October 07, 2004

Irony on the Border

From the CSMonitor's "Mexico's other migrant wave":

...Upwards of 1 million Mexicans are successfully crossing into the US each year, leaving behind a dearth of laborers. Increasingly, that void is being filled by... poor Indians from remote villages throughout Mexico.

..."Our workforce has left," says Tomas Torres, the general secretary of Zacatecas. "So these other people come here, lured by the high demand for seasonal labor. But then they decide to stay."

...[Zacatecas] has the highest per-capita emigration rate of any Mexican state - an astounding 1 of every 2 Zacatecans are estimated to reside in the US. That opens the door to migrants who come from poor Indian towns in states like Veracruz, Hidalgo Durango, Jalisco, and San Luis Potosi.

...Here in Chaparrosas, workers are welcome and generally unobtrusive. But elsewhere in Zacatecas, it's a different story. "In the last six years, many more people have come from other states to work here," says Laura Macias, a radio reporter in Tlatenango, in the fertile south of Zacatecas. "They come to work, but they stay and cause problems."

...According to Ms. Macias, the laborers, largely Huichol Indians from neighboring states Jalisco and Nayarit, have increasingly been accused of thefts, assaults, and even murders in the normally quiet community. The accusations have led to hard feelings toward the newcomers, and tensions in Tlaltenango are on the rise. But, Macias admits, it's proven hard to link crimes directly to any of the Huichols, and she wonders if part of the problem isn't that "locals are resentful that outsiders are earning money in their town."

Does that make those complaining about this XRM-SBAHs*, or is that possible in this case?

*xenophobic racist mean-spirited bigoted anti-humans

Posted to Immigration2004 at October 7, 2004 10:02 PM

Comments