In the wake of finalization of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the rate of migration from Mexico to the United States will accelerate during the 1990s, according to a UC Davis agricultural labor expert. "Eventually, however, NAFTA should create economic development in Mexico that will diminish the forces that boosted immigration to the United States during the 1980s," says Philip L. Martin, a professor of agricultural economics. During the 1980s, 3 million of the 9 million people immigrating to the United States were from Mexico. They were attracted by jobs in the expanding fruit, vegetable and nursery production industries, which offered wages 10 times those available in Mexico. Sophisticated migrant networks throughout the United States helped facilitate the movement of Mexican workers -- legally and illegally, Martin says. He and UC colleagues recently wrote a report anticipating the impact of NAFTA on the migration of rural Mexicans to the United States. The researchers project that more Mexicans will immigrate to the United States during the 1990s than came during the 1980s. "But NAFTA will eventually stimulate growth in jobs in Mexico and cause wages to rise there faster than they will in the United States," says Martin. He suggests that the most important significance of NAFTA for migration may be the hopeful signal it will send to Mexicans that life at home will improve, making emigration unnecessary.