Mexican immigration to USA has increased because NAFTA was bad for them too.

This post reports Mexican government data that 1.7 million Mexican farm workers lost their livelihoods as a result of NAFTA. Initially 700,000 manufacturing jobs were created by shifting work from the US, but more than half of those jobs have since been moved again—to China. (I personally observed several hundred jobs move from USA to Mexico to China.) In addition 20,000 small Mexican businesses were displaced by NAFTA-facilitated trade in just the first 7 years. The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement says these severe dislocations have caused increased immigration to the USA. That put further downward pressure on US wage rates. And the benefits of NAFTA were . . . . ?

Update on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 at 11:17AM by Skeptic

In other nations, farmers who can no longer compete with (subsidized) imported food don't emigrate, they switch to growing cocoa. 

Update on Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 07:22AM by Skeptic

Laura Carlsen tells the story in detail here, comparing what was supposed to happen under the theory of comparative advantage with what actually did happen. Before NAFTA Mexico produced enough food to feed itself. Now it imports 42 percent of its food. Two million farmers were forced off the land and did not find jobs in manufacturing as expected. Instead of having national food security, Mexicans are subject to the vagaries of international commodity prices leading most notably to the 2007 tortilla crisis. Obesity has become epidemic as the poor population shifts to high fructose corn syrup and other processed foods. Twenty million Mexicans now live in "food poverty," and malnutrition is worst in farm families.