by Kim Barker

Created on: March 06, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

The up tick in the number of illegal immigrants in America began in earnest nearly 10 years ago, when our then strong economy could more readily absorb the new members to the workforce and, not so coincidently, around the same time we started to see the results of NAFTA rear it's ugly head on working men in women in Canada, the US and Mexico. Why no one ever bothers to discuss NAFTA when debating the issue of illegal immigration only goes to show you that the pundits against the trend want to have their cake and eat it, too. NAFTA has a similar forerunner in the early economic treaties sign to form what has now become the European Union. If you had told the citizens of the then EEC that in 50 years time, they would mostly all share the same currency and would be able to pass through borders without interruption and with only one passport, they would never have believed you. Many might have even been offended by such threats to their own nation's sovereignty.

But once nation's engage in economic treaties with one another, they are, in essence, tying one another's economic destinies up with each another, for better or worse. And, indeed worse for the majority of working men in women in North America.
You can't be a globalist one minute and resent the effects of globalism the next. Globalism is not only about the free exchange of goods and capital across national borders, but also, eventually, the free flow of human beings across those same borders. If GM can move a factory to Mexico and the likes of Anna Nicole Smith and others can move her assets to the Bahamas (to avoid taxation) freely, then the next logical step is that human beings feel that they should have the same rights as factory parts and money. The logical conclusion is that people, too, should be able to negate borders for their own financial well-being. If you don't like that scenario than NAFTA is the culprit, not working Mexican men and women who would rather not be so far away from their families and their homes.

In Mexico alone, over the past decade, highly subsidized produce from the US has dampened the ability of the average Mexican farmer to compete in his own country selling the same (unsubsidized) product. Additionally, a flood of cheap products manufactured in China has forced the reduction of pay rates to Mexican and American factory workers alike.

In my mind, the formation of NAFTA says that we are all one happy continent whose citizens share the same human and workers rights as one another. If that be not the case, or was never the intent of NAFTA, coupled with the fact that the policy has failed miserably, then we should abandon the treaty all together. Just don't tell that to Presidential nominees and congressional members who rely heavily on donations from the few corporations that actually benefit from NAFTA. Instead of building walls, we should first start dismantling laws.

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