Ethical Borders: NAFTA, Globalization, and Mexican Migration [Paperback]

Bill Ong Hingis a Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis. He teaches Immigration Policy, Judicial Process, Negotiations, and Asian American History. Throughout his career, he has pursued social justice by combining community work, litigation, and scholarship.  His books includeDeporting Our Souls-Values, Morality, and Immigration Policy, Defining America Through Immigration Policy(Temple), andMaking and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy. Professor Hing was co-counsel in the Supreme Court asylum case, INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca (1987). He is the founder of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center and serves on the board of the Asian Law Caucus.

In his topical new book,Ethical Borders,Bill Ong Hing asks, why do undocumented immigrants from Mexico continue to enter the United States and, what would discourage this surreptitious traffic?  An expert on immigration law and policy, Hing examines the relationship between NAFTA, globalization, and undocumented migration, and he considers the policy options for controlling immigration. He develops an ethical rationale for opening up the U.S./Mexican border, as well as improving conditions in Mexico so that its citizens would have little incentive to migrate.

InEthical BordersHing insists that reforming NAFTA is vital to ameliorating much of the poverty that drives undocumented immigration and he points to the European Union's immigration and economic development policies as a model for North America. Hing considers the world-wide economic crisis and the social problems that attend labor migration into homogenous countries, arguing for a spectrum of changes, including stricter border enforcement and more effective barriers; a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants; or a guest worker program.

Hing also situates NAFTA and its effects in the larger, and rapidly shifting, context of globalization—particularly thelÃ$