Bio: Former
Senator (D-SC)

To avoid its members from raiding each other’s production and jobs, the European Union has strict rules for admission. Before entry, a country must have property ownership, the right of appeal, a respected judiciary, labor rights, anti-trust provisions, and an open or free market so that it can engage in free trade. Countries in the European Union taxed themselves $5 billion over five years to build the entities of an open market in Greece and Portugal before admitting them to the European Union.

When President Clinton submitted NAFTA for Mexico, I countered with the European Union approach. Mexico is sadly lacking an open market, and there are no labor rights. The Mayor of Tijuana pointed this out on my industry trip to Mexico. An industry in San Angelo, California, had moved to Mexico, signing up the legal papers to make it appear that the facility in Tijuana had a labor union. The lawyers in California transferred money monthly to a business agent who never appeared at the Tijuana facility. After a favorite supervisor, pregnant with child, went to the front office saying she was getting sick and needed to go home, the head office required her to go back to work and shortly afterward she miscarried. Twelve concerned workers were determined to go to California and organize a union. It was there that they learned that the plant was already unionized. Under Mexican law, if you attempt to organize a plant that’s already unionized, you can be fired. I met with the twelve fired workers, wrote an article for Foreign Policy, and sent my stipend to the workers to keep trying.

An open or free market should be developed with a Marshall Plan for Mexico. I voted for NAFTA with Canada because Canada has an open market. We don’t have illegal immigrants spilling over the Canadian border into the United States. And a Marshall Plan would not only develop labor rights and jobs in Mexico, but end the corruption, crime and drug war in Mexico. In addition, it would solve our immigration problem.

We’ve been at war in Afghanistan with 3,000 killed in the past nine years. In the past four years, in Mexico, there have been twenty-eight thousand killed. It’s gotten so bad that the Mayor of Juarez, Mexico, lives most of the time in his home in El Paso, the United States. Mexico is our neighbor. Harkening Cordell Hull’s Good Neighbor policy we ought to love our neighbor, Mexico. The drug war and immigration problem in Mexico is of more concern than eliminating 50 to 100 Al Qaeda plotting against us ten thousand miles away. We would save money. We’ve already expended $787 billion in Afghanistan. A Marshall plan of a billion dollars for five years would develop an open market in Mexico and solve Mexico’s crime, corruption, drug, and work problem. It would go a long way to solving our illegal immigration, drug, and crime problem in the United States.

I know. As Chairman or ranking member of the State, Justice, Commerce Subcommittee of Appropriation in the United States Senate for thirty years, I can tell you that we have been wasting a fortune. We started a fence idea over thirty-five years ago by erecting along the Rio Grande a fence by taking metal strips for a forward landing field in combat and standing them up perpendicularly for a twenty-foot high border fence. Now we’re spending billions for a super-duper fence. I started a school for thousands of additional Border Patrol agents at the closed Navy Yard in Charleston that has now been moved to New Mexico. Several trained in Charleston have now been killed. We keep adding appropriations to the Courts – prosecutors, judges, parole officers, marshals, etc. When I left five years ago the Prison Budget was a half billion dollars a year and growing. Over half of the serious crime in the United States is drug related coming out of Mexico. Then we doubled the immigration budget and deportation cost. Now we have the Federal government suing the State of Arizona because the Feds refuse to enforce the law. We could have enforced the law long ago by making it a felony to hire an illegal immigrant. Now the problem is of a comprehensive nature. You can’t just send the FBI to train Mexico in law enforcement. We tried that twenty-five years ago to no avail. There must be an overall solution. We could save money with the present President Calderon and the past President Vicente Fox. Both are honest and proud of their country. Get them together and work out a Marshall Plan for Mexico.

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