Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Crime & Punishment Illegal Immigration and Appropriate Penalties

Falls under "hospitality" Rick. And you thought that meant "escort services", hmm?

No Rick, you haven't. You've been shown to be part of the problem.

From another Pew report:

The Pew report describes the sample included in the data displayed in table 8:
What you have done is taken these data regarding Hispanic immigrants not employed in an industry and applied them to all Hispanic immigrants. What the chart shows is that is that 82% of those surveyed who have little or no English language skill and who arrived less than six months ago are not employed in an industry.

It also shows that among respondents who have been in the US for 10 years or more, less than half lack English language skills. Are they any less "illegal" than those who arrived less than six months ago?

It says nothing about those who are employed in an industry. In other words, for example, it says nothing about the language skills of undocumented workers in the construction trades.

I understand that Americans don't want to take personal responsibility for the huge increase in undocumented workers over the last decade, but facts are facts and you can either ignore them or educate yourself.

The impact on corn farmers was only one small part of why NAFTA increased illegal immigration. Furthermore, while undocumented workers have always existed, the massive increase happened after NAFTA.

[url=http: www.commondreams.org/views06/0425-30.htm][/url]

Immigration Flood Unleashed by NAFTA's Disastrous Impact on Mexican Economy
by Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter


The recent ferment on immigration policy has been so narrow that it has excluded the real issue: family-sustaining wages for workers both north and south of the border. The role of the North American Free Trade Agreement and misnamed 'free trade' has been scarcely mentioned in the increasingly bitter debate over the fate of America's 11 to 12 million illegal aliens.

NAFTA was sold to the American public as the magic formula that would improve the American economy at the same time it would raise up the impoverished Mexican economy. The time has come to look at the failures of this type of trade agreement before we engage in more and lower the economic prospects of all workers affected.

Thanks for the interesting reading Roger. It is interesting to note that there has also been an enormous flood of legal immigration from India after NAFTA. Which simply demonstrates that just because B follows after A does not prove that A caused B.

I am sure that American Foreign policy has created lots of problems around the world. And I agree that Americans should become more aware of the extended effects of our actions.

On the other hand, I think it is simplistic to attach every bad circumstance in the world as the near certain consequence of American foreign police malfeasance. In the case of NAFTA and immigration, I remain unconvinced of the importance of the connection you are asserting.
Ardy

Escort Services? No! My bad. I consider "hospitality" to mean hotel/motel industries and restaurant industry - restaurant industry.

I think escort services would fall under, um..."comfort industry."

Does this quote from page one of the December 2005 Pew Study contribute to the "problem"?

There is a clear connection between the corporate produced trade agreements like NAFTA and illegal immigration.

The information is out there if someone really wants to understand the issue.

If not, one can always take the predictable overly simplistic reactionary linear approach and they won't have to really think about the reasons why there has been such a dramatic rise in undocumented workers from Mexico.

Personally "learning" has always superceded my need to be right.

http://borderbattles.ssrc.org/Portes/

Peasant agriculture has been eviscerated by the arrival of agri-business and the lifting of restrictions on the sale of peasant land. Industrial employment has been eviscerated by the closure of hundreds of plants unable to compete with the transnationals under the new free-for-all trade regime. The response of peasants and workers thus displaced has been clear and consistent: they have headed north in ever greater absolute numbers. Before NAFTA, undocumented Mexican immigration came mainly from four or five Mexican states and a limited number of mostly rural municipalities. Since NAFTA, migrants have originated in all Mexican states, practically all municipalities, and cities as well as towns and villages. A number of formerly vibrant places are now ghost towns, all their able adults having gone abroad; about one-third of all Mexican municipalities have lost population during the last decade, some by half or more. The counterpart of this hollowing out of the Mexican countryside is the growth of the Mexican migrant population in the U.S., much of it undocumented.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0605/S00446.htm

JEFF FAUX: Before the North American Free Trade Agreement, illegal immigration from Mexico was less than half of what it is now, and if you go back 20 years, before the early 1980s, it was just a trickle. Mexico at that time was poor, but their economy was relatively stable. What happened as a result of the U.S. helping bail out Mexico in the early 1980s -- they had a crisis with their currency at that time -- Mexico started to deregulate, to privatize, and its growth in the 1980s slowed down. And you saw illegal immigration start to accelerate. And then with NAFTA, illegal immigration really took off from Mexico. Why? A number of reasons, but the most important is that the treaty forced Mexico to open its borders to subsidized and cheap U.S. corn and wheat, and wheat from Canada as well. This meant that one million to two million farmers could no longer live on their land. They could not compete with the subsidized big agribusiness corn that was coming in from the U.S. So, they were driven off their land.


http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/07/nafta_and_illeg.html
Placing Blame for Mexico's Ills, by Marla Dickerson, LA Times:

...Many Americans are angry that as many as 12 million illegal immigrants, mostly Mexican, are living in the U.S., driven by lack of opportunities at home. Critics are demanding that Mexico right its stumbling economy ... and end its de facto development strategy of shipping its problems north...

But some experts say U.S. economic policies have played a role in fueling the mass exodus. Pushed hard by the United States, Mexico began embracing the ... prescription of privatization, free trade and government austerity in the early 1980s.

http://www.alternet.org/story/34768/?comments=view&cID=108071&pID=107718
Blame NAFTA

At this point bringing up an old medical adage might be appropriate: "The surgery was successful, but the patient died." NAFTA achieved its intended goals. But the flood of illegal immigration is up, and the standard of living of the average Mexican is down.

Real wages for most Mexicans are lower than when NAFTA took effect. And Mexican wages are diverging from, rather than converging with U.S. wages, despite the fact that Mexican worker productivity has increased dramatically. From 1993 to 2003, worker productivity rose by 60 percent. In the same period, real wages declined by 5 percent.

As NAFTA intended, Mexico has become an export-dependent economy. But this has not benefited most Mexicans.

Roger
Small farms are disappearing in the USA as well. And small American stores and manufactures cannot compete with larger manufacturers and imports. I agree that this is disturbing, and may not be a good thing. But it is not foreign policy. It is the nature of unregulated competition that the strong will win over the weak, that large over the small.

The Mexican government and people are extremely suspicious of the gringo. The have good reason to be suspicions. But because of that suspicion, the Mexican government has not been a lap dog for American policy. As an example they trade freely with Cuba despite US policy an preference.

The policies that you mention as damaging Mexico have been implemented by Mexico itself. If those policies did cause a flood of emigrants, it is not primarily a matter of US foreign policy.

From an economic perspective, the US economy entered a period of extended and unmatched prosperity after 1995. There was an over all shortage of workers for all purposes. And a flood of wealth and people wanting to buy things... like houses, etc. These factors made it relatively easy for undocumented immigrants to arrive and find good jobs. Their was little outcry against this immigration since people wanted their labor and felt they could find better jobs. This is the reason for the flood of immigration in the late 90s.

We now see that the flood of immigration is abating. This change is not because the NAFTA laws have changed. Instead it is again a matter of economics.... fewer jobs, harder to get jobs more enforcement, less economic vigor, less welcoming social environment.... so fewer immigrants come and more return to their homeland. It is not NAFT, it is economics.

Here are a collection of quotes about globilization and the phrase known as "Free trade" that I believe are indirectly related to the topic of the rise in undocumented workers coming to the United States.

The global economy works for about twenty percent of the world, for about eighty percent it doesn't.
-- Kevin Danaher

When the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity."
-- David Korten


What is called 'capitalism'is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close cooperation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society.
-- Noam Chomsky

Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people instead of an industrial oligarchy
~ Justice William O. Douglas

"Globalization was supposed to break down barriers between continents and bring all peoples together. But what kind of globalization do we have with over one billion people on the planet not having safe water to drink?"
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people; the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies...
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

The role of globalization is to homogenize all cultures, and to turn them into commodified markets, and therefore, to make them easier for global corporations to control. Global corporations are even now trying to commodify all remaining aspects of national cultures, not to mention indigenous cultures.
-- Jerry Mander

The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment.
-- Ralph Nader

Clearly, the Global Economy isn't working for workers in China and Indonesia and Burma any more than it is for workers here in the United States.
-- John Sweeney

With all due respect Mr. Rogers, your assertion is contrary to the December 2005 Pew Study: