Eastern Europe too has been making a play for offshoring business based on its relatively low wages and physical proximity to western Europe.

ECONOMIST: Offshoring

What it does have going for it is a large population, with most of its 150 million people of working age, and relatively low wages, which helped fuel a manufacturing boom centered around garment making.

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It does all of its manufacturing in China, where it employs over 20, 000 workers at relatively low wages, and it sells most of what it makes in the U.S. and Europe, with battered Asia accounting for less than 5%.

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"While wages are still relatively low in Mexico, employment growth has been quite strong for two years running, especially formal sector employment that comes with some fringe benefits, " said Pia Orrenius, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

WSJ: Mexican Immigration Wave Winds Down

Benefit recipients, he suggested, had done "relatively well" in recent years in comparison to working people on low incomes, many of whom who have seen their wages frozen and incomes fall in real terms.

BBC: UK Politics