http://www.gazetteextra.com/tradetalk112806.asp

Speaker: NAFTA fuels immigration

(Published Tuesday, November 28, 2006 11:37:33 AM CST)

By Frank Schultz
Gazette Staff

Think immigration from Mexico is a crisis? You might want to blame the lawmakers who voted for NAFTA.

Mexican immigration was flat or on the decline in the years leading up to the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a speaker at a Janesville school said Monday.

But immigration skyrocketed in the late 1990s after NAFTA's "free-trade" rules pushed hundreds of thousands of Mexicans into poverty, said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch.

Wallach is a Harvard-trained international trade lawyer who spoke Monday at the Janesville Academy for International Studies. United Auto Workers Local 95 and the state AFL-CIO, two groups that oppose NAFTA, sponsored her.

Mexico was self-sufficient in corn until NAFTA opened the border to cheap U.S. corn. The result was that 1.1 million Mexican farm families could not longer compete and left their land, Wallach said.


Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch, spoke to students and the public Monday at the Janesville Academy for International Studies. Wallach says NAFTA is responsible for the higher rate of immigration from Mexico.
Bill Olmsted/Gazette Staff

Many of those farmers ended up in the border-town factories that U.S. companies set up to take advantage of NAFTA, Wallach said.

But the companies soon discovered they could pay $1 a day in the Far East rather than $6 a day to Mexican workers, Wallach said, so the workers found themselves abandoned.

Mexico has seen a net decrease of 50,000 manufacturing jobs since NAFTA, Wallach said.

At the same time, Mexico registered a net decrease of 28,000 small- and medium-sized businesses, she said.

Wallach was sharply critical of members of Congress who voted for NAFTA.

"They created the supply side of the immigration crisis that now they're brutally trying to counteract," she said.

Wallach came to Janesville at the invitation of Janesville UAW activist Jose Carrillo. Carrillo met her at a conference and invited the Wausau native to speak at the academy when she came home for Thanksgiving.

David Newby, president of the state AFL-CIO, drove Wallach to Janesville. He said she is probably the top expert in U.S. trade outside of the government.

Despite her connections to advocacy groups, Wallach said she wasn't just spouting opinions. Now that NAFTA and other trade agreements governed by the World Trade Organization have been at work for more than a decade, the data confirms a multitude of threats to the U.S. economy and that of many developing countries, she said.

Academy students-who are also students at Craig and Parker high schools-said they found Wallach's fast-paced description of international trade fascinating.

"The stuff she is telling us is something that everybody needs to know," said Meaghan Griffin, a senior at Parker.

"It kind of makes people realize they should get their heads out of the sand and learn about what is happening to their country," agreed Malisa Middlebrooks, a Parker senior.

Middlebrooks said the academy does a good job of opening students' eyes to global issues, such as their own futures.

"When I graduate from college, I'm not going to be competing just with people in our own country. I'm going to be competing with people worldwide," Middlebrooks said.

Wallach agreed that even jobs that require high-level thinking, such as computer programming and engineering, are moving overseas.

But she held out hope: "We can change the rules, but we have to organize."

Wallach told a young questioner after her talk that either the U.S. economy will continue to suffer, "or you guys are going to be the ones to change the rules so the rules of competition are more fair."