NAFTA’s Effect on Immigration to the United States
By Diego Bleifuss Prados
Despite ebbing and flowing over time, Mexican immigration to the United States is often seen as an issue isolated from the forces and policies that propel it. Recently, we have largely failed to examine why millions of Mexicans immigrated north in the 1990s and 2000s, and what role the United States had in contributing to this phenomenon. While the election of Donald Trump has led to recent reflection on NAFTA’s (North American Free Trade Agreement) effects on the U.S. economy, less energy has been devoted to looking at how this free trade agreement propelled the massive wave of Mexican migration to the United States, and how the type of free trade and financial liberalization that the United States has preached, spread, and imposed around the world contributes to the movement of people.
In the buildup to the United States, Mexico, and Canada signing NAFTA, the bill had the enthusiastic support of not only Bill Clinton, but former Presidents Bush, Carter, and Ford[1]. As corporate interests from both sides of the border sought to convert the losses of the debt crisis into gains, embracing free trade wasn’t presented as a choice, but rather a necessity to avoid being left far behind in a globalizing world.
As for immigration, Vice President Al Gore, suggested NAFTA would reduce it, as did the president of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who announced that Mexico wanted to “export goods, not people”[2][3].
While NAFTA did help Mexico’s non-oil exports and led to an increase in manufacturing along the US-Mexico border, it was devastating to rural farmers, particularly those that grew corn. Playing a central role in Mexican agriculture, corn accounts for over two thirds of agricultural production in the country, with millions employed in its cultivation.With the signing of NAFTA, Mexican corn suddenly was forced to compete with US-grown corn, which receives massive subsidies form the American government that remained in place despite all the proclamations of free trade. Meanwhile, Mexican subsidies to farmers and the tortilla industry disappeared faster and more completely than required by NAFTA. As a result, the price of tortillas rose by 279% in the first decade of NAFTA, while the price at which Mexican farmers could sell their corn fell by 66%. One million Mexicans lost their job in the first year of NAFTA’s implementation, and the Mexican rural poverty rate of 35% from 1992-1994 rose to 55% in 1996-1998. By 2010, 20 percent of Mexicans lived in extreme poverty, mostly in rural areas. With their agricultural livelihoods no longer viable, many Mexicans left their farms for the United States, leaving villages depopulated. The number of Mexican migrants in the United States doubled from 1990 to 2000.
A 1990 Congressional report on the effects of NAFTA advocated for the Free Trade agreement, but cautioned that many of the most beneficial aspects could take decades to be fully realized. This disregard for the immediate effects of a policy is typical of neoliberal politics, which relies on static models with little concept of time. The comparative advantage model used to justify free trade, for example, shows a “before” and an improved “after”, but there is no specification of when that “after” will occur. The result is a dreary in-between that leads to economic dislocation and, in the case of NAFTA, massive human migration.
When the Europe Union integrated Spain and Portugal into its economic union, it invested heavily in these countries to help the relatively poor governments modernize and integrate economically with their Northern neighbors. Had similar spending occurred upon the signing of NAFTA—the United States investing in Mexico to ease the transition from corn to other crops—it is likely the agreement’s painful effects on the rural poor would have been diminished, lessening the need for so many to migrate[4]. Instead, we got the false promises of free market solutions, and their very real consequences—economic dislocation and increased immigration.
[1] “Clinton hits road to pitch NAFTA”. September 15, 1993. St. Petersburg Times (Florida).
[2] Moore, George C.J. “Yes: More trade with Mexico, fewer illegal immigrants.” November 11, 1993. Palm Beach Post.
[3] Johns, Brian. “NAFTA Answers Immigration Problem, Salinas Says”. September 22, 1993. Journal of Commerce.
[4] Uchitelle, Louis. “NAFTA Should Have Stopped Illegal immigration, Right?”. February 18, 2007. New York Times.