Hillary: "I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning"

[shadowmayor]

48. Try living on the border

I live in El Paso. NAFTA closed a bunch of shops in El Paso and we watched them get up and move south of the border. At the same time many of my friends went to work in the maquiladoras in Juarez. So if 2000 folks saw their jobs disappear in El Paso and 1000 Americans went to work in Juarez, the Bureau of Labor would say that it was a net loss of 1000 jobs. But the bottom line is, shops closed their doors and many of those workers could only find employment in the service (especially food) industries. NAFTA wasn't very good to the working class in El Paso, but the top 10% benefited quite nicely. It was somewhat of a boon to Juarez, but they had a "captive" population and the migration from southern Mexico to the border to work in these same maquiladoras created a whole new set of problems. It's a complicated story, but without a doubt - factory workers here got squashed.