Speech #1020037035

This is not sound foreign policy. North American freetrade agreement bears the promise of moving us toward an appropriate relationship for the 21st century. My experience on the Subcommittee on Immigration also suggests to me that we must proceed on freetrade talks. Economic development in Mexico is the only effective means of stopping the flow of illegal immigration into the United States from Mexico. We currently have in place a system of employer sanctions which is causing discrimination and which is not stopping the flow. So long as poor Mexican parents see little hope of supporting their families in Mexico compared with opportunities in the United States. no laws. no fences. or ditches. are going to protect United States jobs from undocumented workers. American labor has a clear stake in stemming the Job losses and downward pressure on wages and working conditions in the United States created by illegal immigration resulting from Mexican underdevelopment. As it is. there are entire sectors in the U.S. economy where our labor laws are not enforced. and where employers deliberately recruit undocumented workers whose rights they can more easily abuse. American workers are losing Jobs right here and now in the United States to Mexican workers with lower wage expectations. Ask American farmworkers who have to send their children to work in the fields in order to afford school clothes. or American garment workers competing with undocumented workers willing. out of desperation. to work for low wages in dangerous sweatshops. about the disparity in labor law enforcement between the United States and Mexico. I bet theyll tell you its overstated. Economic development in Mexico is a means to end these illicit and intolerable labor practices in the United States.