Between 1941 an 1990 approximately 800,000 legal immigrants from Mexico entered the USA, and many more did so illegally. By 1990 people of Hispanic origin made up 26 per cent of the population of California and 35 per cent of New Mexico, with the possibility of their becoming a majority in these States within a century.
This flow of fresh immigrants, above all from Latin America soon began to transform American society anew. The US relations with its Latin American neighbours had traditionally been uneasy, but by the 1990s the need to institutionalize Mexican economic reforms helped to promote the idea of a North American free trade area. Canada had made such a pact with the USA in 1985, and on 1 January 1994 Mexico joined in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the largest free-trade area in the world.
This probably explains the limited flow of US products into Europe in recent years, which has boosted Asian manufacturers export trade at the expense of business opportunities for US employers.
