from 59.6/100,000 in 1993 to 105.9/100,000 in 1997. By 1998, the neural tube defect rate for babies born in Cameron County, TX climbed to 19/10,000 babies, almost twice the national average. The public health crisis plaguing the U.S.-Mexico border attracted intense media scrutiny in 1991 after three babies were born with a rare condition called anencephaly (born brainless) during a 36-hour period at the same Cameron County (Brownsville) Hospital. The Texas Department of Health Neural Tube Defect Surveillance Project reported a new cluster of defects in 1995. The Department recently declared that "The entire border area remains a high-risk area [for neural tube defects] compared to the rest of the U.S."As the health crisis looms overhead, so too does the disparity in wage levels between U.S. workers and Mexican workers. Production workers engaged in manufacturing in the U.S., where the average hourly compensation is approximately $18.74/hr, must, because of NAFTA, compete directly with maquila workers now in new foreign-owned high-tech plants who are paid $1.51/hr.In the 1990's U.S. workers have experienced wage stagnation followed by a couple of years of weak wage growth, notwithstanding sustained and much-herald economic expansion. Many economists attribute this wage stagnation to trade. NAFTA makes it easier to suppress workers' wages and to discourage unionization with threats of job relocation. According to a study undertaken under NAFTA's labor side agreement, employers use the threat of relocation under NAFTA as a means of leverage against organizing efforts and salary demands or workers. Kate Brofrenbrenner of the Cornell University School of Industrial Relations found that the percentage of U.S. companies following through on threats to close in response to union drives tripled under NAFTA.NAFTA was engineered to raise living standards in Mexico so that Mexican citizens could develop into a consumer society, thus creating a rela...
