Immigration (Written in 1993) NAFTA

Immigrationle

November 14, 1993|Walter Russell Mead, Walter Russell Mead, a contributing editor to Opinion, is the author of "Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition" (Houghton Mifflin). He is now working on a book about U.S. foreign policy for the Twentieth Century Fund

NEW ORLEANS — The North American Free Trade Agreement will encourage foreign investment in Mexico and create jobs there. Because Mexicans will have jobs at home, they won't come north looking for work. NAFTA, there fore, will reduce immigration from Mexico to the United States. Right?

Wrong. NAFTA could mean millions of additional immigrants over the next 20 years. This is the conclusion of a study by NAFTA advocate--and Clinton Administration Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner--Doris Meissner. Other studies by pro-NAFTA groups, like the Institute for International Economics, say the same thing: A vote for NAFTA is a vote for more immigration for the rest of this decade, and possibly longer

Why? Think farms. Roughly 24 million Mexicans live in rural areas supporting themselves on small farms. NAFTA will force millions of them off the land faster than it creates jobs for them in Mexico's industries. The net result: Up to 20 million people will leave Mexico's countryside and flood into its cities over the next generation.

But Mexico's cities are full. Jobs are poor-paying and hard to find. Far from absorbing Mexico's surplus rural population, the cities will be sending people north. Considering migration from the countryside and from the cities, tens of millions of Mexicans will be driven by economic pressures to seek work in the United States over the next 30 years.

Many immigrants will be coming whether we have NAFTA or not. But if Meissner's study is correct, ratification of NAFTA means up to 2 million extra immigrants between now and 2013. This is a pro-NAFTA estimate. Anti-NAFTA experts think the total could be higher.

This will be bad news for Mexicans as well as Americans. The flood of dispossessed farmers from the countryside will keep wages low and unemployment high in Mexico's cities despite new investments under NAFTA. The Mexican people, their hopes of better living conditions once again disappointed, will not thank President Carlos Salinas de Gortari for this treaty. Despite heavy propaganda from Mexico's government-controlled press, polls show that support for NAFTA is slipping in Mexico.

But if NAFTA won't control immigration, what can we do? Fortunately, there are alternative approaches to Mexican agriculture that could reduce immigration. Instead of sweeping Mexican farmers off the land, United States needs to be strengthening family farming in Mexico.