Posted on 12/28/2002 7:10:41 AM PST by madfly
Angry Mexican farmers are threatening to block U.S.-Mexico border crossings on New Year's Day to protest the lifting of tariffs on agricultural products under free trade rules.
The farmers say they fear they will not be able to compete with U.S. and Canadian producers when tariffs are removed on January 1 as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The farmers and their supporters are calling on the Mexican government to do more to protect the agricultural sector.
President Vicente Fox refuses to re-negotiate the free trade agreement, but he has pledged to help the farmers compete with the United States and Canada.
Some information for this report provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Think that this was part of the reason that the longshoreman went on strike several months back?
You know the vast majority of people are against illegal immigration, there's no trying to manipulate it. In 1994 the people of California overwhelmingly voted for Prop 187 and made their feelings known.
You're free to believe otherwise, but then you'd be in denial wouldn't you?
We're getting there, another 5 to 10 years at most if we stay on the present course.
Reagan did not get my vote for his 2nd term as president. From then on, after learning of his "Kitchen Cabinet's" advice, I have been registered as an Independent voter, though I actually vote Republican or skip that chad.
As governor of California, he closed vital hospitals for the mentally ill, saying it was too expensive.
I'm none too thrilled with Bush, either. Will not vote for him again. A war with Iraq has nothing to do with it.
You just don't understand what's going on. NAFTA was supposed to create disincentives for illegal immigration with better paying jobs in Mexico through American investment. It hasn't quite worked out this way. American companies in Mexico are primarily concerned with keeping wages as LOW as possible, lest they become uncompetitive with the slave labor from countries like China.
Given that most of our companies are concentrated within a few miles of the border, millions of Mexicans in the southern region of Mexico have moved to Northern Mexico. This has made it all the easier for them to become familiar with America's lax immigration control and cross our border in search of more money. With the added draw of welfare i.e. free medical care, subsidized schooling, housing etc. there is a tremendous economic incentive for Mexicans to enter America illegally.
The only true beneficiaries of NAFTA are the business owners of the transplanted companies there, the domestic companies that benefit from the flow of illegals that the treaty encourages with closer ties to the U.S. and the politicians they pay off.
Like I said before, how much economic sense does it make to sign trade agreements with backward, corrupt 3rd world nations? I ask you: would you do business with someone that you knew was corrupt to the core? If you don't think this accurately describes Mexico I don't know what else to say.
That strike was about the new tech elimating SOME jobs ..so they were looking for some "job protection" from the machinery..but is the norm with union a little more in the paycheck of the workers silenced that I think
I do not believe the dockers have seriously considered that the good times are over for them..(they were the only ones to benefit from free trade,,unloading all the China stuff)...soon their jobs will move south and they will join the rest of the nation on the unemployment line...
Me either..quite frankly I think the war is a diversion..and nothing more..the IMPORTANT work is the making of USA Banana republic...and as a side note letting the only ones that will really oppose the New World Order the Muslims (as they want a theocracy) know that if they are not careful they will have nothing...
This is all about power not nationalism..
It just seems the monster has too many heads, we do we start?
So true.
(sarcasm) You know how it goes - 'Document It', "prove it", 'well it happened there by what makes y ou think it happened elsewhere' 'just because you saw it' - and on and on.
How are they going to do that? throw sticks.
I have seen first hand exactly how wrong and untrue this statement is.
Yeah let's not cloud our judgement with reality, sometimes the eyes can be deceiving after all.
And I thought Clinton was the one who played the "is" is game.
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