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 ]
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