Kucinich blames NAFTA for illegal immigration

[vssmith]

Kucinich said that the Mexicans did not come pouring over the borders in such great numbers until NAFTA was passed. He stated that NAFTA had the effect of quickly and dramatically devaluing the peso which made coming to the US much more attractive. He advocates repealing it. I had always thought that NAFTA was beneficial to Mexico.

[depakid]

1. Subsidized US corn flooded Mexican markets

Very bad news for rural Mexican farmers.

Combine that with depressed urban wages and of course you're going to see a dramatic increase in migration.

That's a no brainer.

[rinsd]

2. Kooch going for the racist vote?

This is usually Buchanan's line.

[Solon]

5. Uh? Buchanan wouldn't say anything good about Mexicans.

Besides, I don't know what definition of racism you are using. Is there some definition of racism that involves pointing out that a group of people are being screwed over by the man?

[rinsd]

9. It is using illegal immigration as an emotional trigger point to be anti-NAFTA

Though I would like to see exactly what was said.

[Solon]

13. The thing is that he is right...

Basically all he said, and he said it early this morning, was that many Mexicans are having their wages depressed, being kicked off their farmland, etc. all because of NAFTA. Due to this, he said they go to the most obvious place to get a job when you have no prospects at home, the United States. The thing is, when put that way, you can't really blame the Mexicans, can you?

[rinsd]

14. I understand what he is saying.

Though I am not sure he even said it. I can't find anything with Kucinich brining up illegal immigration while talking about NAFTA. Gravel has though.

My point is by conjuring the image of a flood of Mexicans as a means to support a policy you are playing on xenophobic fears. That is why I mentioned Buchanan.

But all I have here is a quick line with no quote and no link so I am unsure of what the context was (the OP's presentation was not encouraging)

Do I think Kucinich is a racist or anit-immigrant? hardly.

[Solon]

15. He was interviewed on the phone early this morning on MSNBC...

some empty-headed pundit's show, we actually discussed it before the downtime, at least a little bit:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3302264

I made one comment on his immigration stand, as articulated this morning, I don't know where they keep transcripts for the morning shows.

[rinsd]

17. Thanks for the info (nt)

[primative1]

33. He is 100% correct ...

The two issues are completly intertwined.
Mexico working class hates NAFTA as much as the American working class does. Didnt people follow the Obrador story?
This stupid agreement has destabilized the entire regions financial stability while enriching the upper crusties on either side of the border.

[brentspeak]

6. How is opposing NAFTA "going for the racist vote"?

[rinsd]

7. By tying it to illegal immigration (nt)

[John Q. Citizen]

37. Are you suggesting the "push/pull" model of emigration used in social science

is somehow bigoted?

In what way?

[cyclezealot]

8. wrong. You gotta be kidding.

Very wrong. It's not a line. It's so obvious a nation's people don't leave freinds/family and their culture so easily. Desperation at their predictment is the cause for such drastic measures.

[ulysses]

21. no - it's not racist to point out that an economic treaty

displaces people looking for a living wage.

[enid602]

3. Mexico

NAFTA did not benefit either country. Mexico had to join the WTO prior to gaining NAFTA membership, however. Joining the WTO opened them to Chinese imports, which is ruining their economy. When you visit Mexican border towns these days, most of the 'handicraft' items sold are made in China.

[MGKrebs]

10. So they wouldn't have Chinese imports without NAFAT?

Oh, I see, The Chinese imports would just come directly to the US without passing through Mexico first. That would be better for Mexico?

I wonder if the designers of NAFTA foresaw the competition from the Far East and were at least partly attempting to keep SOME jobs in this hemisphere.

[cyclezealot]

30. Nafta and WTO trade law are seperate entities.

Nafta came first. Regardless of whatever tariffs, certain forms of slave labor will even underbid Nafta.

[greendog]

4. NAFTA benefited the millionaires and billionaires in Mexico.

The poor just got poorer.

A lot of the land that was previously used for subsistence farming was taken away from the farmers to use for export crops. The farmers either moved to more marginal land or migrated north to find work in the border towns producing stuff for export. Now, A lot of "that" work has gone to China.

Of course they're going to end up here cleaning toilets and working in slaughterhouses. NAFTA destroyed their communities and wrecked their economy.

[Rydz777]

16. I would add two quotes about NAFTA:

Jorge Castaneda, former Mexican Foreign Minister on NAFTA: "an accord among magnates and potentates: an agreement for the rich and powerful...effectively excluding ordinary people...."

Jeff Faux in The Nation: "In all three countries, NAFTA has worsened the distribution of income and wealth."

[StudentsMustUniteNow]

35. So why did Gore support it?

That's the 200 dollar question.

[MGKrebs]

18. First of all, that Chinese connection has nothing to do with NAFTA.

The subsistence farming you refer to is another way of saying "don't pay taxes".

Detractors of NAFTA sometimes argue that helping the Mexican government get control of their economy by inviting American factories in to provide jobs that pay taxes is a bad thing.

I haven't figured it out yet.

[Solon]

19. So let's eliminate the middle class in Mexico so that they can "control" their economy?

Uhm, NAFTA has a shitload of provisions to PREVENT Mexico from controlling its economy. Look up Chapter 11 of NAFTA.

[greendog]

20. Mexican factories that close after being...

...underbid by cheaper Chinese factories don't pay taxes.

And, the subsistence farming that I refer to is little more than a large garden and a few chickens. Interesting that you'd view this as tax avoidance.

[MGKrebs]

23. I have to admit I am not clear how NAFTA made it possible for

Chinese factories to underbid Mexican factories. I mean, they're underbidding everyone.

[greendog]

24. Well, I'm sure you'll be able, at least, to agree...

...that NAFTA wasn't much of a benefit to the rural folks that had to leave their communities for factory work in the north only to see those jobs go to China.

[MGKrebs]

31. I can agree to that.

I guess my point is that whenever I try to engage on this (I feel as if I haven't been clued in on some secret because I don't see the big evilness of NAFTA) the reasons given for NAFTA= bad eventually end up with "China", and I think it's possible that things would have been WORSE for Mexico without NAFTA. At least NAFTA attempted to put some jobs in Mexico. The fact that most companies leapfrogged right over Mexico and went to the Far East is a different problem.

My recollection is that it was supposed to be bad for the US but pretty good for Mexico. How did those farmers feel about it at the time? Were they OK with the prospect of getting company jobs and joining the economy? Did few or none of these farmers own their property? Is there a problem with Mexico's property laws? Could they not get jobs on the "corporate" farm, farming the same land? If not, is the problem mechanization? How is that a NAFTA issue? If a company owns the land and wants to mechanize it, how did NAFTA facilitate that? If they don't own the land, how did NAFTA allow them to get it? What is a better solution? Are we saying that leaving much of Mexico as undeveloped rural subsistence farming is a better way? Don't we want to encourage poverty relief and the social discord that often results from poverty?

I'm not saying NAFTA is perfect by any means, but I just haven't found that it is the great evil responsible for all the ills of the world either. We can't solve problems if we don't identify (and talk about) them accurately. I will continue to read more about this.

[Solon]

32. At the time that NAFTA was approved, Mexico couldn't have even been called a Democracy...

it was a corrupt one party state, and was for most of the 20th century up to that point. You also have to remember that the Zapatista Army of National Liberation went international, and called for revolt in Mexico on the day that NAFTA took affect. NAFTA is no more evil than any other piece of paper, but it would be frankly stupid to think that it was ever designed to help the majority of people in any of the three nations that are signatories of it.

NAFTA wasn't just "not perfect" it was disastrous, literally hundreds of thousands of farmers in Mexico lost their land and crops as a direct result of NAFTA. Wages have been depressed, and even tax revenues to the government have fallen. The middle class has practically disappeared, unemployment has skyrocketed, and the local economy has been destroyed.

[stevebreeze]

25. NAFTA didn't by itself, we also have GATT to thank and favored trade

status for China for the flood of immigration. Many of the jobs that actually did go to Mexico for a time went further away still, when the General agreement on trade and tariffs was passed, creating the World Trade Organization(WTO).
None of these agreements should EVER be referred to as "free trade" they are nothing of the sort. They have thousands of pages of rules and regulations that must be followed, all in the name of protecting profits while exposing the rest of us to more competition in wages.

[Vincardog]

38. Figure this out. By opening Mexico to subsidized US GRAIN the locals

could not afford to compete and were forced off the land.
They went to the city and there were no jobs.
So they head for the US.

The US companies that were to provide the good paying jobs decided that a dollar a day was too much to pay, They moved the jobs to India, then Indonesia, and finally to Slave prison labor in China.

NAFTA is bad for 90% of the people. PERIOD.

[polichick]

11. This is how I understood it...

Has nothing to do with racism ~ just a look at the history.

[rinsd]

12. Are you sure it was Kucinich? I haven't seen him tie immigration to NAFTA?

And I couldn't find anything on the web about it.

Gravel has though.

[vssmith]

26. He hinted at it in the debate and

I saw him inteviewed the next day and he plainly said just as I reported.

The Peso is worth in US dollars only about 1/4 of what it was before NAFTA. All other things being equal a worker can get 4 times as many Pesos working in the US as he could before NAFTA. Am I thinking correctly?

[jcrew2001]

22. Mexico should just become a Communist state like Cuba

and Cuba's doing okay. Besides, they will be 'refugees' when coming onto US soil and be accepted.

[MadHound]

27. Kucinich is right on his analysis

Any honest economist will tell you that while Mexico took over the US manufacturing sector in the early years of NAFTA, US agriculture ate Mexico for lunch due to US corporate farming practices. Hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers were displaced. Many initially moved into the manufacturing sector, but when China received most favored nation trading status under Clinton, manufacturing fled to China leaving a toxic waste hell behind in Mexico, especially along the US-Mexico border.

This is why illegal immigration exploded, and Kucinich is correct in saying that we should go back to bilateral trade relations rather than our current form of "free trade". "Free trade" isn't so free, and sadly it is the working class and the powerless who are paying the price.

[pingzing58]

28. Free market economies hurt the little guy. How to protect them here and abroad? n/t

[cascadiance]

34. The subsidized corn exports to Mexico were a big factor...

In like what many said here in pushing Mexicans off their land. They couldn't compete making corn products or sugar for that matter (against HFCS-based foods we'd export to them). Companies or Mexican elites would buy up their land and then turn around and make Maquilas (U.S. owned factories down in Mexico) that would hire these desperate former farmers to work cheaply in factories, or these people would move north here.

Also other factors:

1) Mexico used to have large rural schools that were free to teach teachers in local communities like Oaxaca. These were "privatized" with multinational company helps to "upgrade" them, but in the process a whole segment of Mexicans were left out and less teachers were trained, and then less Mexicans were able to get a basic education, which drove them further down the economic ladder too. They are suffering from less literacy now. That is why SO many of those in Oaxaca that were protesting, etc. when Brad Will got killed as an indy journalist, were teachers.

2) The WTO (created by NAFTA) has been used by our multinationals AGAINST Mexico where it was used to rule against Mexico putting up tarrifs on any imported drinks that weren't using cane sugar as its sweetener vs. other sugar (high fructose corn syrup that we serve), saying that was artificially propping up their bottlers who used cane sugar (I still just get Mexican coke here at Costco now since they don't use HFCS and use cane sugar instead!). Of course the WTO doesn't look at (and probably are paid under the table) the fact that the U.S. subsidizes it's soft drink exports through subsidizing the HFCS that is used for sweetener with corn subsidies. If they weren't using subsidized corn, then likely they'd have to sell it at higher prices, and the Mexican tarrif would be unncessary to compete.

[Indyobama]

29. If he said

He's right, Most of the illegal immigrants here in the US that are from mexico are from farming communities.

[robcon]

36. You can count on one thing...

Dennis Kucinich has it wrong - on almost every issue.

[Vincardog]

39. Dennis Kucinich has it RIGHT- on every issue I have heard him speak to.

[robcon]

41. Well, let's just look at his latest kooky argument.

It's FACTUALLY untrue, as well as inconsistent with basic economics.

Any questions?

[Vincardog]

42. What statement is FACTUALLY untrue? Please enlighten me, where are the factual errors?

[AnOhioan]

43. "crickets chirping"

[Vincardog]

45. I believe that is what happens when inquiring minds meet RW talking points.

:grouphug: :toast:

[AnOhioan]

44. Your statement reflects more on you than it does on Dennis

[bunnies]

40. NAFTA has been a disaster for Mexico.

Its put a couple million farmers out of business, shut down 1000's of other businesses and increased the price of corn to the point that people cant even afford to eat. It should be repealed. Immediately. Dennis is absolutely correct.