"Impact in Mexico
For the past two decades, Mexico's neoliberal policies followed the "free market" model (dictated by the IMF and World Bank) by largely ending subsidies for grain production, especially corn. Under NAFTA, protective tariffs on corn are scheduled to end in 2008. Even before tariffs are eliminated, corn prices fell by 48% between January 1994 and August 1996 as imports from the United States increased dramatically, undercutting the national market and forcing many small and medium sized producers to look for other sources of income.

Many campesino producers grow corn both for self-consumption and for local markets, offering a source of income for products that campesino families are unable to produce themselves, for example, school supplies, tools, cookware, medicines, etc. By undercutting prices in local markets, campesinos are forced to look elsewhere for a source of income, while continuing to produce for self-consumption. (According to Arturo Leon, Mexican lands dedicated to corn production have actually increased in the past two decades, while corn imports from the US are also increasing at staggering rates. Demographic factors cannot account for both increases, and presumably the vast majority of increased campesino production is for auto-consumption and is, to some extent, replacing more expensive nutritional sources such as animal protein.) In the context of neoliberal capitalism, migration to large cities, border maquiladoras or, increasingly, the United States often offers the only available alternative. Displaced rural dwellers from central and southern Mexico are converted into the maquiladora workforce, a process known as proletarianization.

The decision to migrate is generally a family decision and often this means splitting up the family unit for extended periods of time. Maquiladoras often prefer young female workers, for their reputed hand dexterity and because they are generally seen as less demanding than male workers. For families contemplating migration as a survival strategy, this means that young women are often sent to the border region to search for work in maquiladoras, while young men often come to the United States as undocumented workers.

In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's most important maquiladora center, more than 60% of the maquiladora workforce is women, and most of them are migrant workers. In 2001, 41.1% of population of Ciudad Juarez was immigrants, and the percentage grows every year (INEGI 2001).

Explosive population growth means two things. First, in combination with meager (and decreasing) tax receipts from the dominant maquiladora sector, city services are severely overburdened. Many migrant workers live in barrios with unpaved roads and without water, sewer or electricity. Newly arrived migrants are often forced to live in cardboard shacks located long distances from the maquiladora industrial parks. It is not uncommon for maquiladora workers to travel two hours or more on uncertain public transportation to reach their workplace.

Second, constant migration means a huge unemployed reserve workforce that forces down wages. Turnover rates in the maquiladora sector are extremely high as workers constantly search for better and safer working conditions.

Increasingly, as maquiladoras fail to provide enough jobs, the United States becomes the destination of choice for migrant workers. Undocumented immigration has always been a fact of life along the border, but dramatic increases beginning in the 1980s and extending through 2004 have no historic precedent. Today there may be as many as 12 million undocumented workers in the United States, with more than half from Mexico and another quarter from the rest of Latin America. Entire sectors of the US economy would either have to raise wages and improve working conditions, or close up shop if it weren't for undocumented workers. Perhaps 90% of the fruits and vegetables in the US are harvested by undocumented workers. More than half the workers in the meat-packing industry are undocumented. The hotel and restaurant industry depends on undocumented workers. Next time you go out to eat, visit the kitchen and you are likely to find undocumented workers. The seasonal construction industry depends increasingly on undocumented workers. As much as 10% of the entire US workforce is undocumented.

Undocumented workers provide significant subsidies to the US economy. Most are in the late teens to early 30s, and they arrive in the US as fully formed adult workers. Society is not responsible for their education or upbringing. Many workers have to purchase false social security cards in order to get employment, and they pay weekly into the social security trust fund without any hope of future benefits. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has determined that undocumented workers "account for a major portion" of the $374 billion (as of July 2002) that have been paid into the social security system under names or social security numbers that don't match SSA records, and which payees therefore can never draw upon. Because of their relatively low wages, undocumented workers pay a relatively higher proportion of sales taxes in relation to income level.

Some experts claim that undocumented workers take jobs from native workers and lower wages for all workers. However, a recent study by the United Nations indicates that undocumented workers generate as many jobs as they occupy due to their increased consumption. And studies in Chicago indicate that wages are lowered only in neighborhoods dominated by immigrant workers.

Despite their obvious contributions to the US economy - or perhaps because of the very nature of those contributions - undocumented workers do not enjoy legal or political rights in this country, a travesty that could be remedied with an amnesty program.

Immigration is not an easy choice for most undocumented workers. Most leave their families behind to make a dangerous and uncertain journey of thousands of miles. They cross a heavily militarized border, often walking through desert areas for days at a time. One migrant worker dies every day trying to cross the border. They enter an unfamiliar country as "illegals," they don't speak the predominant language, and they are under constant threat of deporation. Undocumented workers don't come to the United States "por gusto." They come because neoliberal policies offer absolutely no alternatives in their home countries. And with no end in site, the neoliberal model will most likely continue to generate a massive exodus from the Mexican countryside that negatively impacts family structures and community foundations."

http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/Alte...Neoliberalism/