From 1994 until NAFTA (The American Free Trade Agreement) took effect in 2001, “total trade with Mexico had increased by a factor of 2.3, the number of intracompany transferees crossing the border had risen by a factor of 5.6, the number of temporary workers by a factor of 4.8 and the number of tourists by a factor of 2.9.” This from an article by Douglas Massey, the Princeton professor about whom I have posted before. I read this week an article he wrote, as part of a WESAW course I am taking in my town.
Go here to find the article on migration.
Massey takes a global perspective on immigration: International migrant flows “are intimately connected to broader processes of economic integration that for the past half century have been shrinking the globe.”
Flows of commodities, services and information are matched by flows of people. The industrialized countries are caught in a “contradiction”: they want to globalize everything except the flow of people. America is dead center in this contradiction. As I posted before, we have the largest number of cities with at least one million in foreign born residents, but our politicians are largely fearful of immigration.
“Immigrants arrive because the same processes of globalization that create mobile populations in developing regions and a demand for their services in global cities also create links of transportation, communication politics and cultures to make international migration easier and cheaper.”
— from Great Decisions, 2007 edition, the Foreign Policy Association