How Should Busby Spell Defeat? N-A-F-T-A

Democrat Francine Busby's recent loss in a special election to Republican Brian Bilbray stings. The election was called to fill the seat vacated by Randy "Crook" Cunningham, who is now doing time. Sure, it's a way-Republican district. And sure, every San Diegan works in defense or real estate. And sure, the never-halting sunshine of "America's Finest City" has so cooked the brain plate of the average San Diego voter that he/she will pull the GOP lever every time their told -- no matter how often their favorite Republican turns out to be a theif.

But it stings, nonetheless.

The reason it stings is that it signals how hard its going to be to take back the House. I mean if the Democrats can't persuade cosmopolitan San Diego to overthrow the GOP, how the hell are they going to win in gay-hating districts in Idaho and Alabama?

If I didn't have an answer, I wouldn't have asked.

San Diego has its own version of "gays" -- illegal immigrants. Republican candidate Bilbray credited his win to his “tough” stand on illegal immigration telling his colleagues on the House floor, “the greatest scandal in America is not that one man broke the law but that 12 million illegal immigrants are in this country, and Washington isn't doing enough about it."

Congress’ newest member even went so far as to admit that “outrage” over illegal immigration was the sole issue that won him the seat.

What Bilbray didn’t talk about is the reason for all this illegal immigration.

Unfortunately, neither did his opponent.

First, in case your wondering, there really has been a marked increase in the number of Mexican immigrants crossing the US border illegally over the last twenty years. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that the number of "unauthorized migrants" (which includes some who have temporary permission to live in the US or those whose immigration status is unresolved), has grown substantially since legalization programs began in the mid-1980s (yes, the Republicans have Ronald “Amnesty” Reagan to thank for the increase). But a large and more or less permanent upswing also occurred in 1995 in the aftermath of the ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement by the US, Mexico and Canada.

Many Mexicans make their living growing corn, a staple of the Mexican diet, on small farms. Called Campesinos, these small farmers are the beneficiaries of the 1910 Mexican Revolution which led to the nationization and redistrubition of large estates. After NAFTA, the Mexican market was inundated with cheap American corn, much of it sold at below the cost of production thanks to US government subsidies. Mexican farmers saw prices paid for their corn drop 70% leading to 1.5 million jobless Mexican peasants migrating to the cities looking for factory work in the first 10 years of NAFTA.

The factory work, much of it in plants building consumer electronics and cars for the American market, was supposed to absorb this glut. At least that's what the planners had anticipated. (Or told us.) But the post-NAFTA manufacturing boom never got off the ground. In the last decade, over 300,000 jobs have been lost in the much vaunted maquiladora plants that line Mexico's US border as multinational corporations have pulled up stakes, seeking even cheaper labor in Guatamala, Malaysia and China.

The net result of this internal migration and ensuing glut of urban workers has resulted in a 20% drop in the already puny Mexican minimum wage (from $5/day to $4/day).

What's a Mexican to do? What would you do?

In the five years before NAFTA (1990-94), illegal immigration from Mexico averaged 368,000 persons per year, in the five years after (95-99) the average was nearly 445,000, in the years 2000-2004, the average has leveled slightly to 434,000 as the job market in the U. S has cooled.

But this only highlights another failing of NAFTA: it's failure to "modernize" Mexico’s economy, create millions of Mexican jobs and stem the tide of illegal immigration. Instead, NAFTA has acerbated the flight of Mexicans north searching for the only kind of jobs that the American economy produces in abundance – low-paying service jobs.

Removing tarrifs is only part of NAFTA's raison d'etre. Largely the pact was created by America's corporate class to permanently impair citizen's abilities to challenge their dominance by straitjacketing all three nation's economies and diluting popular sovereignty. NAFTA overrides popular opinion and does so in the interest of multinationals (or, as they'd have it, in the interest of competitiveness).

President Clinton is responsible for lending his political capital to this travesty and pushing it through a Democratic Congress. A Democratic Congress that would soon loose its grip.

Francine Busby thought she could win by stressing her competence, honesty and all-around bonhommie. Guess again. When Democrats don't have an economic platform they don't win. Its that simple. The baby-boomer Democrats grew up in the wide-spread prosperity that the New Deal created and took it for granted. They reduced all of politics to the cultural/generational battles of the mid-60's to mid-70's and lost.