. . . check out this new Associated Press story about the upcoming World Trade Organization negotiations. The piece states as fact that the Doha round of negotiations "sets out to boost the global economy and lift millions worldwide out of poverty by lowering trade barriers across all sectors."Illegal immigration to the U.S. will not stop for walls or laws. It will not stop until the U.S., and its affiliated international trade organizations, are forced to regulate trade in such a way that corporations and banks can no longer deliberately suck nations dry and thrust their citizenry into poverty. The only reason this isn't self-evident to everyone is because the corporatists (including the corporate media) slam the public with well-concocted, often nativist if not outright racist, disinformation--disinformation which sometimes even evolves into a reactionary fascist agenda like that of the (neo-)minutemen.
since the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement - a pact, in part sold to the public as a way to help Mexico's poor - Mexico has seen its ranks of the poor jump by 19 million
The last thing the corporate elite want is for U.S. citizens to realize the simple truth that the solution to illegal immigration lies entirely in regulating trade in such a way as to lift people in third world countries out of poverty. Poverty reduction does not, has not, and will not happen by unfettered free trade on the global market, because the goal of transnational corporate profit is the theft of masses of livlihoods and displacement of ways of life.
Lifting the third world out of poverty will only happen if the U.S. citizenry demand it. Because it reduces incentive for transnational corporations to move U.S. jobs overseas, lifting the third world out of poverty (debt reduction, minimum wage requirements instead of the converse, etc) will also help restore the American middle class dream.
3 comments:
For example, make "free trade" contingent upon "fair wages."
Also, regulate so that whehter or not investment/development goes ahead is contingent on also investing sufficiently to replace jobs that are eliminated. For example, typically free trade displaces small farms with large farms that are technology intensive and are not as labor intensive. This leaves small farmers to seek work in cities. With regulated trade, investment/development would take this into account, and would have to be sufficient to re-employ these workers. With re-employment requirements, and with living wage requirements, investment/development would be less likely to encroach on small farmers, and, where it did, the injustice of uprooting local small-farm traditions would at least be partially offset by the guarantee that displaced workers wouldn't necessarily have to migrate to find sufficient employment. This would be far more humane than building walls and making harsh laws: far more humane than denying services, even emergency life-saving services, to millions of immigrants; than luring and/or forcing millions of immigrants into slave-like conditions; than burdening the American tax-payer with the debt that corporations with profits at a 40-year high could absorb with trade practices regulated so as to be fair across the border.
Consequentially, fewer immigrants available to fill low-wage jobs in the U.S. would mean that U.S. unions would have more power at the negotiating table, that immigrants couldn't be used as scabs whenever the union went on strike.
Nope, the anti-union corporations don't want to discuss this, and their coporate media mouthpieces can be counted on, not only to continue to black out the real issue and the most humane solutions, but we can also expect a sustained flood of propaganda touting the (false) vitues of so-called "free" trade, a "free" trade which ensures only the freedom of the corporate exploiters who alone reap the benefit in the form of profit, a "free" trade which fails to ensure the common worker's freedom to have enough money to acquire a roof, a nutritious diet, healthcare.
If we don't fight back, there will be a race to the bottom as corproate money-for-nothing sequences displace life-support infrastructure and suck everyone else dry, on all sides of all borders.
Here's an interesting article about "savage subsidies," another area of trade that should be regulated so that the U.S. muscle doesn't force untold millions of people into dire poverty:
Savage Subsidies
By Michael Hogan
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/3066/1/159/
And, another idea would be off-set taxes on international big-corporate trade to go into a re-investment program to develop civil commons in Mexico or other economies adversely affected by "free" trade, as implied in the following rueters article:
Immigration Debate Seen Skirting Root Cause
http://english.epochtimes.com/news/6-3-29/39847.html
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