The Economics of Immigration Reform
In reality, the same Wall Street corporations that in part caused the current recession and benefited from it via bailouts are also responsible for the destruction of the Mexican economy and the consequent migration wave.
Bill Clinton’s 1994 “Mexican bailout” was supposedly used to save the Mexican economy from disaster. In reality, much of the money went to Wall Street investors who helped inflate the Mexican economy but didn’t get out in time when the bubble burst (similar to the recent housing bubble in the U.S.).
Bill Clinton used U.S. taxpayer money to bailout Wall Street via the Mexican government, but Mexico still had to pay back the money that went to Wall Street. The Mexican loan came with devastating strings attached: state industries were to be privatized; the Mexican currency was devalued; state workers were fired by the hundreds of thousands; and social services were slashed. The ruinous results sent hordes of desperate Mexicans north to escape poverty and starvation.
When this massive fraud was being orchestrated, Republican Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato continued his opposition to Clinton by actually telling the truth about the bailout: "The rescue plan has failed. And we are just perpetuating a myth if we think we are helping anyone except rich investors, who the United States has saved while everyone else in Mexico starves." (The New York Times, April 2, 1995).
Who benefits?
U.S. Corporations. The Mexican economy was cracked open to rich U.S. investors who take advantage of slave wages south of the border, while also benefiting from the Mexican migration to the U.S. that corporations use to drive down wages in the U.S. (corporations in the U.S. massively advertised in Mexico to bring more workers across the border).
If Latino immigrants in the U.S. are not afforded basic civil rights — including the right to form unions without being deported — they become easily exploitable by corporations; wages for all workers in the U.S. consequently drop. This sad state of affairs will continue if the Democrats’ anti-immigration bill is passed.
What if they are illegal? That is the question that is being ignored. Will allowing them to organize in order to protect wages fix what is wrong with Mexico? Or the corporations? Is this the best practicable solution? Wouldn't it be better to do something about the corporations?
Sheldon Richman, Immigration, Civil Liberties and the Drug War
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