Mexican-Americans Struggle for Jobs

In this election year, the presidential candidates debate the benefits of free trade mostly in the rust-belt swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio that have been battered by the loss of manufacturing jobs. Yet the North American Free Trade Agreement, known as Nafta has affected the low-skilled, low-wage Latino workers near the border more than any other place. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, which focuses on labor issues, California lost 116,000 jobs from 1993 through 2002 because of Nafta, many of them textile jobs. The federal government has certified that 7,800 workers in El Paso County were displaced by Nafta over the past three years, more than double the number displaced in Cook County, Ill., which was second. Immigrants elsewhere find their jobs being shipped back to their motherland. As part of Nafta, the federal government promised retraining programs for workers who lost their jobs to foreign competition, so that they could obtain a new job that pays at least 80 percent of what they earned previously. [more ]