Thread: NAFTA Cited as Immigration Factor

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/200506 ... /106280021

NAFTA cited as immigration factor
Brady McCombs
June 27, 2005

GREELEY - Prof. Norberto Valdez said the effects of North American Free Trade Agreement on the Mexican economy is a factor in the influx of unauthorized migrants to the United States in the past decade.

Valdez, a Colorado State University associate professor in the anthropology department, recently talked about his time and studies in Chiapas, Mexico, studying the Zapatista movement.

He said the presence of U.S. corporations in Mexico after NAFTA came into effect in 1994 has caused the a loss of jobs, land and the country's natural resources.

As Mexicans lost jobs on farms and in rural areas, they begin to migrate in search of work to survive. Many have migrated to Mexican cities, others to factories along the United States-Mexico border, and some have crossed the border and landed in places like Greeley where agriculture provides jobs to immigrants ready to sweat and work in the sun.

"To understand domestic policy it's imperative we understand foreign policy. They are interlinked. They are interrelated," Valdez said. "If we are concerned about immigration, we need to understand that they are here because we are there."

Valdez, an activist for 25 years and a university professor for 30 years, has done research in Mexico, Honduras, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Cuba. He said the Zapatistas taught him an important lesson about illegal immigrants:

"All people aspire to live life with dignity," Valdez said. "When that dignity is threatened people will rebel. We can learn that on that side of the border or here."

Vail, Colorado

Thanks Butterbean for this great article. This is another confirmation about the Depopulation of Mexico was inspired by our American AgriBusiness under NAFTA.

This is the same AgriBusiness interest pushing CAFTA, not to sell farm products grown here, but to establish corporate GMO farming in Central America which will empoverish the Central American farmers and cause the same great flood of immigrants into the United States.

This is the reason to VOTE NO ON CAFTA is there ever was one. The tragedy of what our American AgriBusiness is doing world wide has to stop. First is was Mexico, then Aghanistan, then Iraq and now Central America.

There is no upside to CAFTA for the United States.

There is no upside to CAFTA for Central America.

The only beneficiaries are the Globalist multi-national companies wanting to develop Central America with cell phones; take over their farming; monopolize their utilities; and employ them in factories at their existing "market wages" which does little for them and nothing for us.

We need to terminate NAFTA and end that mess altogether.

Great article by Professor Valdez. Thank you, Sir. I hope you sent a copy to Congress and the President.

Our government needs to learn that...big time. They need to get their fingers out of the business of other nations. Hellsbellz they can't even properly address the problems of THIS nation.

RR