With Illegal Immigrants Fighting Wildfires, West Faces a Dilemma
SALEM, Ore. Ñ The debate over immigration, which has filtered into almost every corner of American life in recent months, is now sweeping through the woods, and the implications could be immense for the coming fire season in the West.
As many as half of the roughly 5,000 private firefighters based in the Pacific Northwest and contracted by state and federal governments to fight forest fires are immigrants, mostly from Mexico. And an untold number of them are working here illegally.
nytimes.com
Mexico After NAFTA
On April 17, the Washington Post ran an article about Mexico’s economy and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect on January 1, 1994. Part of the focus was on market forces and the flight of some Mexicans to the U.S.
“Still, the past 13 years haven’t been all bad economic news for Mexico,” wrote Manuel Roig-Franzia of the Post’s Foreign Service. “Spurred by NAFTA, Mexico’s gross domestic product has ballooned, multiplying nearly seven-fold, from $108 billion in 1993, the year before NAFTA implementation, to $748 billion in 2005.”
If the Post’s data for Mexico’s GDP, or the market price of all goods and services produced within the country annually, was correct, it would be a world record for economic growth, according to economist Dean Baker, co-director of Center for Economic and Policy Review. Thus, economists and staff at the CEPR repeatedly contacted the Post concerning the assertion that Mexico’s GDP grew at a 17.5 percent annual rate over the past 13 years.
In fact, Mexico’s GDP grew at a 2.9 percent annual rate since 1993, the International Monetary Fund states on its Web site. Mexico’s per person GDP growth was 1.3 percent per year from 1993 to 2005 versus GDP growth per person of nearly 4.0 percent per year between 1960 and 1980, Baker adds.
Crucially, the Mexican economy as measured by GDP grew at an annual rate six times slower than what the Post reported for the 13 years ending in 2005. This is no small error for the top paper in the capital city of the U.S.