NAFTA, Maquiladoras, and Mexican Immigration in the late 20th Century

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Donald Trump, in a September 2016 presidential debate, said, “NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country.” But NAFTA was not addressed in any of his executive orders, and now President Trump’s intentions for NAFTA are unclear. Today Averill and Elizabeth continue our series on US immigration with this episode about the North American Foreign Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Maquiladoras and Mexican immigration in the 20th century. Trump has said little about what improvements he wants, apart from halting the migration of U.S. factories to Mexico. This this conversation is also closely tied to rising nativist sentiments in America about Mexico and Mexicans in general, and cannot be separated from the discussion of wall building, and actions our President has taken to place restrictions on immigration. In our current political climate, this rhetoric and vitriol has had a dramatic impact on the lives of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, which has everything and nothing to do with the actual role of the economy in all of this.

Immigration Part 3: NAFTA, Maquiladoras, and Mexican Immigration in the late 20th Century

Written by Elizabeth Garner Masarik

Produced by Elizabeth Garner Masarik and Averill Earls, PhD

Elizabeth: NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, has had a dramatic impact on the economies of both the United States and Mexico. Some consequences were wholly unintended, and probably few Americans think much about what exactly NAFTA has done for the US. Trade was a major issue for Donald Trump when he was campaigning. We all know his opinion about the Trans Pacific Partnership, which he has successively pulled the US out of; and in one debate with Hilary Clinton, Trump said that “NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country.” Early in his presidency, many speculated that they expected NAFTA to go by the way of all of his other rashly fulfilled campaign promises – via executive order. NAFTA was not addressed in any of the EOs in the first two months, and now President Trump’s intentions for NAFTA are not as clear as a straightforward “renegotiate”. Regardless, Trump has said little about what improvements he wants, apart from halting the migration of U.S. factories to Mexico. This this conversation is also closely tied to rising nativist sentiments in America about Mexico and Mexicans in general, and cannot be separated from the discussion of wall building, and actions our President has taken to place restrictions on immigration. In our current political climate, this rhetoric and vitriol has had a dramatic impact on the lives of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, which has everything and nothing to do with the actual role of the economy in all of this. In this series on Mexican immigration and migration, we’ve looked at the 1848 Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, and then the Mexican Braceros worker program which took place between 1942 and 1964. We encourage you to have a listen to those if you haven’t already if this is a story that interests you. Today, however, we are going to examine NAFTA and some of the global repercussions of this deal, and discuss how it has shaped the current immigration debate in the United States.

I’m Elizabeth Garner Masarik, and I’m Averill Earls, and we are your historians for this episode of Dig.

Averill: The framework of the deal was first drafted under President Ronald Reagan in 1987. It was signed in 1992 under President George H.W. Bush, ratified by Congress in 1993, and initiated into law in 1994 under President Bill Clinton. Prior to sending it to the United States Senate, Clinton added two side agreements, The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). Both of these additions were intended to put some protections for workers into place and also to have some environmental protections as well. So although NAFTA is most commonly assigned to Clinton, it actually went through a very long process, through three presidents- originating with the Ronald Reagan’s administration.

Elizabeth: NAFTA was designed to eliminate trade barriers investment between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. When NAFTA was implemented on January 1, 1994 it enacted the immediate elimination of tariffs on more than one-half of Mexico’s exports to the U.S. and more than one-third of U.S. exports to Mexico. Within 10 years of NAFTA’s implementation, all U.S.-Mexico tariffs were eliminated. Most U.S.-Canada trade was already duty-free due to previous trade deals. Agriculture is the only section that was not negotiated trilaterally; instead, three separate agreements were signed between each pair of parties. The Canada–U.S. agreement contains significant restrictions and tariff quotas on agricultural products (mainly sugar, dairy, and poultry products), whereas the Mexico–U.S. pact allows for a wider liberalization within a framework of phase-out periods for various agricultural tariffs.

Averill: I find that so funny because as you all know, I also work for Cabot creamery cooperative on the side, one of my side hustles, and that is one of the things that we talk about frequently. That we can’t export our products to Canada because Canada has very strict restrictions on the number of American-made dairy products that can go into Canada. They like to have their people buy their own products.

Elizabeth: Yeah, and you know it’s funny because I thought about taking that out because we don’t really discuss Canada much in this episode but because we here live in Buffalo, like literally we live closer to Canada than we live to the rest of the United States.[laughter] Like we can throw a rock and it will land in Canada. So that’s like a common theme- or like Canadians will come over and buy a lot of milk at Aldi and like smuggle it back over and stuff. [laughter] So there’s this weird kind of trade-thing going on with dairy

Averill: It’s good to live on the border.

Elizabeth: It’s interesting. This is our own borderland, we need to do some more Canada-U.S. stuff.

Averill: We do need to do more of it, more than just the War of 1812.

Elizabeth: Right.

Averill: Other things have happened since then.

When looking at NAFTA, at issue are questions of job gains and job losses in different regions, prices paid by consumers, acceptable standards for wages and working conditions in transnational manufacturing industries, and the quality of the environment. When viewed through an American lens, the results of NAFTA have been far more than the simple outsourcing of jobs that its opponents describe. NAFTA expanded American sales or exports between the three countries. Also, it implemented a dramatic shift in which products are now made jointly between the countries.

Elizabeth: One of the hardest hit industries in America since the implementation of NAFTA is the garment industry, particularly denim manufacturing. And if you think back to the first part of your American history survey, you’ll remember that textile mills were one of the first major industries along the East coast of the United States and what made the North complicit in the growth of cotton production and thus slavery in the southern states. So the eastern region of the United States had a vibrant textile manufacturing industry um, well into the twentieth century.

In 1994 there were almost 500,000 people working at textile mills in America, today according to U.S. Labor Department data there are 113,000 American workers in textile mills. In the year 2000, there were about 15 denim mills in America, now there are three.

Averill: So it really has had a dramatic impact on that industry. But, to complicate the situation, those denim manufacturers actually rely on NAFTA to stay in business, stating that they would certainly shut-down if America were to abruptly pull out of NAFTA or if America began imposing large tariffs on Mexican exports. That’s because roughly 85% of American made denim is shipped duty-free to Mexico to be cut and sewn into jeans, which are then shipped back to the United States to be sold. So a tariff or abrupt pull from NAFTA would make jeans for example, more expensive.

So if you look at some charts or graphs, it looks like Mexican exports into the US grossly outnumber the exports that America sends to Mexico. But those numbers distort how many of those Mexican exports actually originate in America, or rely on American marketing and distribution for final sales.

Elizabeth: According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, about 6 million American jobs rely on trade with Mexico in some way. This is because 40% of the parts in Mexican exports actually originate in the United States. So like in our denim example, the denim originates in states like Georgia and South Carolina, it’s shipped to Mexico for cutting and sewing, and is then shipped back to the United States for marketing and sales. In Georgia and South Carolina alone, 272,000 jobs rely on trade with Mexico and almost all the denim made in Georgia goes across the border.

Another example of this codependence is in the auto industry. The Center for Automotive Research, maintains that abruptly pulling out of NAFTA could cost around 31,000 US auto jobs created since the end of the Great Recession.

Averill: This codependence has decreased the price of goods for the average consumer. Americans have come to rely on cheaper prices for goods, and grossly take that for granted. We don’t think about these things as we spend twenty dollars for a pair of jeans or fifty cents for an avocado.

Can you find avocados for fifty cents?

Elizabeth: That’s like deep discount sale. When I find avocados for fifty cents I buy a shhhh, a lot of them.

[laughter]

Averill: A lot of avocados…..maybe like a dollar an avocado.

Elizabeth: A dollar each. Still cheap.

Averill: Fifty cent avocado though would be a good price. If you see a fifty cent avocado….

Elizabeth: That’s party time.

Averill: Buy it, and made some guac.

Or when we can buy fresh raspberries or green beans at the grocery store in the dead of winter. Obviously that’s not being grown locally, most likely. That’s produce you could not buy on-demand like that twenty years ago. The volume of produce from Mexico to the U.S. has tripled since 1994 because NAFTA eliminated tariffs on that produce. So for example cantaloupes used to have a 35 percent tax on them, now they don’t. Also, NAFTA encouraged investment, so American and Canadian firms have heavily invested in Mexican farms and supply the American and Canadian demand for year-round produce. So, when we run into Krogers or….do you say heb?

Elizabeth: H. E. B., it’s H-E-B, for Herbert E. Butts. [Laughter]

Averill: Herbert E. Butts, that’s why they say H.E.B.

[laughter]

Averill: uh,HEB or Tops, or depending on whatever grocery store you go to. We don’t think about that, do we? Many shoppers today don’t even remember a time when produce like that was simply not available. – and I should plug another podcast we’ve done entitled Women, War, and Bananas – for a discussion about produce and how the globalization of the produce market has affected the everyday lives of workers.

Elizabeth: Yeah, so go listen to that podcast after this one.

Averill: Mmm-hmm.

Elizabeth: But back to NAFTA, most economists argue that tearing up NAFTA would not bring jobs back to the U.S. because When costs in one country rise — as would happen with Mexico if NAFTA is killed — companies just move operations to the next cheapest country. It could be another country in Latin America or an Asian nation.

But the point here is that many many jobs in the United States are closely tied to trade deals with Mexico and Canada and rely on that codependence to stay in existence.

Averill: NAFTA has had an impact in Mexico as well. Particularly, Mexico’s garment production for export has seen a rapid increase. In the first year that NAFTA was in effect, 412 maquiladoras employed 82,500 workers sewing garments. By 2000 there were 119,000 maquiladoras employing more than 282,000 workers sewing garments. And maquiladoras is the Spanish word for a factory that imports certain material and equipment on a duty-free and tariff-free basis, assembles or manufactures those materials and then exports the assembled or processed goods back to the country from which the raw materials originated. So in our denim example, the denim originated in the US Southeast, is shipped duty-free to Mexican maquiladoras where it is cut and sewn, and then the finished jeans are exported back to the US for sale. Maquiladora has also become synonymous with sweat-shop when discussing the garment industry.

Elizabeth: The maquiladora work environment is far from ideal and the industry relies on the exploitable labor of mostly young women, not unlike the garment industries in the northeast at the turn of the 20th century. Labor practices that are against the law in the US are common in many maquiladoras run by US companies. I should say, Mexico does have worker protections or worker rights in place but they aren’t necessarily followed. Human Rights Watch found in 1996 that maquiladoras owned by major corporations, including General Motors, General Electric, Zenith, Panasonic, Sunbeam-Oster, Sanyo, and AT&T, were all found to require pregnancy exams as a condition of employment, thereby subjecting women applicants to a different hiring criteria than men. In response to a letter from Human Rights Watch, the Zenith Corporation noted, “[I]t is common practice among Mexican and maquiladora employers in Matamoros and Reynosa to inquire about pregnancy status as a pre-existing medical condition,” and admitted to screening out pregnant women from its applicant pools. Examiners often question women on how often they have sex or what birth control they use. Sexual harassment is reportedly endemic within the manufacturing facilities. And I just can’t help but make the correlation between these modern-day maquiladoras and the New York City sweatshops from the turn of the twentieth century that exploited the cheap labor of Italian and Jewish immigrant women. A great book to read about their experience is Nan Enstad’s book “Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure”. It’s just a great read and it chronicles the lives and experiences these women had in these sweatshops but also the empowerment they found in working for wages in these new jobs that they had. Or just think about the conditions that led to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire where 146 women died by jumping to their death or burning to death because they were locked inside of one of these sweatshops that caught on fire. The lax regulations and the low prestige or value placed on women’s work led to those conditions, not unlike the paltry conditions in many of the US funded maquiladoras in Mexico.

Averill: And because the maquiladora is synonymous with sweatshop, you have to think that in some way, passing over pregnant women would be paternalistic way of protecting those women. Because a pregnant woman probably shouldn’t be in those environments. If they’re really that dangerous. It’s still super inappropriate.

Elizabeth: Sigh… yeah, I would look at it, I would beg to argue that it’s because of the lessend work that they’d be able to do or the um, “concessions” that they’d have to give to a pregnant woman, versus protection for their unborn child.

Averill: I’m sure they couch it in language of “protection” for the worker.

Some occupations and even maquiladoras are still segregated by gender, and women are generally relegated to the lowest-paying tasks, even if they share them with men. But, there is also new opportunities for Mexican women laborers, as many women now perform typically “male” tasks, such as welding. Dr Harley Shaiken, an expert in Mexican labor issues and the global economy admits that, “There is a paradox when it comes to maquiladoras and women,”
“A young woman who goes to work at a maquiladora experiences an unusual liberation. She’s playing a different role, often as principal breadwinner,” “The maquiladoras free women from the social constraints of the village but introduce new obstacles in the factories.” These obstacles can be a gender wage gap, gendered violence and rape, and ongoing daily sexual harassment.

Elizabeth: The American meat industry has been a major winner in the post-NAFTA economy. Mexico used to import a small amount of US meat prior to 1994. By 2004 Mexico had become the second largest importer of U.S. agricultural products. With the elimination of duties and tariffs between Mexico and the US, Mexico has provided a growing market for the consumption of US meat, leading to an increase in sales and profits for the U.S. meat industry. But, we must also look at the environmental drawbacks of increased meat production which contributes to increased methane gas and thus more global warming. I have to throw that out there to show the complexities of these trade deals and how environmentalism, human rights, and economic “freedoms” can be at odds with one another.

Averill: A 2012 Chicago Booth school of business survey found that 95% of leading economists supported the notion that on average, U.S. citizens benefited from NAFTA, because as a whole America made money from the deal. Many of the economists also pointed out however, that there were definite losers in the deal despite the overall net gains.

Elizabeth: NAFTA is one part of the massive globalization of the late 20th century which resulted in a boom of multinational companies, the creation of the World Trade Organization, and unlimited outsourcing. During the last two decades of the twentieth century, and carrying over to today, poor and middle class incomes have not kept up with inflation. Meaning average wages adjusted for inflation fall well below the levels of the 1970s. So when NAFTA came into effect, inequality for middle and lower income earners in America was also becoming more apparent. Because of NAFTA, American companies were building plants in Mexico to take advantage of cheap labor and weak environmental safety regulations. This was happening alongside a general shift where business gained profits from financial operations rather than from making things, an example being Ford and GE making more money off of the interest from their lending banks instead of from the actual products that they made and sold.

Averill: In addition, more than manufacturing was moving to countries with lower labor costs. Business started moving their customer service, legal services and technical jobs to other English-speaking countries. So all of this outsourcing actually lowered prices for American consumers, but it also put direct downward pressure on American wages. In 1970 GM was the nation’s largest employer where most workers belonged to unions, had health benefits and pensions, and by 2000 America’s largest employer was Wal-mart, which pays the majority of its 1.6 million employees just above minimum wage and actively resists efforts for collective bargaining. So although most economists agree that there has been a net-gain for all three countries involved with the NAFTA agreement, many who lost in the deal were ordinary workers.

Elizabeth: So how does this play out in our discussion of immigration? Well, on the one hand, it shows the complexity of these types of trade deals. And the complexities that simple free-trade vs. protectionist rhetoric really hides. On the other hand, a discussion of NAFTA coincides with a discussion of Mexican immigration policy in the US because they are closely related.

Undocumented immigration from Mexico to the United States started picking up in the 1980s, before NAFTA. One of the “selling points” for NAFTA in America is that it would curb this wave of illegal immigration. The results however were vastly different from the outcomes that many foresaw.

Averill: For example, the Mexican government used to subsidize corn. It kept the crop price of corn high so that small farmers could stay in business and in return that kept the price of tortillas very low so that poor people had access to this staple food source. The NAFTA agreement phased out these Mexican corn subsidies in order to encourage investment between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. But, the U.S. government still subsidized highly productive American corn producers. This resulted in seventy-five thousand Iowa farmers growing twice as much corn as three million Mexican farmers, at half the cost. So what happened was that U.S. corn flooded Mexico, putting small Mexican corn farmers out of business and drove an estimated two million Mexican farm workers from the countryside into the big cities. From there, many traveled illegally into the U.S.

Elizabeth: Or for another example, NAFTA’s tariff reductions allowed for certain big American firms, such as Wal-Mart, to enter the Mexican market. Their lower prices eliminated many Mexican small-business. So all of those workers had to go somewhere else too, many immigrating to the US. And by the way, Wal-Mart is now the leading employer in Mexico AND the US.

Averill: Now this large wave of Mexican immigration from Mexico in the US had started in the 1980s. NAFTA was supposed to curb the number of Mexicans crossing the border without documentation because NAFTA was supposed to grow the Mexican economy enough to reduce the incentive to migrate to America. Instead, undocumented migration from Mexico to the US picked up strongly after NAFTA, resulting in massive militarization along the US Mexico border. And it contributes to millions of undocumented workers living underground in the U.S. So the legacy of NAFTA in Mexico, just like in the US, is mixed. Overall NAFTA helped expand the middle class in Mexico, making a larger consumer market for American goods- like meat that we mentioned earlier. But also like in America, inequality has also increased, with nearly half the country living in poverty. About 20 percent live in extreme poverty, almost all in rural areas. This extreme income inequality is a driving factor of undocumented immigration into the United States.

Elizabeth: But when we are talking about NAFTA and immigration from Mexico, we cannot deny that race is a factor in this discussion. Dan and I laid the groundwork for that discussion in the previous two episodes in this series from our past project, the first on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the second on Mexican immigration in the 20th century with the Bracero program and the American welfare state. So if you haven’t, listen to those as well to get a more rich understanding of this story.

But here is just one example in how NAFTA and race has played out in North Carolina, home to Smithfield Foods. In 1999, Smithfield Foods, an American company based in Tar Heel, North Carolina, acquired a huge pig farm operation in Veracruz, Mexico. The farm could import heavily subsidized US corn to feed the pigs, and feed makes up two-thirds of the cost of raising pigs, making their costs much lower to produce more hogs. Through NAFTA, US pork producers could also export large amounts of pork into Mexico. So Smithfield also became a huge exporter of pork from America into Mexico. In 1995 Mexico imported 30,000 tons of pork. By 2010 it imported 811,000 tons. This caused Mexican pork producers to see a 56% drop in the prices they could get for pork production, thus causing many Mexican-owned plants to close or to lay off workers.

Averill: And I am just as guilty for supporting this system, because when Smithfield bacon is on sale I be buying it.

Elizabeth: Dang! I didn’t even put those two together. We always buy Smithfield bacon. Holy Moly. Well, and when I was writing this, afterwards I went to the grocery store and cantaloupes were on sale for a buck.

Averill: And you were like oh, I want that cantaloupe.

Elizabeth: But- so yeah, don’t think we’re getting on a high horse here. We’re all complicit in this.

Averill: So American companies like Smithfield were not only producing cheaper hogs in Mexico through the importation of American corn, they were also exporting more pork as well. Smithfield was operating as both a producer and an importer. This coupled with other factors drove many people to leave Veracruz in search of work and income. Many Veracruz residents found their way to Tar Heel, North Carolina and began working in the Smithfield plant, for the very company that had put their families out of work in Veracruz. One Smithfield worker from Veracruz said that all of the boys he had grown up playing with now worked in the Smithfield plant. In general, North Carolina became the number-one US destination for Veracruz’s displaced hog farmers.

Elizabeth: Not only hog farmers, but displaced farmers. All Veracruz farmers. Tobacco farmers, corn farmers. The whole region was decimated.

Averill: I also didn’t realize that there was a town called Tar Heel. I thought that was just the mascot.

Elizabeth: And what happens when you have a large in-migration of “foreigners” into an area during a period where rising inequality leave middle and low income people feeling hostile and “forgotten”? You have rising instances of hatred and racism as well as a general lack or a willingness for understanding. All of a sudden there is an influx of people who don’t speak English, may have different cultural customs and ways of living in a community… it creates friction.

Averill: And many workers came to the US through the Immigration and Reform Control Act which created the current H2-A visa program. This allows US agricultural employers to bring in workers from Mexico and other countries and gives them temporary visas tied to employment contracts. But because of the effects that globalization had on places like Veracruz, Mexico, there was no reason for many of those workers to leave once their contracts were up. So like in the tobacco fields, North Carolina became a huge user of the H2-A program, and once the tobacco season was over, those workers just spread out into other areas of work in North Carolina- thus becoming “illegal aliens.”

Elizabeth: So racial tensions in places like North Carolina increased. Swift demographic changes in rural locations can ignite hostile reactions over concerns about allocation of resources, increasing urbanization, and the incorporation of a non-English speaking population. These anxieties have fueled aggressive anti-immigrant policies such as the 287(g) program which allows local law‐enforcement authorities to check the immigration status of anyone arrested and to hold undocumented suspects for deportation proceedings. As of March 2017, there are 37 287(g) programs operating in 16 states.These policies and others attempt to create an atmosphere where hostile and unwelcoming environments force “self deportation” in which people leave communities that become unwelcoming places.

Averill: Many state and local governments have passed aggressive state laws and county or city ordinances that attempt to reverse migration trends by targeting immigrants and sectors of society that engage with or offer services to immigrants. So in our North Carolina example, employers, landlords, health officials, educational institutions, and driver’s licensing agencies were all implicated in proposed new anti-immigrant legislation. This type of legislation is happening in states all across the US.

Elizabeth: What isn’t apparent however, when these types of laws are proposed, supposedly for their tough stance on “crime” is the global push and pull of policies, like NAFTA, as the driving forces behind such migration. The recruitment performed by US companies across Mexico and Latin America to bring low wage workers to work in the US on temporary visas isn’t apparent. The low costs that Americans enjoy isn’t discussed. Instead these policies are centered on the immigrant alone- as if they are operating within a vacuum. Reasoning behind contemporary policies lacks a historical understanding of the role of the United States government and private industry in recruiting Latin American labor over the past centuries. Just look at our last episode discussing the US bracero program for one example.

Averill: And as discussed earlier, NAFTA has created economic and political relationships between Mexico and the United States that rely on mutual dependencies as US companies have sought out and become dependent on cheap migrant labor and low-cost manufacturing performed in Mexican maquiladoras. So policies that only target the immigrant aren’t addressing the larger issue of globalization, of which the US economy is largely implicated, which has driven the undocumented immigration in the first place.

Elizabeth: I think too, in examining the ramifications of a trade deal like NAFTA, it can also be one way of explaining how in the last election you had people who were super excited about a candidate like Bernie Sanders who is a Socialist Democrat and ran on a protectionist platform and then those same people could turn around and become supporters for a candidate like Donald Trump who ran on an arguably nativist platform. Because these effects of globalization have had unintended consequences in the lives of everyday people.

Averill: Right, either Mexican or American. Even if we have these baseline profits nationally, that doesn’t take into account how it takes into account the workers, the middle class, the working class, those that live under the poverty level obviously. And 20% of the population living in deep poverty in Mexico is incorrigible.

Elizabeth: So it seems like any quick and rash answers are not going to be the right way to go about um, solving these problems. I think that most people would agree that NAFTA could be looked at again, and that their have been some major unintended consequences. However, any kind of quick, rash, knee-jerk reactions are going to do more harm than good. And the concepts of globalization need to be historically looked at when creating new policies.

Averill: Contextualized at least. And I think that based on the inactivity on NAFTA by the current administration during the last, during these first 100 days, that someone within that administration is trying to make sure that something rash doesn’t happen here. Obviously something rash happened with TPP and now that’s gone. And now… those opportunities as they would have existed are gone. But now, we’re living in a time when the state isn’t particulalry concerned with improving environmental policies in Mexico because obviously we’re living in a time where the administration is decimating the EPA. So if, that’s most likely because of business interests in the U.S.

Elizabeth: No doubt.

Averill: Who want to impact the environment without being regulated.

Elizabeth: It’s hard to talk about this now too because I mean, things could change by next week. Things are so uncertain right now with all of these executive orders that you have no idea which way things are going to turn. But like you said, hopefully someone is driving the reigns there to keep some kind of knee-jerk reaction from happening. You know, most labor unions agree that NAFTA has been bad for the American worker, so I don’t think anyone is suggesting that a re-visitation is not in order, but a knee-jerk executive order is not the way to go.

Averill: This is something to be thinking about in your own life and the way you think about these policies because a lot of our listeners are American voters. Right? And we’ve got a lot to do in order of addressing just in general the types of problems that these policies create. For our own citizens for the citiznes of mexico and beyond.

We’re glad you joined us. If you get a chance please leave us a positive review on iTunes. You can always keep up with us on social media.

Elizabeth: Come stalk us on all of them.

Averill: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re always posting weird stuff and sometimes pictures of us.

Elizabeth: Yeah, we just snap a selfie.

Averill: Even though I just woke up.

Elizabeth: Averill still in her pajamas.

Averill: My jams. S’alright, it’s ten a.m. on a Monday. I really do work hard! Don’t judge me!

Elizabeth: I’m Elizabeth

Averill: And I’m Averill. Thanks for listening!

Show Notes and Further Reading

Bacon, David. “How US Policies Fueled Mexico’s Great Migration.” The Nation

Chicago Booth. “Free Trade.”