Date: 2005-05-04
Speaker: LINDA T. SANCHEZ (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. this evening I rise in opposition to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. I am glad to see that there are other Members fighting against this deeply flawed trade agreement. When a trade agreement is so terrible that the Costa Rican president says he thinks it will hurt hardworking people and that their parliament is reluctant to even approve it. you know that it is a bad deal. When a trade agreement is so terrible that the majority will not even bring it to the floor of the House for a vote until a year after signing. you know it is a bad deal. When a trade agreement is so terrible that the Labor Department cannot even comment. they could not even mount an effective counterargument about CAFTAs awful labor provisions. well. then you know it is a bad deal. If Costa Rica cannot justify it. if the majority has no confidence in it. and if the U.S. Labor Department cannot even defend it. then it needs to be scrapped. There is not one single reason to support an agreement with this many problems in it. I would like to talk about a little comparison between CAFTA and NAFTA. because NAFTA was supposed to be this great free trade agreement with our partners to the south. Mexico. and. boy. did we really get the woQ1 pulled over our eyes. With CAFTA. we have a chance to learn from the mistakes of NAFTA and irot allow that to happen again. They told us that NAFTA would bring jobs. but we lost jobs. They promised that our trade would improve. bilt it has gotten worse with the steadily rising trade deficit. And they told us that it would elevate the middle class in Mexico. Well. guess what? I have been there. and it has not. When I visited Mexico. I went to a small town in the state of Michoacan. where 60 percent of the men have left the town because there is no work. These men used to be soybean farmers. but their farms have been wiped out since NAFTA. Were these not the people that NAFTA was supposed to help? Instead. they got nothing. and their way of life has been decimated forever. CAFTA will have the same effect. The gentleman from Arizona has said that CAFTA will reduce illegal immigration. Well. guess what? He said the exact same thing about NAFTA. In fact. history has taught us the exact opposite. NAFTA enabled cheap U.S. imports. which pushed 1.3 million Mexican campesinos off the land. It is reasonable to think that some of them may long have since crossed the border into the U.S. seeking economic opportunity. Central America is even more dependent on agriculture than Mexico is. so the impact on illegal immigration could be even worse. We do not want another NAFTA debacle. We do not want an agreement that hurts hardWorking people in the U.S. and other countries. The word needs to get out that CAFTA is a rotten deal for Central American and American workers. This agreement helps no one but big business. which makes sense. since this administration gives them a prime seat at the negotiating table. This is simply an expansion of NAFTA. which broke all the golden promises that it made to the American people. CAFTA should be more appropriately renamed The American lobs For Sale Agreement. because that is what it does. I say to my colleagues. dq not be fooled twice. For those of you who were not here then. like me. do not even allow yourself to be fooled once. I invite you to join the growing list of opposition to CAFTA.