Is nafta responsible for us immigration woes?

NAFTA has become a topic of debate in the presidential race lately, with Obama and Clinton saying it should go or be modified, and McCain saying it should be kept in place.

But the boom in illegal immigration to the US from Mexico seems to have...

started in the years after NAFTA was ratified. Several border states reported over 50% increases in detainments in the first year after NAFTA alone. And of course, it's gone up since then. NAFTA made things hard on Mexican agribusiness, and many of those who immigrate illegally to the US are in fact migrant farm workers.

So, do you think NAFTA is partly responsible for unemployment and poverty in Mexico, and for the subsequent migration of Mexicans to the US, through legal and illegal means? If so what should be done about it?

yeh aggree 0pen b0rders!!

Border security now is no worse than it was in 1991, yet there wasn't nearly as much illegal immigration then as now. So that really doesn't answer the question.

No, laws against immigration are responsible for immigration woes. I'd be interested in statistics backing up the claim that the rate of illegal immigration has accelerated since NAFTA. Arrests might have increased, but that doesn't mean illegal immigration has increased. The US has been pouring massive amounts of money into enforcement since 9/11, so of course arrests are going to go up.

"I'd be interested in statistics backing up the claim that the rate of illegal immigration has accelerated since NAFTA."

http://giannini.ucop.edu/Mex_USMigration.pdf

To quote: The estimated number of unauthorized Mexicans in the United States rose from 2.5 million in 1995 to 4.5 million in 2000, and then to 11 million in 2005, when the 36 million foreign-born US residents included 30 percent who were unauthorized.

close the borders, god! I don't want more immigrants into this state...they are ruining it.

Looking through the table at http://giannini.ucop.edu/Mex_USMigration.pdf, there is a note that states it's based on apprehensions. The problem is, that we can't use apprehensions as a good proxy for increased imigration, when we know we have dramatically stepped up enforcement.

If you put more cops on the streets, they'll catch more crimes. But that doesn't mean more crimes are being committed.

Well I wasn't getting my info from the table, but from the body of the article. It's clearly talking about the level of overall illegal immigration to the US, not how many people were apprehended by the cops or border patrol.

There's a lot of other data out there indicating that levels of illegal immigration have gone up dramatically since 1994. It's not really a question of whether it's gone up, but why. I'm just wondering if it's coincidence that it's been since NAFTA, or if that's partly the cause.

But the conclusions in the body of the article are based on the table, which are based on apprehension rates.

I still question whether there really has been a significant change from pre-existing trends since NAFTA. I haven't seen anything convincing to that effect.

Fair enough. The stats in the body of the article don't refer to arrests, but I guess we'll have to "agree to disagree" on this one. I really do think that NAFTA has caused the immigration boom. The reasoning is that NAFTA has forced Mexican agribusiness to compete more directly with the US, whose agricultural industries are heavily subsidized and also much more productive. This has resulted in a bottoming out of Mexican agribusiness and an influx of migrant workers to the US, many of whom are poor Mexican farmers seeking employment.

One way to reduce illegal immigration might be to translate some of our far left publications into Spanish and give everyone in Mexico subscriptions. After they read how terrible this country is, many may want to stay away.