RICK UFFORD-CHASE

Migrants coming north across our border with Mexico are caught in a horrible dilemma - one not of their own making. They are trapped between competing forces that end in death in the borderlands of southern Arizona. Here's a synopsis of that equation:

Trade policies force them off the land. Over the past 25 years, Mexico and much of Central America have worked hard to lower trade barriers with the United States in the name of promoting "economic development" and "entering the First World economy."

Despite a great deal of debate about the wisdom of that decision, the results are undeniable. Poor campesinos have found it impossible to compete with highly subsidized agribusinesses from North America that export their products tariff-free into Central America. As their wages drop lower and lower, they make the logical decision to head for the cities to look for work.

Multinational corporations always seek the lowest wage. A large work force headed for the city plays right into the master plan of proponents of neoliberal economic policy. As workers arrive in the cities, they find jobs in U.S.-owned factories making cheap goods destined for big-box stores across the United States and, increasingly, across the world.

In the process, they become consumers in the global economy themselves. Workers paid 1/10th or even 1/20th the U.S. wage find themselves paying $3 for a gallon of milk or $7 (a day's wage) for three dozen diapers. This is the defining reality for most people I know in Nogales, Son., who are struggling to provide for their families. They are paid a local wage but shop for the same products at the same prices as you and I.

A border enforcement strategy that criminalizes migration. As workers in Latin America make a logical decision to opt for survival and try to get family members north to find work and send money home, they are met by an increasingly militarized border. The border policy implemented since 1992 has made it almost impossible for illegal immigrants to cross the border where they traditionally have for generations. If policy-makers believed this would deter workers from attempting to come, they were sadly misguided.

Workers come because they see few other ways to survive. That's why the number of deaths in our desert has inexorably climbed year after year since 1995; more than 210 people died (according to the Mexican consul) in Arizona in 2003. This year, all indications are that it will go higher.
What would solve this problem?

First, we need to see Mexico and Latin America not as a source of cheap labor, but as a long-term neighbor and trading partner. We need to offer serious, sustainable development and jobs that pay a living wage so people there can make a life-affirming choice to stay in their communities of origin.

This may seem naive, but it is exactly the aim of the European Union. They know that as they drop their borders, countries entering the union must have a sufficient standard of living so that corporations won't go one direction seeking cheap labor, and labor won't go the other seeking a well-paid job.

Second, we need to develop an immigration policy that encourages the open, easy, documented movement of workers. Those are workers that are needed in our economy, and such a program would remove death from the border equation.

So here's a bold proposal. Let's make the capitalists put their money where their mouth is. If you want a trade agreement with Mexico, Central America or anyone else in the world, it shouldn't be allowed to happen until and unless an immigration policy is implemented that will allow the free movement of workers to match the free movement of corporations, goods, money and profits.

I'm betting such a proposal would slow "free trade" negotiations and step up development efforts, environmental protections and living-wage provisions in our partner countries, so that everyone won't try to come north, and help us to develop regional economies that are healthy and built to carry us all into the future.

The task of building that kind of healthy, regional economy is no more difficult to imagine than a strong United States was difficult to imagine for folks at the end of the Industrial Revolution. States were independent, the federal government was too weak to regulate corporate enterprise or to tax and redistribute wealth, and wealth was unbelievably unevenly distributed.

Sound familiar? Our ancestors did it, and so can we. It begins with a new kind of leadership and creative thinking not exemplified by either Republicans or Democrats.

Forty years ago, multinational corporations began to imagine a world defined by a global community rather than by the borders of nation states. Our challenge is to insist that any global economy that doesn't take responsibility for the global community is morally bankrupt.

Worse, it makes for the worst kind of insecurity, in which the majority of the world's population watches as we in the First World gain more and more wealth, while they become more and more poor. Is it any wonder we feel insecure on our southern border?

Another world is possible. Do we have the courage to create it?

Rick Ufford-Chase is the co-founder and international director of BorderLinks. In June, he was elected to head the Presbyterian Church (USA) for the next two years.