"Because in the last 15 years, Mexico's longstanding system of sustaining its huge population of poor citizens (including small self-sufficient farms, jobs in state-owned industries and subsidies for such essentials as tortillas) has been scuttled at the insistence of U.S. banks, corporations, government officials and "free market" ideologues. In the name of "modernizing" the Mexican economy, such giants as Citigroup, Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and GE -in cahoots with the plutocrats and oligarchs of Mexico -have laid waste to that country's grass-roots economy, destroying the already-meager livelihoods of millions.

The 1994 imposition of NAFTA was particularly devastating. Just as Bill Clinton and the corporate elites did here, Mexico's ruling elites touted NAFTA as a magic elixir that would generate growth, create jobs, raise wages and eliminate the surge of Mexican migrants into the United States. They were horribly wrong:

Economic growth in Mexico has been anemic since '94, and the benefits of any growth have gone overwhelmingly to the wealthiest families.

Since NAFTA, Mexico has created less than a third of the millions of decent jobs it needs.

Average factory wages in Mexico have dropped by more than 5 percent under NAFTA.

Unemployment has jumped, and unskilled workers are paid only $5 a day.

U.S. agribusiness corporations have more than doubled their shipment of subsidized crops into Mexico, busting the price that indigenous farmers got for their production and displacing some 2 million peasant farmers from their land.

Huge agribusiness operations, many owned by U.S. investors, now control Mexican agricultural production and pay farmworkers under $2 an hour.

Since NAFTA passed, there has been a flood of business bankruptcies and takeovers in Mexico as predatory U.S. chains have moved in. U.S.
corporations now control 40 percent of the country's formal jobs, with Wal-Mart reigning as the No. 1 employer.

Nineteen million more Mexicans live in poverty today than when NAFTA was passed."

And then he goes on to make the point that I think is the way to really talk about immigration.  This should be the elevator talking points. 

"But even if there were no illegal workers in our country--none--the fragility would remain, for poor Mexican laborers are not the ones who:

• Downsized and offshored our middle-class jobs.
• Perverted our bankruptcy laws to let corporations abrogate their union contracts.
• Stopped enforcement of America's wage and hour laws.
• Perverted the National Labor Relations Board into an anti-worker tool for corporations.
• Illegally reclassified millions of employees as "independent contractors,"
  leaving them with no benefits or labor rights.
• Subverted the right of workers to organize.
• Turned a blind eye to the re-emergence in America of sweatshops and child labor in everything from the clothing industry to Wal-Mart.
• Made good healthcare a luxury item.
• Let rich campaign donors take over both political parties.
• Passed by hook and crook a continuing series of global-trade scams to enrich the few and knock down the many.

Powerless immigrants didn't do these things to us. The richest, most-powerful, best-connected corporate interests did them."

I don't think I could say it any better so I'll leave it to you to convey the message to those you meet.