Prior to the signing and implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, between the United States, Canada, and the United States of Mexico, migration has been a major topic of concern, especially straining relations between the United States and Mexico. Neoliberal economic policies aimed at the strict limiting of government intervention in business matters underestimated NAFTA 's effect on population movements between Mexico, the United States and Canada. Throughout NAFTA negotiations the U.S. refused to accept Mexican arguments that the trade agreement should legislate the free movements of labor inputs. However, limiting or minimizing government intervention in business does not create model working conditions and living conditions for the population at large. This in turn raises a host of push and pull factors for migrants. According to Mexican President Salinas,"Without the free-trade agreement you will witness millions of Mexicans crossing the border and looking for work." (1) Wayne Cornelius and Philip Martin explain President Salinas 's statement saying, "Mexican President Salinas has bluntly warned that Mexico will export either its people or its products to the United States, and that Mexico prefers to export... Mexican tomatoes rather than Mexican tomato pickers." (2) Contrary to these rhetorical claims migration of Mexicans to the United States has increased tenfold since the signing of NAFTA. (3) NAFTA 's advocates promised less immigration pressure on U.S. borders, arguing that trade liberalization and democratization in Mexico would lead to stability and thus a reduction in migration pressures. Prior to NAFTA 's implementation, the stream of Mexican migrants created controversy within the U.S. regarding entitlements and education as well as problems in Mexico resulting from droves of people emigrating from within its borders to the United States in search of work and higher wages. This chapter will interrogate claims that free trade would effectively reduce migration and analyze the contradictory processes unleashed by free trade led development.
The Mexican economy changed extensively with the implementation of the free trade agreement, though these changes were not all for the better. Free trade has led to a virtual collapse in the agriculture sector in Mexico. Erin Hallock 's chapter illustrates the role of NAFTA style neoliberal economic policies in the Peso devaluation and the subsequent collapse of the Mexican agriculture sector immediately following NAFTA 's implementation. Though the Peso devaluation was the result of economic policy making, the control of which is far removed from the average Mexican worker, the real cost of the crisis can be counted by the millions of Mexicans who were forced to migrate in search of a better life. Mexican immigrants are migrating from rural to urban areas, from both rural and urban areas to the Maquiladora 's as well as extensive northward migration to the United States in search of better education, health services and living conditions. Contrary to the promises of NAFTA 's authors, all three of these migration patterns have accelerated since the signing of the agreement.
There are many reasons why people decide to migrate. There are economic reasons that lead people to migrate, such as escape from low wages and unemployment in addition to a desire for higher living standards and better health services. Furthermore, some migrants flee their homelands to escape political pressures. These oppressive forces are part of contemporary Mexico.
The implementation of NAFTA has led to vast changes in the Mexican economy resulting in increased job displacement and hence increased migration. The agriculture sector of Mexico 's economy was hardest hit. Approximately 30% of Mexico 's population participate in small scale farming of corn and beans. (4) Before NAFTA 's implementation, the protected price of corn and beans insured rural farmers of steady incomes. The inflated prices were a protection measure taken by the government to sustain agricultural workers. The Mexican government took such measures to assist farmers and also to reduce the flow of migration to urban centers from rural farming regions. Migration to metropolitan cities has become a larger problem for the Mexican government since the 1980s recession and the droughts of 1987 and 1988 that caused extensive crop failures throughout Mexico. (5) Inflated food prices enabled the Mexican government to curb migration by making it possible for rural farmers to remain on their farms and not seek employment elsewhere. With NAFTA 's implementation, protectionist measures were halted. The international market now regulates food prices within Mexico. With the lowering of tariffs, the Mexican market was flooded with American agricultural products. Not only are U.S. crops cheaper, they are of better quality due to superior technology. This phenomenon caused chaos in the rural farmlands. Unemployment soared in the agriculture sector. (6) The more Mexican farms produced, the lower the prices were driven. Farmers stopped producing corn and beans, seeking alternative means of earning their incomes by migrating to urban centers. The agriculture sector became exceedingly worse off than it was before. The land became incapable of providing as it used to causing numerous farmers to abandon their farms and move either to large metropolitan areas or northward (mainly the Maquiladoras region or the United States) to find higher paying jobs that would actually sustain their families.
The numerous multi-national corporations that set up shop or expanded their current facilities in northern Mexico attracted migrants to the Maquiladoras region. Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans migrated northward in search of new jobs. Most of the Mexicans that have migrated from their home to new regions are doing different types of jobs than what they were doing previously because the jobs they performed in their home regions do not exist anymore. People move to the cities and further north in search of higher paying jobs only to realize, once they get there, that they lack the education and skills to perform those new jobs. Desperate to find work, migrants are forced to take low or no skill jobs to survive. Only now, migrants are left without homes, family, or acquaintances.
New kinds of jobs are being created with the implementation of the free trade agreement and the thousands of new multi-national corporations that are springing up throughout Mexico. These new kinds of jobs have played havoc with migration within Mexico. More and more Mexicans are bewildered by the new system and have to move from their homeland and distinct regions to take part in the new economy that is developing around them. Consequently, job displacement has had a tremendous effect on migration within Mexico as well as emigration from Mexico.
Migration within Mexico has increased at an alarming rate, with people moving from the rural areas to urban centers such as Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Tijuana, to name just a few. (7) Migrants abandon their farms in the rural areas and go to the cities in search of more work and better money. There has been a virtual collapse of peasant farming in rural Mexico. Thus, there has been extreme pressure on the cities from the farms. Five states with the highest number of out going migrants are: Michoacan, Zacatecas,Guanajuato,Jalisco, and Hidalgo. (8) These states are located in the arid dry lands of central Mexico that rely mostly on nature 's cooperation to produce crops. People, recently, have been leaving these states in droves. This is extremely hard on the people that live in these regions. Their labor force is leaving and there are no new workers to take over the absent workers ' place.
Family members ' migration is extremely hard on remaining members. The remaining family members come to depend on unstable external sources of income. They have less control of a part of their future income than they would have otherwise if they were directly involved with it. An example of this would be if the portion of money that was sent back to the family fluctuated considerably, lessened, or worse yet stopped altogether. The remaining family members would be depending on that income that they had absolutely no control over. "Control of the local economy shifts from local factors, over which families have some control, to international forces over which they have no control." (9) Another negative impact is lack of investment in local economies. The money that is sent back, while extremely valuable to individual families, is not sufficient to create significant investments within rural infrastructure, such as enhanced farming technology or improved education. Usually, the money is not used to increase the production of agriculture or local goods, but is used to increase the living standard of the family in a small way. In the first few years that money is sent back, it is used for basic needs such as clothes or more food. Only after a few years, do remaining family members have enough to make small investments such as a new plow or more seed. (10) Furthermore, the transfer of skills from the host country of the migrant worker to the local economy is minimal. Usually, when, and if, the migrant worker does come back home, he/she can not use his/her newly acquired skills at home with the technology that is available in the local economy. A clear example of this would be if a migrant worker, who worked at the Volkswagen factory in the maquiladores region, came back home and tried to find a job in the local economy similar to his/her job at the automobile factory. Clearly, he/she would be working on the land, once again, despite the fact that he/she knows how to assemble an automobile. Many migrants come home not to invest and innovate, but to relax and retire. The return of the migrant worker also has social impacts within the family structure and village. Jones states:
With the adoption of host-country values that the migrant brings, there is less acceptance of parental authority, less support of the extended family and of the social institutions such as the church, and more exasperation with local politics. With the male head of household absent for long periods, children are undisciplined and may suffer from a variety of psychological stresses. (11)
Also, the migration of these people, in the central states, strains the cities that they migrate to. One such city whose resources have been extremely strained is Mexico City. Mexico City is the largest city in the world today, with a population exceeding twenty million people. Statistics show that if Mexico City grows at the rate that it has been for the past ten years its population could reach an estimated 32 million by the year 2000. (12) There are enormous pressures on the city 's resources due to the high amount of unexpected migration. Housing, health services, air pollution, water pollution and quantity, and a rise in crime are some of the problems that have arisen with the increase of migration to the city.
Unplanned housing is abundant in Mexico City, along with other large cities in Mexico. Shantytowns spring up and increase in numbers everyday. Approximately, 1200 families move to Mexico City everyday, from around Mexico and the rest of Latin America. (13) The government is attempting to build low income housing for the incoming migrants, however, resources and funds are extremely limited and it can not keep up with the demand. The price of land has skyrocketed around Mexico City so much so that it is not economically feasible to buy land for the purpose of building low income housing, because such a project costs more than it earns in profits. The housing that may be categorized as low income houses the middle class as the average new migrant has nowhere near the money to rent such housing. (14) Even though it is illegal to build a house where the city has not granted permission to do so, such illegal building occurs everyday. The enforcement agents can not keep up with the migrants. Usually, if the government tears down the migrants ' houses, they just go across town to another area and easily build another house. Also, shantytowns spring up in unlikely places. The migrants use the lands that can not be used commercially to build on. Unstable lands are used everyday by in coming migrants to make temporary houses for themselves. (15) Land speculation has increased tenfold in Mexico City, since migration has increased recently. Land owners keep buying land farther away from the urban areas knowing that the city will grow further and their land will increase in value. After a while, when the city has expanded to their land, they sell off their land to make astounding profits.
Tijuana, like Mexico City, has been affected by extensive migration in every aspect. The more the north grows, the more the country 's poorest citizens stream to it looking for opportunity, only to find that they lack the education and skills required for employment in the new automated factories. Many migrants end up in the slums, further straining local governments that are trying to make up for decades of neglect in basic services. (16) Everything that is needed to have a normal life in a city is in scarcity in Tijuana and is in scarcity in all the cities growing the fastest, but that is not stopping people from coming in droves. Despite the hardships, still the poor come, mostly without knowing what awaits them. Once again, what they find is very different than what they hope to find in their migration. "Marked by squatter villages, drug trafficking and diseases spawned by poor sanitation, it is a concentrated sort of misery distinct from the rural poverty that defines much of Mexico." (17) Tijuana is in essence divided in two sections, the new modern downtown and the shantytowns surrounding it. Nowhere are the problems associated with unplanned city growth more pronounced than in the shantytowns that surround the new office buildings and fountains of Tijuana 's increasingly modern downtown. These squalid neighborhoods are an urban nightmare of too many people with too little housing and too many drug traffickers. If jobs and better living conditions remain out of reach for the migrant poor, the north 's booming cities could become smaller copies of troubled Mexico City, resembling the worst features of urban life.
There are no health services to take care of the migrants once they arrive to the cities. Health care centers that do exist have exhausted their funds and resources. Health issues have deteriorated considerably in the city because there are not enough facilities to accommodate the droves of new settlers. The amount of toxins in the air, due to the excess pollution that is produced by cars and factories, has also affected the health of many migrants and natives alike, as CITE WENDY AND VIRGIL. Cancer and respiratory problems have increased measurably in the recent past. There is not any enforcement or regulation standards that are implemented to curb the problem. What has been enforced in terms of regulations is simply ignored or not adequate. There are no schools that migrant children can attend. The schools that do exist are pushed to the limit and are extremely over crowded. More direly, there are no more jobs left for the new crop of migrants that come to the cities. Skyrocketing unemployment rates prevail in the big cities throughout Mexico today. High unemployment rates have caused an increase in crime. Some turn to petty crime to supplement their dwindling incomes. In most cases, as desperation increases, so does the frequency and seriousness of the crime.
High unemployment rates through Mexico results in the migrants remaining in the cities a short while before moving farther north to seek jobs and better living conditions. Along with the astounding rate of internal migration, there has been a trend of moving north throughout Latin America as well as Mexico. People from Latin America are migrating north in search of better economic opportunities, better health services, more political stability, and more freedom. (18) El Salvadorans and Guatemalans are the highest group of immigrants in Mexico today. (19) Latin American immigrants seek the same things that other migrants in Mexico are seeking when they move farther north. In most cases, Mexico is their destination, but in other cases, Mexico is their short stop on their way to the United States. (20) Mexicans and other Latin Americans are moving north, in larger numbers than before NAFTA 's implementation, for better opportunities than what exists for them in their homelands.
In the maquiladores region of Mexico migration has increased astoundingly. The creation of more jobs has led people to move to the region. After NAFTA was implemented, numerous multi-national corporations moved or expanded their existing plants in the region to take further advantage of the cheap abundant labor and loose environmental laws that exist in Mexico. Their numbers increased noticeably more so than before NAFTA 's implementation. Now, multi-national corporations such as: Honeywell, General Electric, Ford, Sony, Daewoo, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, Rockwell International, and Toyota are expanding their operations in the region extensively to take advantage of the abundant workers that will work for low wages. (21) The workers can not make demands for better safety conditions, higher wages, or better working conditions because they may be fired as another migrant would be more than happy to take his/her existing job. (22) The pressure of more migrants gives the multi-national corporations more incentive to make working conditions worse. There will always be another migrant that is desperate enough to work in worse conditions than another worker that retaliates and quits. More jobs cause more migration to an area and more migration causes deteriorating working conditions. Today, there are 20% more workers in the Maquiladoras region than there were before NAFTA 's implementation. (23) In 1981, there were about 120,000 workers in the region. (24) In 1992, with NAFTA negotiations underway, there were about 500,000 workers in the Maquiladoras region. (25) People migrated farther north to find jobs and better lives. Currently, the border population exceeds ten million people and is expected to double between 1990-2010. (26)
Living conditions in the Maquiladoras region of Mexico is intolerable for most of the migrants. The area does not have the capability to facilitate the ever-increasing number of migrants that move there with the hope of finding factory jobs. Like Mexico City, the area has been growing faster than the region can accommodate it. There is a lack of basic services and housing. New migrants come everyday, looking for work. The area lacks the planning for long term sustainability. Shantytowns are abundant in the region, yet traditional housing complexes are a rare sight. In most cases the houses are built of cheap materials that are to serve the migrants for a short while.
Due to the abundance of factories in the area environmental quality has been exceedingly worse in the Maquiladoras region than in other areas. The health of migrants has been affected as a result. (27) Illegal dumping by factories is an everyday occurrence. Toxins are illegally dumped in the water systems. In most cases, it is easier and cheaper for the factories to pay an insignificant fine than it is for them to correct the problem. Often politicians and enforcement agencies look the other way altogether, because they are on good terms with the businesses. The air and water systems in the area are contaminated by toxic matters. The general public is forced to breathe and drink contaminated air and water. These harmful substances have affected numerous births. (28) Children have been born to migrant workers with an ear, arm, finger, or toe missing. These birth defects are directly correlated to the environmental hazards that are abundant in the area. The chances of people getting cancer are much higher in the region as well, due to the toxins that surround the migrants. (29) Migrants are forced to live in deplorable conditions. They have no choice; if they want to keep their jobs, then they have to put up with the way their employers operate their businesses. There has been considerable downward pressure on wages, health, and safety issues for the sake of more profits and stock returns for the companies.
Immigrants whose destinations are the United States have good reason to leave their economic hardships and come to the US. 'Pull forces ' draw people to the US, such as higher wages and better jobs. "The Mexican-U.S. border is the busiest border in the world. It has more than three million legal crossings each year, and that is not counting the illegal crossings". (30) Currently, "about three million Mexicans work illegally in the U.S. (maybe even ten million), they send back more than $6 billion a year". (31) In the last decade, Latinos have been the largest immigrant population, more so than Italians and Jews. Within a few years, Latinos will surpass African Americans as the largest minority group and will account for roughly one-fourth of the U.S. population by mid-century. In fact, 255,000 people, born in Mexico, became U.S. citizens in the last fiscal year. (32)
Seasonal migration is another phenomenon that has been largely affected by NAFTA, to the dismay of many Americans. It has increased tremendously in the past few years, along with other types of migration, straining U.S.-Mexican relations. Many Americans are concerned with the number of Mexican seasonal migrants that cross the border several times each year. Most of the seasonal migrants are farm hands that disperse themselves from Washington State to Portland, Maine. Seasonal migration has been going on for many years between the two nations, yet now appears to have changed shape and form in many Americans ' viewpoints. Whereas before, Mexican migrants used to work for a season and then go back home to Mexico. (33) Now, more so than before, migrants tend to stay for longer periods of time, and sometimes do not go back to Mexico at all. More so than before NAFTA, Mexican migrants tend to stay in the U.S. for better economic conditions. (34) A typical farm hand might make $50 a day in the U.S., whereas if he/she worked in Mexico, in a farm, he/she would make $3-4 a day. (35) Thus, after the recession in Mexico, which was caused by the Peso crisis, seasonal migration has increased and furthermore changed drastically than what it was before NAFTA 's existence. (36)
Migration became a larger problem after the Peso crisis that occurred in December of 1994. The Mexican Peso went from 3.1 Peso to $1 in January of 1994 to 7.6 Mexican Peso to $1 in March of 1996. (37) This occurred right after the signing of NAFTA in 1994. Mexican workers ' wages declined 40-50%, while the cost of living rose by 80%. (38) Salaries of Mexican workers increased only by 30%, while inflation rose by 51%. (39) Essentially, Mexicans were a lot worse off than they were before NAFTA was implemented. Now, they make less than they used to make in purchasing power. This, of course, correlates directly to the increase in migration. Migrants seek new places to make more money and have more purchasing power. The number one reason why a family perhaps migrated was to increase their possessions or make investments. This investment could be better education for their children, better health care services, more seed and livestock, plows, or more material goods. In fact, the money that gets sent back to the families of migrant workers is used for investments that are mentioned above.
The Peso crisis had a direct effect on migration in the sense that it forced a lot of small time farmers off their lands. Agricultural land degradation led to further migration to the larger cities, the U.S., or farther north. Agricultural land degradation is the direct result of overgrazing of livestock, and the over-harvesting of crops. Farmers were forced to use their land more so than usual to make up for their lack of funds or to supplement their incomes, because they did not make as much money, in real terms, as they made before the Peso crisis. Thus, they over-used their land and exhausted it. Their land did not produce as much as it had produced before when crops were rotated and the land was not used so much. A decrease in land fertility lowers the income of farmers that rely on agriculture to support them. (40) These problems significantly increased after NAFTA. Today in Mexico, people are leaving in droves and migrating north to prosper. Improper irrigation techniques, a lack of access to technology to grow and transport of agricultural produce leaves Mexican farmers at a serious disadvantage in the new, more competitive market place . Now, that the U.S. owns agricultural farm lands in Mexico and can produce a far more superior quality and quantity, for cheaper, the small time Mexican farmers have further incentive to abandon their farms and seek new employment elsewhere. Between 700,000-900,000 of the rural poor population leave the dry lands yearly and migrate in search of new livelihood elsewhere. (41)
Since the signing of NAFTA, 2.3 million Mexicans have lost their jobs. (42) Unemployment or unsustainable employment has changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans recently. This has resulted in extensive migration to the north, mainly to the United States. The United States ' relationship with Mexico, as a result, has become strained. Immigration to the United States is escalating to such a level that now the United States is spending millions of dollars in fortifying its southern border. (43) The border between San Diego and the Tijuana region is getting a face-lift that is going to cost the American people millions of dollars. (44) It is ironic that all the fortification was to be unnecessary according to both the nations when NAFTA was being signed.
The free trade agreement between the three nations has not been beneficial for the low skilled workers in Mexico, causing them to migrate within Mexico and farther north to the United States seeking work and better living standards. The shift leading the poor rural migrants was the lack of investment in their home regions. The strategic curbing of migration require that more investment occur in the rural areas and not just the Maquiladoras region and the metropolitan areas. (45) Thus, there would be jobs and the rural poor and low skilled workers would not feel the need to migrate and leave their regions behind. NAFTA failed to accomplish this goal. Instead, the Maquiladoras region and the cities are exploding with new, expanded factories, completely ignoring the rural areas. This has led the poor rural farmers in those regions to migrate to find work and supplement their incomes. One possible suggestion would be for the Mexican government to plan and invest further in the rural areas with different types of factories and plants, or just better infrastructure. If the government followed plans and invested in the rural areas, then the rural population would feel less compelled to leave their regions and seek sustainable work elsewhere. Also, the government of Mexico, or the MNCs that have businesses there in Mexico, need to better the infrastructure of those regions to, at least, put the farmers at a more level playing field. If farmers could work their lands with higher yields as a result of better infrastructure (for example better irrigation systems and easier access to markets), then they would be able to live off of their lands solely and would not seek employment elsewhere to supplement their incomes. NAFTA needs to have a long-term vision that takes into consideration the whole population of the Americas if it is to remain, be successful, and expand. Failing to have this long-term vision that would be beneficial to all concerned would ultimately be the failure of NAFTA, because free trade always has other social factors involved as well.