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FTAA and Immigration
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Yet another area in which FTAA is likely to have a serious adverse
impact is on immigrants and their political rights in the hemisphere.
Mostly, this means the rights of immigrants from Latin America and the
Caribbean, in the U.S. and Canada. The observed effects of NAFTA on
immigration and immigrants’ rights provide a basis to guess at the
potential impact of FTAA.
An effect of NAFTA has been to create
conditions in Mexico which encourage migration. To conform with NAFTA,
the Mexican government had to change Article XVII of the Constitution,
to allow privatization of collectively owned farms or ejidos (1). This
was to facilitate the acquisition of large amounts of agricultural lands
by transnational agribusinesses. As a result, small farmers have been
driven off the land, but there are no jobs for them - the
unemployment / underemployment rate in Mexico in 1997 was 65% (2). The
maquiladora, or export processing zone, sector is the only sector of the
Mexican economy that has shown significant growth since NAFTA,
expanding from a workforce of 546,433 the day NAFTA went into effect, to
a workforce of 983,272 in April 1998 (3). Meanwhile, small businesses
have suffered - 28,000 small businesses in Mexico have closed between
1994 and 1997 because of competition from multinationals and their
domestic partners (4). Another attack on small farmers has been the
trade liberalization policy, under which Mexico has opened up to imports
of cheap, often genetically modified U.S. corn grown with subsidies.
Mexican corn farmers are unable to compete and are driven off the land
(5).
The picture that emerges is of a Mexican economy in which
livelihoods are being destroyed, particularly in the agricultural and
small business sectors, and people are being driven into unemployment
and poverty, but the export-oriented economy is failing to create a
sufficient number of jobs to replace the ones destroyed. The inevitable
result is pressure to migrate. It is too early to detect a definite
trend in increased immigration from Mexico to the U.S. since the
enactment of NAFTA, but studies have shown that such an impact is
possible (6) and may already be occurring on sections of the border (7).
The
domestic political response to the potential for increased post-NAFTA
immigration has been an assault on immigrants’ rights, starting with the
increased militarization of the border since January 1994. This was
followed by Proposition 187 in California in November 1994, which denied
education and health services to undocumented immigrants and their
children. In 1996, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act, which made it much harder for people to immigrate,
and easy for the INS to deport immigrants (including legal permanent
residents) on almost any pretext.
The motivation for these
policies include the need for corporate interests to drive a wedge
between American-born workers and immigrant workers to prevent the
formation of solidarity, which becomes an especially important
consideration when the numbers of immigrant workers are growing. In
addition, suppressing immigrants further makes them more easily
exploitable by employers. It is reasonable to speculate that these
policies were adopted at an accelerated pace since 1994 in anticipation
of a rapid growth in immigrant population resulting from NAFTA (as well
as WTO, IMF, and World Bank policies worldwide). By extrapolation, it is
very likely that the enactment of FTAA will lead to further erosion of
the rights of immigrants, in anticipation of another large increase in
immigration.
References
(1) Public Citizen Global Trade Watch. “NAFTA at Five Years: Report Card from the School of Real-Life Results.”
(2) Petras, James, Professor of Sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton, Zeta Magazine, April 1997.
(3) Instituto Nacional de Estadistica Geografia E Informatica (INEGI). "Industria Maquiladora de Exportacion." Junio 1998, p.8.
(4) Imaz, Jose Maria. "NAFTA Damages Small Businesses," El Barzon (Mexico City), January 1997.
(5)
Seymour, Ann, and Gzesh, Susan. 2000. “Greenpeace and Mexico-based ANEC
Launch New Project to End the Importation of U.S. Genetically
Engineered Corn.” Mexico -U.S. Advocates Network News, Vol. 2, Issue 8,
October 2000.
(6) Schiff, Maurice. “Trade policy and international
migration in the short and medium term.” [Politique commerciale et
migration internationale à court et moyen terme.] Revue d'Economie du
Développement,
No. 1, 1995. 3-25 pp. Evry, France. In French with summary in English.
(Interestingly, this is a study by a World Bank economist.)
(7)
Buchanan, Ruth. “Border Crossings: NAFTA, Regulatory Restructuring, and
the Politics of Place.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol. 2
No. 2, Spring 1995.
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