DR-CAFTA is of course not NAFTA, but this NY Times article has an interesting critique on the immigration and development angle often brought up in relation to Free Trade Agreements. This is a look back at NAFTA and Mexico. Them immigration/development argument generally runs like this: an FTA will encourage investment, which in turn leads to higher wages and better physical infrastructure, and this results in less people seeking to immigrate (illegally). Oftentimes the end product (less illlegal immigration) is also tied to arguing that the result is stronger national security.

The article points out, in short, that the reality of NAFTA did not lead to greatly decreased illegal immigration. The key factor is that the projections on government spending to increase infrastructe did not turn out to be true. Dani Rodrik, an economist and trade specialist at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government explained:

“We have indeed had one disappointment after another on this score,” Mr. Rodrik said, noting that the same assumption about government spending is part and parcel of the agreements, now before Congress, with Columbia, Peru and Panama.

Rodrik also compared the NAFTA (and DR-CAFTA) approach to the EU:

The European Union, in contrast, assumes little about government spending on the part of economically weaker nations joining it. The union itself has hugely subsidized the improved services needed by entering countries like Portugal, Spain, Greece and Poland, rather than leave financing to the relatively meager resources of entering countries.

Though this goes into the bigger picture questions of FTAs, I note that several legal scholars who have looked at e-commerce in Latin America have noted that a solid infrastructure is required in order to expand e-commerce as well. Roads and other transportation networks are key to deliver products ordered over the internet, as well as increasing telecom infrastructure to get people on the internet in the first place.

DR-CAFTA will become a fertile ground for more comparative study in this area. As this is just the beginning of the agreement, only time will tell.