May Day Rallies for Immigrants' Rights

There were May Day rallies in New York and several other US cities.

Teresa Gutierrez, a co-coordinator of the event, blames current government policy for the United States' immigration woes. She said she believes the Clinton administration's landmark 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA -- which was meant to promote cross-border growth between the United States and Mexico -- actually had exploitive effects on the Mexican population.

"Immigrants came because of NAFTA. They don't risk their lives crossing the border because they want to, but because they have to," she said.

A book released earlier found that the biggest surge in Mexican migration to the US begin in 1994 after NAFTA went into effect.

[Sociologist James W.] Russell argues that NAFTA allowed tariff-free imports to flood into Mexico, taking markets away from many Mexican peasants and manufacturers. With work no longer available, displaced peasants and workers joined in increasing numbers the migrant route north into the United States.

In 1990, before NAFTA went into effect, 13.6% of Mexican-origin persons in the three countries of North America—the US, Mexico and Canada—lived in the United States. By 2000, after the entry into force of NAFTA, that percentage jumped to 17.5—the largest ever ten-year increase.

In 2005, the last year for which figures exist, it jumped further to 20.5%. Put differently, between 1990 and 2005 the Mexican-origin population in the United States increased by over 50%. This occurred despite former Mexican and US presidents Carlos Salinas de Gortari and Bill Clinton both arguing that with NAFTA Mexico would export products rather than people. Precisely the opposite occurred, Russell finds.