Perhaps they should ask why NAFTA—which took effect 12 years ago amid promises to raise the fortunes of Mexicos beleaguered workers—hasnt done more to reduce desperate labor migration over the U.S. border. That illegal flow, about a million migrants a year, is as heavy as ever. (Just ask CNN's Lou Dobbs, whos broadcasting live from Cancn this week because hes so aggravated about it.) NAFTA has not been an altogether bad deal for Mexico; it has buoyed the economy and improved opportunities for workers in the more technologically advanced north. But it has only exacerbated their plight in the nations south and midsection—states like Oaxaca and Zacatecas that are hemorrhaging workers to California lettuce fields, North Carolina poultry plants and Chicago restaurants.
The big reason, say critics, is that NAFTA all but sold Mexicos campesinos up the Rio Grande by failing to challenge lavish U.S. and Canadian agricultural subsidies—the kind that all too often shut Third World farmers out of First World markets. Moreover, free trade has also failed to generate enough U.S. and other foreign investment in new industries and small- and medium-size businesses—and, as a result, hasn't created enough new Mexican jobs. Even when new jobs do appear, the nations unforgiving low-wage business culture—the dark shame of Mexico's political and economic leaders, which NAFTA was also supposed to reform—makes sure that they still often pay in a day what similar work would pay in an hour in the U.S. Add the recent deluge of dirt-cheap Chinese imports into North America that are taking business previously provided by Mexico, and the urgency for Mexican workers to head north only heightens.
It's no wonder then that Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City whose platform focuses on the poor, is the heavy favorite to win Mexicos July 2 presidential election. Lpez has not been shy about suggesting that Mexico may need to renegotiate NAFTA, especially with regard to U.S. agriculture subsidies, a prospect that alarms the Bush Administration. In a recent stump speech, Lpez called unabated Mexican migration "proof of the Mexican economic failure" in the NAFTA era, and he called for a "new cooperation accord with the U.S." to address Mexicos development.
Lpez hasnt yet made clear what that "cooperation accord" would entail. But his likely victory points up an undeniable reality: whether or not NAFTA is really to blame for continued rampant illegal immigration into the U.S., it certainly hasn't delivered on its promises to help curtail it. To destitute farmers in Oaxaca, that is reason enough to renegotiate at least parts of it. And if the U.S. is really serious about reducing illegal immigration, it might eventually be reason enough for Bush, too.