Immigration: The Issue That May Tear Apart The GOP

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/8217

Immigration: The Issue That May Tear Apart The GOP
by Randolph T Holhut | Jun 20 2007

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The Mexican economy has become so dependent on remittances from immigrant workers that they are now equal with oil revenues — they are the two largest sources of foreign income in Mexico. Mexicans sent $23.54 billion back home in 2006. According to figures from the Century Foundation, a think tank, for every dollar of foreign aid that goes to Mexico, immigrants send home $150.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, enacted in 1994, was supposed to improve Mexico's economy. Instead, it decimated it.

The inequities in trade policy have given U.S. corporations unfettered access to markets, resources and cheap labor in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. The results have been predictable.

For example, NAFTA has allowed American agribusinesses to flood Mexico with highly subsidized exports of American food and agricultural products. As a result, one-sixth of the Mexican agricultural workforce has been displaced over the past decade.

By depressing the economies of our neighbors, the United States has created a massive pool of unemployed immigrants who need jobs. Too many businesses in this country are benefiting from this. Unfortunately, it's the undocumented workers — not the people who employ them — who get punished.

As long as Mexico gets treated as a place for American corporations to plunder, Mexicans will do whatever it takes to cross the border and find a better life here. But the best immigration control measure might just be improving the economies of our neighbors so that their citizens will stay put.

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