The Pros And Cons Of Transnational Migration

Migrants and immigrants have political and economic structures that produce experiences of danger while crossing the United States and Mexican border and they have poor public reception and policies to help them cross. Before reading this article, I thought I had a decent amount of knowledge about transnational migration and people crossing the border between Mexico and the United States. I knew that thousands of people attempted to cross the border every year, but only a few achieved their dream of making it to the United States. There were many different reasons for individuals to cross the border, such as, the opportunity to make more money, escape conflict and violence, and to create better lives for their children. After reading this
piece, I had little knowledge about the price migrants paid for travel and the emotional roller coaster individuals go through to come to America. Migrants and immigrants have political and economic structures that produce experiences of danger while crossing the United States and Mexican border.
One of the biggest political and economic structures that stand in the migrants’ way is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The author states that “since the passing of NAFTA, every household in the Triqui town of San Miguel has at least one person working in the US and sending back remittances” (Holmes, 2013). The reason every household had to send at least one member of the household to the United States because “cheaper yellow corn from the US first entered and later dominated the markets by underselling the locally grown diverse varieties of corn” (Holmes, 2013). “The relatively poorer Mexican government was forced to erase tarrifs, including on corn, the primary crop produced by indigenous families in southern Mexico. However, NAFTA and other free trade policies do not ban government subsidies. Thus, the relatively wealthy U.S. government was allowed to increase corn subsidies, effectively enacting a reverse tariff against Mexican corn” (Holmes, 2013). I agree that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) hurt many small time farmers because I remember reading in my Spanish class last year that starting in 1994 there was a jump in immigration to the United States because small farmers could not compete with genetically modified midwest corn, and the farmers also only had enough crops to feed their
family, not enough crops to sell for income. Another structure that is in migrants’ way is trying to collect money to cross the border. Migrants need anywhere from 1,500 to 2,500 dollars to cross the border into the United States (Holmes, 2013). It is hard to get that much money when you only have enough food for your family and you do not have enough to sell at the market.
Migrants have poor public reception and policies to help them cross the border. Some citizens in the United States think that migrants are lazy, rapists, and killers. If they do not fall into one of these categories, they are stealing American jobs. This does not help the perception of migrants when Donald Trump, the republican presidential candidate says this during his stump speeches on the campaign trail. I believe that most migrants are good people and they are just trying to make their children and their own lives better by coming to the United States. One policy that has been put in place to make it more difficult to cross is border patrol agents. There are agents on both sides to stop people from crossing.
Migrants and immigrants have political and economic structures that produce experiences of danger while crossing the United States and Mexican border and they have poor public reception and policies to help them cross. The political and economic structures that produce danger are the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and collecting money to cross border. Poor public reception and policies are prominent figures in the United States think they are good for nothing and do nothing to help the country. They also have to deal with people trying to get in the way of them crossing the border.