NAFTA and Mexican Immigration
It was supposed to be the magic wand that took care of immigration. The North American Free Trade Agreement was to make Mexico rich and create enough employment incentives to keep its people at home. It has been anything but. More than ten years after the signing of the treaty, economic growth has been anemic in Mexico, averaging less than 3.5 percent per year or less than 2 percent on a per capita basis since 2000; unemployment is higher than what it was when the treaty was signed; and half of the labor force must eke out a living in invented jobs in the informal economy, a figure ten percent higher than in the pre-NAFTA years. Meanwhile, jobs in the runaway maquiladora industry that left the United States to profit from free trade and cheap labor commonly pay close to the Mexican minimum wage of U.S. $7.00 per day, an amount so small in the now “open” Mexican market as to force people into informal jobs or across the border.
