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The ad portrays President Fox as making outrageous demands on President Bush. In fact, it
is the American government and multinational corporations which have dictated policies to Mexico. NAFTA has worked to pit worker against worker in a race to the botton that
benefits only the corporations and the rich.
Blaming Mexican immigrants for recent layoffs at Rubbermaid or Yellow Freight is misguided according
to Judy Ancel, director of the Institute for Labor Studies a program the University of Kansas City of Missouri and Longview Community College, “Immigrants from Mexico mostly fill the bottom rungs of the job ladder and don't compete with workers who are currently being laid off by large corporations,” she said.
Ancel’s work with the Cross Border Network for Justice and Solidarity which links Mexican and American workers has given her a personal as well as academic understanding of the forces driving Mexicans to the United States. “I've interviewed a number of Mexicans and Central Americans just on the other side of the Rio Grande who were waiting to find an opportunity to cross, and they all say some version of, ‘There's no work in my village.’ ‘My children need to eat.’ “We can't sell our corn anymore because of imports.’ ‘ The family said it's my turn to go.’”
“As a result of almost two decades of Structural Adjustment and seven years of NAFTA,” Ancel observes “ millions
of peasants who previously subsisted on the land have been driven off it into the informal urban economy, up to the border so their teenage kids can earn miserable wages in the
foreign owned maquilas, or in desperation to the US to ‘enjoy’ the bounty of minimum wage and less jobs where they are often cheated and abused. As a result of NAFTA,
Mexico abolished the ejido system which kept land in the hands of the peasantry, eliminated subsidies for agriculture causing prices paid farmers to sink and prices charged for
food to consumers to rise, and opened the borders to US and Canadian corn and other products which undercut the Mexican producer.”
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