How US Policies Fueled Mexico's Great Migration

David Bacon

January 4, 2012   |    This article appeared in the January 23, 2012 edition of The Nation.

This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation. Some names of the people profiled in this article have been changed.

Roberto Ortega tried to make a living slaughtering pigs in Veracruz, Mexico. “In my town, Las Choapas, after I killed a pig, I would cut it up to sell the meat,” he recalls. But in the late 1990s, after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened up Mexican markets to massive pork imports from US companies like Smithfield Foods, Ortega and other small-scale butchers in Mexico were devastated by the drop in prices. “Whatever I could do to make money, I did,” Ortega explains. “But I could never make enough for us to survive.” In 1999 he came to the United States, where he again slaughtered pigs for a living. This time, though, he did it as a worker in the world’s largest pork slaughterhouse, in Tar Heel, North Carolina.

For complete article : http://www.thenation.com/article/165438/how-us-policies-fueled-mexicos-great-migration

Labor Migration in 2009: A Terrible Year to Be an OFW

The regime of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo changed the face of labor migration in the Philippines. It pursued its labor-export policy aggressively, begging receiving countries to accept more overseas Filipino workers. In the meantime, it shirked its responsibilities toward Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in distress, in many instances even becoming complicit in the abuse of overseas workers.

More at: Labor Migration in 2009: A Terrible Year to Be an OFW - Bulatlat