Anybody see a contradiction in those who are for free trade...

and also are against free immigration? Let me put it this way, OK, so we sign onto free trade agreements that allow for capital, investments, and business, to flow from one country to another without any barriers put in their way. In fact, if some law in some country, like enviromental regulations, cuts into a company's profits, they can sue that government for damages, and have that law abolished as a barrier to free trade. The problem is this, where is the free trade if the most important factor, labor, isn't freed under the same conditions? In the case of the FTAA, as an example, why can't workers from Nome, Alaska to Punta Arenas, Chile be free to look for work anywhere they damn well please?

and workers will be leaving the US for better paying jobs in South and Central America.

though I favor reduced barriers to immigration.

If you want jobs in the US, get rid of taxes against wages and productivity. Let them bear only on exclusion and license - which by the way, would be even more progressive than our current 'progressive' income tax.

Living conditions overseas won't improve until we absolve their debts and buy their products.

When I buy shoes that were made in Nicaragua, they weren't made by a local company of that country, but by a US company, and the profits and investments are sent to the United States, not down there. So they have no "local" economy in these countries where I could buy products from workers who made a living wage for their own standard of living. Without a local economy, no real, sustainable development can be made, without that, forget about developing a middle class, and then, once these companies lobby Congress and the President to sign another free trade agreement with a country with an even lower standard of living, they abandon the factory in Nicaragua and move to Indonesia. Leaving the Nicaraguans with no local economy, not even a currency pool large enough for even local development, they are left without so much as a severance check, and a bigassed building that will gather dust and rot. Not much of a deal for them, or us, since those shoes still cost 60 bucks for a pair, regardless of which country they were made.

force of law and the apparatus of the us government behind them. _The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield the Constitution_ is very interesting, revealing reading in this regard.

As an American corporation, i could put my capital and workers most anywhere. As an American laborer i don't want to work for these corporations.

There's a lot of work to do toward fair trade. Immigration as a wedge issue is something i've not really cleared up in my own mind...