"We are beginning to get a picture of just how big this crisis of illegal immigration has become.
According to statistics that sound very conservative, roughly 10 percent of Mexico's population of just over 100 million is now living in the U.S., representing one of the largest population relocations in modern history. But it gets even worse. About 15 percent of Mexico's labor force is working in the U.S. And one in every seven Mexican workers migrates to the U.S. at some time....
....Listen to these shocking developments south of the border: According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, "entire rural communities are nearly bereft of working-age men." The town of Tendeparacua, for instance, had 6,000 residents in 1985. Today there are 600 left. In five Mexican states, the report says, the money migrants send home from the U.S. exceeds the locally generated income.
How could this be good for the U.S.? How could this be good for Mexico? How could this be interpreted as a humanitarian idea? Why does it strike me as the worst form of human exploitation?"
Wasn't NAFTA billed as the solution to this? Help Mexico to build agriculture and industry in Mexico, where Mexicans could build at least a stable economy? Instead, NAFTA has allowed industry to build tent cities around factories that don't have to abide by US environmental regulations. They're exploited so badly in Mexico, that US exploitation looks good in comparison....so good that thousands risk their lives to get here every day. NAFTA was too flawed....not enough protection for worker rights or the environment, it did nothing to stem the invasion tide of aliens immigrants, and that hurt us and Mexico in the long run. We're sucking away their best workers, pillaging their working class. We need a better NAFTA for the long term, but the first thing we need to do is secure the border. We don't need a wall, and it is possible to do it given enough technology and funding. We could have done it already for a tiny fraction of the cost of the Iraq War. Mexico has immense natural resources and a talented population, they should be a beacon to Latin America and South America... instead, populist Socialism is on the march down there, not surprising since they have been victims of a visceral mix of capitalism and corruption for decades. Isn't it in our best interest for Mexico to be successful? How can they improve economically when the best of their workers all come to the US?