Bad Trade Deals Push Migration to the U.S.

There is good reason some have called the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal "NAFTA on steroids."

A new report by the AFL-CIO details the findings of an October 2014 delegation of U.S. labor and Latino community leaders to Honduras to learn firsthand the impact of America's failed trade policies.

During the trip, CWA President Larry Cohen, AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Tefere Gebre, NDLON Executive Director Pablo Alvarado, and others met with Honduran workers and union leaders, community and women activists and elected officials as they explored the connection between CAFTA, a trade deal passed in 2005, and the immigration crisis affecting Central American families.

CWA President Larry Cohen addressing the media following a news conference on Monday discussing the report about the Honduras fact-finding mission.

Cohen, echoing warnings of other immigrant leaders, said passage of the TPP would accelerate the move of additional jobs from Mexico and Central American countries to cheaper Asian markets – and incentivize a new migration to the U.S. in the process. The report – called Trade, Violence and Migration: The Broken Promises to Honduran Workers – is the latest in a series of events that have brought the issues of comprehensive immigration reform and trade policy more closely together.

"I came away from that trip, as I think most of us on that trip did, really gripped by the obligation to make some difference, if nothing else to sound an alarm like Paul Revere: No more trade deals like this," Cohen said. "Where...the corporate world, sadly led by multi nationals in the U.S., can sue over the top of governments, sue the governments themselves for millions and, in some cases, for billions of dollars. This is not what democracy looks like and I came back committed to fight for what Democracy does look like."

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) accelerated the trend of devaluing U.S.-based jobs and shipping them elsewhere, in that case across the southern border to Mexico. CAFTA soon followed, with catastrophic results. Whatever gains those countries made were offset by other trade-induced losses within their economies, not to talk of the destabilizing effects on their cultures and societies.

Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the other even lower-wage countries seeking to join the TPP want the preferences currently enjoyed by NAFTA and CAFTA nations.

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To read more on the TPP, go to: stopthetpp.org.

Viewpoint From Honduras: CAFTA, Forced Immigration, Deportation Connections by CWA President Larry Cohen, 10/17/2014

Report: Trade, Violence and Migration: The Broken Promises to Honduran Workers