of every other country, should be free." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1786. ME 5:346

"Instead of embarrassing commerce under piles of regulating laws, duties and prohibitions, could it be relieved from all its shackles in all parts of the world, could every country be employed in producing that which nature has best fitted it to produce, and each be free to exchange with others mutual surpluses for mutual wants, the greatest mass possible would then be produced of those things which contribute to human life and human happiness; the numbers of mankind would be increased and their condition bettered. Would even a single nation begin with the United States this system of free commerce, it would be advisable to begin it with that nation; since it is one by one only that it can be extended to all. Where the circumstances of either party render it expedient to levy a revenue by way of impost on commerce, its freedom might be modified in that particular by mutual and equivalent measures, preserving it entire in all others." --Thomas Jefferson: Report on Foreign Commerce, 1793. ME 3:275

"An exchange of surpluses and wants between neighbor nations is both a right and a duty under the moral law." --Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1791. ME 8:219

"It is impossible the world should continue long insensible to so evident a truth as that the right to have commerce and intercourse with our neighbors, is a natural right. To suppress this neighborly intercourse is an exercise of force, which we shall have a just right to remove [with a] superior force." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Mann Randolph, 1790. ME 8:33

"Our interest [is] to throw open the doors of commerce and to knock off all its shackles, giving perfect freedom to all persons for the vent of whatever they may choose to bring into our ports, and asking the same in theirs." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XXII, 1782. ME 2:240

"The system of the United States is to use neither prohibitions nor premiums. Commerce there regulates itself freely and asks nothing better. Where a government finds itself under the necessity of undertaking that regulation, it would seem that it should conduct it as an intelligent merchant would; that is to say, invite customers to purchase by facilitating their means of payment, and by adapting goods to their taste. If this idea be just, government here [in France] has two operations to attend to with respect to the commerce of the United States: 1, to do away, or to moderate, as much as possible the prohibitions and monopolies of their materials for payment; 2, to encourage the institution of the principal manufactures, which the necessities or the habits of their new customers call for." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1788. ME 7:218

[A. Pole]

The only people I know of who say things like that are the extreme Bush haters.

Measuring the worth of a man with his loyalty to the head of the state is characteristic of the monarchy. Are you suggesting that republics which acquire empire tend to evolve into monarchies?

[bayourod]

"Measuring the worth of a man with his loyalty to the head of the state is characteristic of the monarchy. Are you suggesting that republics which acquire empire tend to evolve into monarchies? "

What a bunch of sophomoric socialpsycobable.

Calling the war in Iraq "an irrational, unexplainable war in the ME" is typical of the comments we hear only from the irrationally hysterical Bush haters.

Are you defending iconoclast because you agree with him that the war in Iraq is "an irrational, unexplainable war" or because you share his sentiments about President Bush?