Radical idea for Immigration?

[ThoughtCriminal]

It seems to me that virtually everything is 100% doomed to failure:

We have to improve economic conditions in Mexico

So, the question should be: How do we do this without just exporting our jobs there? Does it have to be a "Zero-Sum" game?

That's not any easy question, but I'm certain that every other "Solution" is a complete waste of time and resources. So how about some proposals that might actually work.

[spindrifter]

1. One area that

generates local jobs is tourism--which Mexico is developing. Mexico is a big destination for Europeans as well as people from other parts of the Americas.
Of course, Mexico also has mega oil wealth and with a recent announcement about a huge find in the Gulf of Mexico, it looks like more money is on the way.

[Jim Warren]

12. J.P. Getty once quipped........

"Pemex is the only oil company in the world thatnever made a profit."

More money might be on the way but it ain't going nowhere.

[spindrifter]

23. There has been a consistent

problem. It isn't just in the oil industry. Of course, our captains of industry didn't do much to assure that we benefited from anything except the sweat of our own backs--with the assistance of unions.

[PsN2Wind]

2. That was tried with NAFTA

the only person correct about that treaty was Perot. The jobs are gone forever and the illegal immigrants just keep on coming.
That after the amnesty of 1986 that was going to cure the problem of illegal immigration.
The problem is that Mexico, in particular, wants these people to come here, employers in this country want them here for their willingness to work cheap.
The only sure cure is enforcing the laws against the hire of illegals, which ain't gonna happen.
So our government will make this bunch legal and then in twenty years we'll probably do it again.

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. The problem with NAFTA

was that it was not really designed to benefit working people in EITHER country.

[PsN2Wind]

7. You nailed that

With the help of Bill Clinton the corporations still got the best of the deal.

[Strelnikov_]

4. My Feeling Is It May Have Worked Without Offshoring To Asia

We would have seen some declines here in the US, but I think it could have been pulled off, over time.

The offshoring of manufacturing and office jobs to Asia, from both the US and Mexico, has broken any chance for Mexico and the US to attain some sort of labor parity.

The US is currently mining equity. When we reach bottom, the whole thing goes pop, for both the US and Mexico.

On edit: For example, consider if everything that we import from China or India were from Mexico.

[PsN2Wind]

6. I kinda doubt it

Many of the workers in the maquiladoras are living in cardboard boxes because the pay is still crap.

[Strelnikov_]

8. Nothing Happens Overnight

NAFTA was the mid-90's, few years later the Corporatists discovered even cheaper labor in Asia.

[PsN2Wind]

11. I agree

Mexico was just a way station for those operations until WTO, again pushed by Bill Clinton, went in effect.
But even those businesses that didn't move on from Mexico hasn't done much to help their workers.
As for your title "nothing happens overnight", does that mean you still have hope for the maquiladoras? If so next time I'm in Nogales I'll encourage them to hang on a little longer.

[Strelnikov_]

14. No. No Hope. Game Over

Like I said in a follow up in my original post "Consider if everything that we import from China or India were from Mexico."

I feel there was plenty of economic might in the US in the mid-90's to lift Mexico's boat quite a bit while lowering ours some. Would this not have been the compassionate thing to do? I don't know if the specific NAFTA legislation would have attained it, but the concept, North America Free Trade, could have.

Then along came Asia, and hyper-globalization, and the flooding of the labor market.

And we all know the rest of the story.

[PsN2Wind]

17. Trouble with NAFTA

was all the workers rights and wage guarantees we were promised by Bill Clinton were going to be "negotiated later". Later never came or came too late as most of the factories had already moved again.
Probably if done properly it could have been a net gain for everyone in North America but instead it was done exclusively for the benefit of the corporations.

[Ian David]

5. That's gay. Everyone back into the pile

[CheshireCat]

9. If you want to stop the illegal immigration problem

Go after the companies and businesses that supply the jobs for illegal immigrants with really big fines and jail sentences for the CEO's. If there are no jobs for these poor souls, then they will not be risking their lives sneaking across the border.

Never should we try to solve the problem by punishing the poor people who come here seeking a decent life. Go after the crooks who want them here to increase their profits.

I like your idea about improving the economy of Mexico, but that will not happen as long as Mexico can force its poor to leave the country in search of a living wage.

Does anyone agree with me that the solution lies in going after the employers?

[ThoughtCriminal]

10. It's not likely to work unless

We go to a National ID. OK , who likes that idea? (I'm not thrilled)

One of the ways that employers have been dodging the fines is to claim that they tried to verify status, but the papers are too easy to fake.

[Minnesota Libra]

13. Correction: go after ANYONE hiring illegal aliens regardless..............

....of whether they are small companies, big corporation, or mom-and-pop operation. Put some teeth in the law by confiscating property and starting the fines at $50,000 for each illegal alien, to be doubled every day. Also go after those housing illegal aliens (renting or selling to them) at $50,000 a day retroactively.

[Bridget Burke]

15. The USA can't be a Gated Community.

(Besides, who would run the leaf blowers!)

US workers in the US, Mexican workers in the US, underpaid help-desk guys in India & sweatshop prisoners in China ALL have more in common with each other than we do with the Corporations.

Encouraging the better elements in Mexico would help. Some have blamed Fox for Mexican corruption--he hardly invented it. Fox represents "the Right" in Mexico, but that's not the same as our own Right. As the first non-PRI president since the Revolution, he actually tried some reforms. Did Bush encourage him to help his own people? Ha!

If the current front runner wins the presidency of Mexico, I was going to predict attacks from the right. Guess what--they've already begun!

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico's presidential race has gone sharply negative with attempts to tie the front-runner to Hugo Chavez and portray him as a leftist revolutionary in the same mold as the Venezuelan president.

After weeks of leveling unsubstantiated allegations that Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's campaign has been infiltrated by Chavez supporters, the conservative National Action Party went even further in a TV ad aired this month.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/03/29/mexico.chavez.ap/

I can already see the posts from the Usual Suspects: "Lopez is a brutal thug, just like Chavez & Castro."

[Nikia]

16. Mexico would be economically prosperous

If their elite actually cared anything about their country's poor. Mexico is an example of what we are to become if we continue as we have been under Bush.

[Jim Warren]

20. Prescient

"Mexico is an example of what we are to become if we continue as we have been under Bush."

That is a line I've often used when dealing with RW relatives, of course they have no clue WTF it means because if they did go see Mexico they'd never leave the hotel pool.

Mexico (and more precisely Honduras) is the the ultimate extension of privatized republican government, low taxes, shit for social civil programs and repressive as hell with one of the worst legacies of civil rights abuses in the world.

[Jim Warren]

18. Despite the glib responses

you are on to the thing here of course. Some ramblings......

Before Raygun busted the back of Unions in America with PATCO, in the late '70s and early '80s the Teamsters displayed anti-immigrant sentiments with no show of solidarity with Chavez and migrant farm workers. The prevailing ethic was jobs would be taken. This was a huge mistake. Only by fighting for fair wages, work place safety and environmental issues across borders could workers ensure their own benefit and short circuit capital flight.

I remember watching the speech when Poppy Bush in a SOTU used the phrase New World Order(NWO), I thought WTF is that?, how Orwellian.

It's not about race or ethnicity but the struggle is of class.
Bushco and the crony top elite he serves have more in common with their social elite counterparts in Riyadh or London or Mexico City or Zurich than he does with you or I or most Americans.

[Karenina]

21. Another important point that many fail to grasp

is that the "globalists, capitalists, avaricious ruling class" whatever you want to call them, HAVE NO LOYALTY TO NATIONS. We, who are not in their ranks, are simply a "commodity." Their goal is a globalized free-flow of capital coupled with localised slave labor.
NO, they don't give a flying fuck about the "human family."

"The troops are fungible." Donald Rumsfeld

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to look up the word "fungible." Jim Warren's post will come into sharper focus once you do.

[Jim Warren]

22. Heh,

from the shortlist of perma-archives

"Every so often, a high-profile Washington figure gets himself or herself into trouble by inadvertently revealing what he or she really thinks"

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0420-11.htm

[Radical Activist]

19. Require companies that import into the US

to meet certain basic labor and pay standards. We have the biggest, richest market in the world that everyone wants to sell in. That's how to leverage our market power. Don't accept imports those who pay slave wages.