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simple. NAFTA didn't work because of free trade with China. the business investment that would have gone to Mexico, matching their lower skilled/paid workers with those kinds of jobs, went to china. those jobs going to mexico would have taken pressure off the illegals problem, but american businesses and chinese interests cannot resist the lure of chinese labor.

free trade with china killed NAFTA.

what did that leave us with? it left us with mexico being the source of low cost SERVICE labor for america, but to perform a service job, the physical presence of the worker is required. hence, they came across the border to take those jobs.

Yes. But WHY didn't NAFTA work? Logic says it should have worked. Why are we still getting so many border-jumpers?

Greed and profit for a few corporations trumped ideals and logic? No checks and balances? Corruption in Mexico? I don't know the answer but in the last ten years, I've heard entire Mexican villages and towns have been emptied of able-bodied men. I've personally seen them streaming over the southern Arizona mountains since about the late 90s.

And now that they've had about ten years to pass along how good it is up here and how we welcome them with everything from bilingual education to free health care, and that they can even protest for "rights," I don't see anything reversing.

I've read some documents lately (I'll have to try and find them), coming out of South American and Mexican leadership. The Mexican leadership is saying that NAFTA has only increased jobs but not wages. Both areas are saying that NAFTA has caused increased migration from South America and Mexico to the U.S. I didn't read the entire documents, but my impression was it seemed as though these results were unexpected in that NAFTA did not pan out to increase the living standards of their countries.

NAFTA didn't work as advertised because it was illogical and flawed from the beginning. It's very premise was flawed. Unfortunately, the only well-known people speaking out against it were flawed, as well (Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot). But on this point they were right.

Here's the essential flaw: if Mexicans in Mexico will work for half of the wages that an American will work for, well, people in China will work for half of what Mexicans will work for. And people in Vietnam will work for half what Chinese will work for. And so on and so on ad infinitum because there is always someone on this planet who is more desperate than the people who currently are getting the low cost jobs. Someone will in essence say "I'll be you slave and work 20 hours a day for just barely enough food to keep me alive." And for that person, it will be a good bargain because otherwise he will starve to death.

Add to this the fact of Mexico's corruption and the fact that it has enormous wealth held by just a few wealthy, all-powerful families who would never allow a middle class to emerge or the life of anyone other than themselves to improve (whatever gains NAFTA did produce for as long as it produced them were only going to go to line a very few pockets).

All I can say is that I am surprised that anyone is surprised that NAFTA didn't work as advertised. It was never designed or intended to work as advertised. But that's not to say it didn't work. It was an enormous success in achieving its true goals, which was weakening American sovereignty and furthering what President George H.W. Bush called the "new world order."