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Jill Stein on Free TradeGreen Party presidential nominee; Former Challenger for MA Governor |
STEIN: To stop the outsourcing of our jobs, it's very clear we need to stop expanding the free trade agreements that send our jobs overseas and which also undermine wages here at home by effectively threatening workers that if they don't drop their wages and their benefits, that their jobs are gone. We saw the first free trade agreement, NAFTA, enacted under Bill Clinton, a Democrat. We saw it carried out under George Bush, but then we saw Barack Obama expand three free trade agreements and is now negotiating a secret free trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that will continue to offshore jobs, undermine wages, and, as well, this time compromise American sovereignty with an international corporate board that can rule on our laws and regulations and say whether or not they pass muster. This is an absolute outrage against American sovereignty, democracy and our economy.
A: I wouldn't use the term "illegal immigration" because human beings are not illegal. The wave of undocumented immigrants resulted from the passage of NAFTA, which was as harmful to economies south of our border as it is to our own economy. People have come here who have lost their jobs, who can no longer support their families, particularly as we have destroyed the economy in South America by dumping agricultural products, as developed by NAFTA. That's where the real solution lies--renegotiating these treaties which have been harmful to American workers as much as they've been harmful to workers in other countries.