Annotations for People: Gonzales-richard

If you are a Chicano entrepreneur in the border states, you're likely to do very well by NAFTA. If you are an industrial worker in the Northeast or in the Midwest, your company might find it advantageous to move your job to Mexico.

I think what they offer is basically a very complicated, long, convoluted process by which a government entity, a private company, a public agency or an individual might file a complaint saying that one country is not enforcing its own labor and environmental laws. It does nothing about addressing the inadequacy of any laws, but just talks about enforcing laws that are now in the books. And so it sets up this process, if one believes that the process can work, then one thinks that these side agreements are good. If you don't think the process is going to work, then you don't think that the side agreements are any good.

If the question is, will Latinos in the US say benefit from NAFTA? The answer depends on who you are, where you live, and what you do. If you are a Chicano entrepreneur in the border states, you're likely to do very well by NAFTA. If you are an industrial worker in the Northeast or in the Midwest, you're probably in a situation where your company might find it advantageous to move your job to Mexico, in which case you become a loser. And because of these various circumstances, you see that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus here in Washington up on Capitol Hill is very divided on NAFTA. As one caucus member said to me, "Whenever you bring up NAFTA, you really have to watch your table manners," because people have very strong opinions pro and against inside the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

I think what we're seeing is that we'll find the administration will be ready to send this up to the hill sometime in early October after they've sent the healthcare package up to Congress and we won't have a vote until November, maybe even as late as December. So once they send it up to The Hill in October, there's 90 days in which Congress has to act and they're really pushing to get this done by January 1st. Whether it will pass, like Patricia said, today it would not pass. But the vote is not going to be held today. It's going to be held after two or three months of a very nasty, ugly debate. And so I don't think you can place of bet either way.

We heard him speak at the White House with the three former presidents reassuring people. Now the question, is it going to be enough? If it's enough to...

Both sides in the ever-escalating battle over the North American Free Trade Agreement are rolling out their big guns with President Clinton calling on three former presidents to declare their support for NAFTA while opponents from Labor to Ross Perot garner more votes against the trade treaty. Latinos are on both sides of the issue playing critical roles according to NPR reporter Richard Gonzales.

In the pro-NAFTA camp, the major player is Congressman Bill Richardson of New Mexico. He is the chief deputy whip for the Democrats, one of the leaders trying to save the NAFTA. In the anti-NAFTA camp, I think that the one of the leading players is California Congressman Esteban Torres. Torres is interesting because he could possibly go over to the other side and support NAFTA if the administration were to accept his proposal for a North American Development bank, which would go to help fund border cleanup and worker retraining throughout the country for people who get hurt by NAFTA. But until now, the administration has been just kind of leading him along, saying, "Yes, Mr. Congressman Torres, we will consider your bill," but they've yet to sign onto it.

NPR reporter Richard Gonzales. He says, "Cuban American Congress members remain opposed to the trade agreement." In California, three of several bills seeking to limit immigration and access to services by the undocumented have been approved by the state legislature. Armando Botello has more.

Well, the good news right now for the administration is that it's not hemorrhaging or losing as many votes as it was say about a month ago. The bad news is that it's not picking up very many votes either.

What they're trying to do is convince Congressman Esteban Torres that they can meet his demands for a North America Development Bank. This would be a bank, funds for which would be used for border and environmental clean-up and for communities away from the border who might be impacted by the North America Free Trade agreement. The problem is that these negotiations are very fragile, but it could also explode and come to nothing.There's a possibility that Congressman Torres, Congressman Xavier Becerra, Congresswoman Roybal-Allard and maybe two or three others might come over to the Pro-NAFTA side. But it's still too early to say. There's the deal in the works, but a deal has not been finalized.

It's a permanent initiative and it's something we're going to be doing from here on out. So, that's the word we're getting at, is it no longer is a special operation, it's a permanent activity.