U.S. foreign policy on Mexico - Essay Example

US FOREIGN POLICY ON MEXICO U.S. foreign toward its Mexico can be analyzed as driven by two agendas: promoting free market reforms and enforcing market prohibitions. In terms of implementation, this means tightening controls over prohibited cross-border economic flows and at the same time promoting a borderless free trade area. U.S. drug and immigration control strategies focus primordially on curbing the foreign supply and secondarily on identifying the sources of demand: consumers of drugs and employers of migrant workers. In a nutshell, US efforts have confronted the demand side of the problem--America's inherent dependence on both. As US scramble to beef up border controls on Mexico, puny efforts are given to tide down the powerful economic forces that drive so many Mexicans to illegally enter the United States. The Border Patrol can only do so much by making life much harder for illegal border-crossers. The underlying push-pull factors that motivate illegal labor migration remain stronger than ever. On the pull side, important sectors of the U.S. economy, such as agriculture and the garment industry, rely on illegal workers. The US government crackdown on employers using illegal aliens is weak, poorly designed, and minimally enforced. The first priority should be to raise and enforce labor standards. Genuine enforcement of existing workplace rules such as the implementation of minimum wages, overtime, and environmental, health, and safety regulations will make it difficult for employers to engage in the exploitation of workers, hence, denying them their most important incentive to hire illegal labor. These efforts should especially target sweatshop employers who are despicable for their abuse of workers and disregard of labor standards. This strict emphasis on raising labor standards by tightening workplace controls would contribute toward addressing the root of the problem than simply tightening border controls. US domestic efforts on the pull side is combined with initiatives to address the conditions in growth of small-and medium-scale labor-intensive industries in rural regions, where most of the job displacement is occurring. These measures require active state intervention in managing the economic transition in the countryside rather than the current laissez-faire approach. The Mexican government had no strategy for handling the millions of workers who are being displaced as a result of market reforms. However, the United States has a strong interest in cooperating with Mexico to devise and promote development programs and social safety nets that minimize the incentive for workers to cross border to the US. Multilateral institutions like the World Bank can assist these efforts by including migration concerns centrally into their programs. The IMF and the World Bank have not considered migration issues in their policy management. Indeed, many of the market-based reforms they support end up fueling migration both in the short and medium term. The main goal of the NAFTA is to spur economic development so that migration pressures will be reduced in the long run. The US can help Mexico manage the difficult process of economic restructuring by helping it cope with the mass displacement of Mexican labor. This requires active government involvement rather than faith in market solutions. The market solution tends to be that of exporting the labor surplus to the United States. For example, Mexico can be encouraged to increase the minimum wage to begin closing the wide wage gap between the two countries. The United States and Mexico can unite to slow down the growth of the border region, since this area has traditionally served as a magnet for northward migration. The United States can encourage Mexico to implement its agricultural reforms to encourage the people to stay in the country. The US can help Mexico through tax incentives and financial and technical assistance. The Mexico experience shows that the free market reforms can also free up the drug trade. This puts Mexican authorities in a bind. Since they are under intense pressure from Washington and the international financial organizations to service their large and numerous debts, Mexico have to tolerate the influx of dollars from any source into their banking systems. Hence, it has resisted adopting strict regulations against drug-money laundering. US FOREIGN POLICY ON NAFTA U.S. policymakers want to foster the promotion of borderless economies based on free market principles. These policymakers believe that the unleashing of market forces and the consequent loosening of government controls over the flow of goods, services, information, and capital has lead to economic growth and prosperity. This trend is highly significant along the 1,951-mile U.S.-Mexican border, where the United States is moving both to open the border to the legal flow of goods and to close the border to the illegal flow of drugs and migrant labor. One, the US-Mexican border is being liberalized. Two, the border is fortified to deter a perceived invasion of undesirables such as drugs and illegal workers. The NAFTA negotiations started in June 1991. The proceedings covered all economic sectors, and the work was distributed to 19 different groups. Market access applied to all exportable goods across an a wide range of sectors. Market access was crucial to the agreement since it required the reduction of tariffs and defined the rules of origin. The rules establish which goods are to be the beneficiaries of the NAFTA treatment by determining the amount of value-added within the region that entitles them to special treatment. Hence, a product with 60 percent regional content may be a regional product, but an exact same product with 50 percent value-added will not benefit from preferential treatment. (Herman Von Traub, 1997, p. 12). Working groups covered agriculture, financial services, transportation, investment and the settlement of disputes. The agreement covered subjects not generally considered in free trade agreements, such as agriculture and transfer of intellectual property rights. The scope was ample but it did not establish an overall common market due to the fact that migration was not discussed except for the granting of temporary entry to highly trained workers. There were differences in perspectives. A case in point, Mexican financial authorities tightly regulate financial institutions and their products, while the institutions themselves are allowed to provide a range of financial services. In the United States, the tradition has been to limit specialized banking services but allow institutions flexibility to create products for their markets. All of these types of financial activities are highly restricted in Mexico. (Herman Von Traub, 1997, p. 12). BARAK OBAMA ON US FOREIGN POLICY AND NAFTA Current Democratic front-runner presidential candidate, US Senator Barack Obama has a communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, who is a member of the Communist Party USA. Obama was a hard-core academic Marxist. (Kincaid, 2002). Obama had earlier disclosed his socialist connections and is known as the man who stands behind Global Poverty Act. This act was designed to send hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. foreign aid to the rest of the world, in order to meet U.N. demands. This policy would likely foster the spread of global corporate governance whose system of governance represents communism as Obama himself is a "far left wing" communist follower and has political ties with "the Democratic Socialists of America, which maintains close ties to European socialist groups and parties through the Socialist International (SI), and two former members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), William Ayers and Carl Davidson. Senator Obama is a critic of NAFTA and has said that the United States should "retool trade agreements to include protections for American workers and the global environment." Workers at the plant questioned Obama on whether NAFTA could be repealed, and he said that it could not though he wants to renegotiate parts of it to include better labor and environmental protections. He said that it when to came to trade, he believed in it deeply but that "the rules of the road have to be fair to everybody."(The Washington Times, August 2, 2004.) He argued that if trade agreements do not contain better worker and environmental and safety protections, the country would start seeing protectionist rhetoric not just from Democrats but also from Republicans. (The Washington Times, August 2, 2004.) Kincaid writes that Davidson helped Obama during 2002 rally against Iraq War. However, early in his career as a senator, Obama fiercely supported the US foreign policy toward Iraq. Taylor says, according to Obama, "unilateral approach to Iraq was not the best one" but "multilateral evolution against Saddam Husein would have been better. (Jeff Taylor, June 22, 2007). As the Democratic Party began to feel uneasy with the invasion to Iraq, Obama led the US House of Representatives to vote for the Senators to have access to intelligence reports. In 2003, Obama turned to support America's mission to Iraq. Having a communist mentor, Obama shares the same imperialism, colonialism and exploitation ideology and values. Like Davis, he may, says Takara, "espouse freedom, radicalism, solidarity, labor unions, due process, peace, affirmative action, civil rights, Negro History week, and true Democracy to fight imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. He urged coalition politics. (Kincaid, 2002). Obama's political vies are addressing more toward the members of the elites. Regarding the US invasion to Iraq, Taylor writes, Obama has an imperial mindset when he said, "There is one other place where our mistake in Iraq have cost us dearly - and that is the lost of our government's credibility with the American people We cannot afford to be a country of isolationists right now. 9/11 showed us that try as we might we need to maintain a strong foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values around the world. (Jeff Taylor, June 22, 2007). However, Obama's values indicate those of monetary benefits as most business leaders do, or as President Bush who values things even human beings based on the dollar values. Americans' values have been trumped in favor of individualism and capitalism. WORKS CITED Andreas, Peter. "U.S.-Mexico: Open Markets, Closed Border."Foreign Policy. Issue: 103. Summer 1996. Page Number: 51. Who Is Barack Obama. The Washington Times. Publication Date: August 2, 2004. Page Number: A16. Kincaid, Cliff. Obama's Communist Mentor AIM Column http://www.aim.org/aim-column/obamas-communist-mentor/. (Accessed February 18, 2008). Randall Stephen and Herman Konrad. NAFTA in Transition. Calgary: Calgary University Press, 1995. Taylor, Jeff. The Foreign Policy of Barack Obama. 22 June 2007. www.counterpunch.org/taylor06232007.html. (Accessed March 30, 2007). Von Bertrab, Hermann. Negotiation NAFTA: A Mexican Envoy's Account. Westport: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997. Read More