Letter: Another view of SPP summit
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President Bush chose New Orleans for hosting the fourth Security and Prosperity Partnership summit gathering of the U.S., Mexico and Canadian heads of states as a way to send a “signal about the city’s redevelopment since the hurricane.” Wrong signal.
Construction contractors used to say that in New Orleans the right spelling of the acronym FEMA, as for the national disaster relief agency, is “Find Every Mexican Available.” Stupid joke? Not so fast.
Immigration, oil, environment and labor conditions were kept off the table 15 years ago when the North American Free Trade Agreement was negotiated, notwithstanding the futile side agreements created to close the loopholes. Holding the summit in a city where the shortcomings but also the hypocrisy of international trade are in plain view makes imperative the recognition that NAFTA has left winners and losers in all three countries. A responsibility that undeniably implies the limited capacities of the administrations to minimize the “shock” consequences and basically to bring light to the issue that should be enlightened: we stand as a region or fall as one.
Under the plainly wrong “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of immigration, millions of undocumented workers of Mexican origin push the engine of the U.S. economy, but contrary to the fear of the giant “sucking sound.” A deafening whisper prevails: “We need your labor — at U.S. substandard contractual conditions, of course — for our citizens at those wages won’t take the jobs.”
Mexican economic and political elites are not better at straight talk.
Let alone that salaries are kept shamefully low, the Mexican population has only seen its country’s economy grown at mediocre levels.
With that background, can anything be achieved at the New Orleans summit apart from a farewell photo-op for President Bush? Before a hurricane of protectionist populist rain hits us, we could send the engineers to reinforce the dikes instead of building walls between us. Yes, we need to revisit NAFTA, take oil and immigration out of the closet and into the public eye, and acknowledge that competitiveness does not imply disregarding social responsibility.
Bernadette Vega Sanchez
Research Center on North America of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and junior associate of the Mexican Council of Foreign Affairs
Mexico City, Mexico
