From NAFTA to USMCA, where do Mexican Farm Workers Stand?

Guest blogger: Magdalena Landa-Posas, law student, University of San Francisco

            Agriculture is a booming industry in any country. Whether you are a country exporting or importing goods, or both, the idea of free trade is always an attractive one. North America is not the exception. In 1994, Mexico, the United States of America and Canada negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the hopes of liberalizing trade and creating a competitive international partnership. Since its enactment many lessons have been learned, and the need to create more sustainable provisions within agriculture labor and environment sectors have been a lively debate. Such debate has led to a renegotiation of NAFTA that has culminated into its replacement, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

            Since 1994, Mexican farm workers have been some of the most vocal advocates for renegotiation. Mexican farm workers faced some of the worst effects of NAFTA. With NAFTA, U.S. grown goods flooded the Mexican agriculture economy, leaving little to no market for local farmers to sell their own goods. As a result, many farmers lost their means of making a living and were forced to adapt and find employment elsewhere. With Mexico already facing unemployment and underemployment, toppled with already existing and heighten problems in crime and government corruption, many sought migrating as their only means of survival.

While economic opportunities for farmer workers declined in Mexico, the need for agriculture workers in the U.S. increased to meet the demand for supply that NAFTA facilitated. It only makes sense that a Mexican farm worker with specialized skills in agriculture, unemployed would seek employment opportunity in the U.S. where their skill was needed and paid at a higher wage.

Today about 75% of agriculture workers in the U.S. are immigrants, authorized and unauthorized workers. It is no secret that Mexicans compromise a large majority of that 75%. With USMCA underway as of 2018, more and new attractive provisions in agriculture have been made to increase trade among the U.S. and Canada specifically in the dairy market. This creates larger economic opportunities for the U.S. with an increased need for agriculture workers, which tend to be Mexican farm workers.

Although this scheme may be oversimplified, the truth is that NAFTA and now USMCA have created the conditions to “push out” Mexican farm workers from Mexico into the U.S. agricultural industry. These Mexican farm workers are then faced with exploitive labor practices made worse by U.S. immigration laws that allow for employers to threaten their workers with deportation if they speak up.

So where do Mexican farm workers stand? Are they dispensable in the name of free trade and global liberalization of goods? Do solutions look like advocating for Mexican farmers so that they can continue making a living off their goods in Mexico, or creating comprehensive immigration reform in the U.S. that protects these workers, or both?

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