Reform Nafta if You're Concerned about the Plight of Mexican Migrants

[amborin]

"In Mexico, the first new "pacto" in 10 months was announced in late October. The pactos are agreements between government, unions, and businesses that include growth, inflation and wage targets. The pacto envisions economic growth of three percent in 1996, 20 percent inflation, and two-ten percent hikes in the minimum wage.

In Mexico, manufacturing employment has dropped every month since September 1990, and one million Mexicans lost their jobs in 1995, especially as large companies streamlined their operations to become globally competitive. In rural Mexico, over two-thirds of the farmers questioned in one survey reported that their incomes had been reduced by a NAFTA-induced influx of corn, processed meat and milk products that lowered the prices they received for farm products in Mexico.

The maquiladora industry is booming--employment rose 100,000 or 20 percent since January 1, 1994, and today tops 600,000. Maquildora wages fell as a result of the peso devaluation--from an average $2.54 per hour, including benefits, to $1.80 hourly-- many workers take home $25 to $45 per week.

Mexican horticultural exports to the US rose about 30 percent in the first half of 1995 versus 1994, enabling producers who had planted tomatoes in Fall 1994 expecting a $1=3.5 peso exchange rate to reap windfall profits. But profits were restrained by the fact that many costs of producing fruits and vegetables for the US are in dollars.

In a few cases, NAFTA increased US production for the Mexican market in a manner that increased the US demand for Mexican workers. Several large US vegetable growers, for example, moved production from Mexico to California, finding that they could supply the Mexican market at lower cost from California than from Mexico. Since Mexican workers pick most of the produce on both sides of the border, this raised the US demand for Mexican workers, possibly increasing illegal immigration."

snip

http://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=789_0_2_0


out-migration has been going on forever, so Nafta is just one factor, but a significant one; there's a huge literature on out-migration; a huge problem is Mexico's own non-egalitarian land reform, which left many peasants without the capacity to self-sustain, and pushed them first to the cities, then to the U.S. Salinas de Gotari's neo-liberal policies (he signed on to Nafta) also transformed Mexico's ejido system, and allowed for consolidation of holdings and more capitalist industrial agriculture, which pushed more off the land....etc......

[amborin]

1. kick

[leftstreet]

2. K&R