Pathauto does not trigger on node_save when programatically creating nodes

I am programatically saving nodes. From my reading, it sounds as if Path auto is trigged to autmatically create a URL alias when node_save() is called. However, this is not happening.

I later read that I needed to set $node->path_set_alias = TRUE. However, this is not working correctly either.

Using 7.12 and the latest versions of pathauto.

Here is my code.

$node = new stdClass();
        //set other defaults
        node_object_prepare($node);

        $node->type = $page_data['content_type'];
        $node->body[LANGUAGE_NONE][0]['value'] = $page_data['description'];
        $node->body[LANGUAGE_NONE][0]['summary'] = text_summary($page_data['description']);
        $node->body[LANGUAGE_NONE][0]['format']  = 'filtered_html';
        $node->title = $page_data['title'];
        $node->field_product_price[LANGUAGE_NONE][0]['value'] = $page_data['price'];
        $node->field_item_location[LANGUAGE_NONE][0]['postal_code'] = $page_data['zipcode'];
        $node->uid = "1";
        $node->status = 1;
        $node->active = 1;
        $node->pathauto_perform_alias = TRUE;

    //the name of my actual field is 'product images'
    $node->field_product_images[LANGUAGE_NONE] = $images;
    unset($images);




    $node->field_baby_clothes_category[LANGUAGE_NONE][0]['tid'] = $page_data['category']; 

    if($node = node_submit($node)) { // Prepare node for saving
        node_save($node);
}

Thoughts on how to get this to work correctly? Thanks!