NAFTA and Immigration Reform

Border issues and human migration are very important to Sarah Roberts. The Tucson, Ariz. nurse has been involved with the humanitarian aid group No More Deaths since its creation in 2004 and with Humane Borders before that. She also works with the Guatemala Project to help displaced families in Central America.

She has seen first-hand the desperation and suffering caused by the current immigration policy in the United States, particularly with Mexico.

"There is a planned policy of deterrence that means people will die in the desert, and the government is aware of that," she said. "The deterrent strategy of the government is to make it as uncomfortable as possible for people to try and come here to work, so ultimately that means that some people are going to die."

She said she would like to see not only comprehensive immigration reform but also the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

"I think those [NAFTA and CAFTA] are what really drive people out of their homes. With these free trade agreements economies are flooded with cheap produce and cheap goods from other places, which forces people out because they aren't able to make a living," Roberts said.

This exacerbates the already overburdened immigration system in the United States. Adding Guatemalans and Salvadorans the the queue in Mexico makes legal migration an even more difficult route. This forces people to cross illegally, usually through the desert as Roberts said, a dangerous journey that claims many lives.

In the introduction to Revisiting NAFTA: Still not working for North America's workers, Jeff Faux writes that 14 years after NAFTA was implemented, " it is clear that the costs to workers outweighed the benefits in all three nations."

Overall, "In each nation, workers' share of the gains from rising productivity fell and the proportion of income and wealth going to those at the very top of the economic pyramid grew," according to Faux.

Specifically in Mexico, "Mexican employment did increase, but much of it in low-wage "maquiladora" industries, which the promoters of NAFTA promised would disappear. The agricultural sector was devastated and the share of jobs with no security, no benefits, and no future expanded. The continued willingness every year of hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens to risk their lives crossing the border to the United States because they cannot make a living at home is in itself testimony to the failure of NAFTA to deliver on the promises of its promoters."