Another way of understanding the appearance and development of the maquiladora industry on the border between Mexico and the United States is from the point of view of illegal immigration, something logical since its history is intimately linked to this problem (8.1). Seen in this light, the maquiladoras are in part the result of the migratory dynamics between the two countries. For the French intellectual Guy Sorman, “it is not the border that regulates immigration, but the labor market,” that is, it is the demand for labor and the contacts already established on the other side of the border what determine how many immigrants cross illegally. If this is the case, it doesn’t make sense to build an impenetrable barrier between the two countries since the United States, to some extent, has benefited greatly from the illegal employment that has resulted from this dynamic. Seen in this light, there would be another solution:
the creation, by companies in the North, of jobs in the South, in order to retain Mexicans in their land. For twenty years, there has been an experience in this sense, although in an embryonic state: the maquiladoras, subcontracting companies installed in free zones along the border, which work on behalf of businessmen from the United States, Europe or Japan. The industries of the North thus “exploit” the low wages and skills of the Mexican labor force, but in their own land!1
Sorman’s book, published in 1993, gave a positive assessment of the maquiladoras but questioned their usefulness in stopping illegal immigrants from entering the U.S. A year later, the signing of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) would radically expand the focus of the maquiladoras:
More ambitious is the North American common market project, which should be launched in 1993 incorporating Canada, the United States and Mexico: a maquiladora, but on a Mexican-wide scale! In theory, the free circulation of products—and then of men, who have been in principle excluded from the treaty —should encourage investors to set up factories in Mexico as longs as wages, at a sustained rate of productivity, are lower than in the United States. The ratio is currently 1 to 10.2
Is this the destiny that the nations of the so-called first world have imposed on developing countries, to create pockets of exception that cover entire nations and turn them into enormous maquiladoras? Fortunately, this possibility has not yet been realized; or at lest not under this scheme. However, this pockets of exception have been on the rise since the mid-eighties: “there were 789 maquiladoras in 1985. In 1995, there were 2,747. By 1997, there were 3,508 employing about 900,000 workers.”3 Since then the maquiladoras have always remained above 3,000 and by 2005 their production represented half of Mexico’s exports.
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