Speech #1030102501

If we do a better job of preparing our work force and have the courage to face our fiscal deficit. we will experience an increase in our quality of life. No elixir of NAFTA or anything else is a substitute for addressing our education and fiscal problems. What about illegal immigration? Mexico today has a population of approximately ninety million people. Despite a declining birtli rate. eventually. Mexico will achieve a total population of more than 200 million. Nothing speeds a decline in a national birth rate as much as an increase in the standard of living. Lifting the quality of life through NAFTA. therefore. will relieve population pressures and lessen the expected growth of illegal immigration. And the growth in job opportunities and wages reduces the attraction of employment in the north. The commission to look at illegal immigration. established by Congress in 1986. urged a free trade agreement between the United States and Mexico. calling it "the single most important longterm remedy to the problem." Few Mexicans come into the United States illegally because they like our cultural life: they come because they have little opportunity to earn a decent living in the country of their birth. NAFTA will not solve the illegal immigration problem. but it will assist in its solution. Are there U.S. foreign policy considerations in this vote? The United States has been fortunate to be bordered by two oceans. by a nation to the north we generally do not regard as a foreign nation. and a nation to the south that we have largely ignored.