An excerpt from an article by Jeff Passan on the issue

In theory, it's a great idea. Rather than allow street agents in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela to control the flow of players based on bonus dollars offered, baseball and the players' association would help centralize its future constituency by including all players from the world in a draft. Baseball's draft started in 1965 because some teams couldn't keep up with the bonus race, and the same culture exists in Latin America and among the top Asian free agents.

The union, in fact, informally acquiesced to the idea and was ready to talk about it following the last collective bargaining agreement. Baseball never pursued it, and from talking with executives, it's obvious why.

"It would not be good," one scouting director said. "The staff you'd need for an international draft would significantly increase the budget, and teams wouldn't be allowed to put on the type of staff you need to cover to world."

"I don't see how you'd administrate it," another said. "The hoops you'd have to jump through. Here, we're able to go to college games, junior-college games. In those other countries, it's too many headaches to know who's playing when and where."

"Plus," added a third scouting director, "the date-of-birth verification. Plus the changing of names. And worst, it would open up a can of worms for people to hide players."

Baseballguru.com - Worldwide Draft

The recently concluded negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement between the team owners and the players settled a number of outstanding issues concerning the economics of Major League Baseball. No agreement was, however, reached on one central aspect of the economics of baseball-the recruitment of foreign baseball talent, especially from countries in Latin America. Press reports of the negotiations indicate that the team owners and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) have agreed to convene a committee to discuss the establishment and implementation of a worldwide draft.

Press reports about the substance of the discussions on the worldwide draft during the last round of collective bargaining negotiations are sketchy and do not provide interested observers with transparent information to assess this radical move toward a new system of bringing foreign baseball talent into Major League Baseball. The number of countries and individuals potentially affected by the establishment of a worldwide draft is significant, and it is incumbent upon both the Commissioner's Office and the MLBPA to create an inclusive, transparent deliberation process on the worldwide draft proposal.

The committee to be formed to address the worldwide draft proposal should include independent representatives from countries that will be most affected by the implementation of such a proposal, namely the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. We are very concerned that the Commissioner's Office and the MLBPA have agreed to move toward a worldwide draft without engaging in serious consultations with representatives from different constituencies in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and other potentially affected countries. Including independent representatives from significantly affected countries on the committee would be one strategy to improve the input on this process from the people potentially affected by this proposed dramatic change in the way MLB teams bring foreign baseball players into the minor and major leagues.

Substantively, we welcome the willingness of MLB teams and the MLBPA to discuss a radical change in the way the teams recruit foreign baseball talent. Without question, Latin American countries are the most important source of foreign baseball players for both the minor and major leagues. The exploitative and discriminatory manner in which MLB teams have recruited and trained Latin players is now well known in the wake of newspaper reporting, academic scholarship, and the behavior and admissions of the Commissioner's Office. The best interests of Major League Baseball require that the teams and the MLBPA work together to end the violations of the human rights of children and young men in Latin American countries.

The proposed worldwide draft offers one potential strategy to change radically an exploitative, discriminatory system into one in which Latin children and young men are treated with same respect, and under the same rules, as baseball prospects from North America. We believe that the establishment of a worldwide draft should be guided by five basic principles: democratization, centralization, harmonization, specialization, and implementation.