CAFTA

The House narrowly passed CAFTA.

Mark Krikorian at NRO:

Our Mexican immigrant population, most of it illegal, exploded during the 1990s, from 4.2 million to 9.2 million, reaching a whopping 10.5 million by 2004. Some of this would have happened even without NAFTA — assuming we pursued the same policy of non-enforcement of the immigration laws — but it was supercharged by NAFTA.

If there is one lesson to be learned from NAFTA it is that free-trade agreements must be accompanied by muscular immigration controls.

The suspicion that free-trade pacts are the first step toward open borders is not without foundation. Mexico’s President Vicente Fox has become notorious for calling for an open border as the fulfillment of NAFTA.

If the experience of NAFTA is repeated, and the immigration pressures unleashed by CAFTA are allowed to flood into the United States, the case for future free-trade agreements will be undermined.

The way forward, then, is clear: More trade, less immigration.

-- LynZee