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f e a t u r e Political Support for Immigration Pact May Have Evaporated,
but in Mexico, Migration Pressures are on the Rise Arrests of undocumented migrants trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border dropped 57% during the three months following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. Also since the attacks, talks between Mexican President Vicente Fox and U.S. President George W. Bush about liberalizing immigration policy have stalled. Officials on both sides of the border say they are continuing the dialogue, but the previously proposed, sweeping policy changes-including amnesty for Mexican migrants in the United States without documentation and an expanded guestworker program-have been pushed into the background by a new focus on border security. The reduction in numbers of border crossers, at least, isn't likely to last long. The increasingly intertwined U.S. and Mexican economies, rocketing unemployment south of the border, and the long-established crossborder U.S.-Mexico labor market all mean that Mexicans will continue traverse the border-legally or illegally-in search of economic opportunities. "Migration between Mexico and the United States is a permanent, structural phenomenon. It is built on real factors, ranging from geography, economic inequality, and integration, and the intense relationship between the two countries, that make it inevitable," concluded a December 2001 report by Mexico's National Population Council (CONAPO). "We Work and Work, But It Seems We Don't Get Anywhere" More than half of Mexico's population lives in poverty or extreme poverty, according to official statistics. Income distribution is increasingly skewed in favor of Mexico's rich. CONAPO reported in July last year that the richest 10% of Mexican households received half of Mexico's national income. In contrast, in 2000 the poorest 20% of Mexican households received only 4% of the nation's income. Such stark inequities in income distribution have led to a highly polarized society with "a forgotten Mexico-poor, composed principally of the Indian populations...who suffer an infinity of unmet needs...[and a] modern Mexico, integrated into globalization, with examples of prosperity worthy of countries of the First World," writes Rodolfo Turain, director of CONAPO. The scarcity of jobs, low wages, and the ever-rising cost of living prompt many Mexicans to cross into the United States to seek service and construction jobs. Minimum wages in Mexico range from $4.20 to $4.60 per day. Workers in border zone maquiladora plants-many of them foreign owned-do better, earning about $2 an hour. Still, when adjusted for inflation, maquiladora wages in all border states remain below 1994 levels. "If I work six days a week for 10 hours, I make 300 or 400 pesos ($33-44), says Juan Carlos Lopez Ramirez, a 25-year-old waiter at a restaurant in the city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. "My father has passed away and it's very hard for my mother. I try to help, but there's never enough. In Mexico we work and work, but it seems we don't get anywhere. We want to give more to our families, but we can't," he adds. Anatomy of an Economic Migrant Just two years ago, Lopez was working a job and attending classes for a degree in architecture. Unlike his younger brother and many of his peers who had gone to work in the United States, he had never planned to leave his home to work in "el norte." Then things changed. "I love Oaxaca. I said I'd never leave it. But my family ran into some difficult times and they needed my help. And working to pay for school left me with little to give them," he explains. Like millions of Mexicans who live one step away from economic crisis, when trouble hit, Lopez began to think about working in the north as a way to help his family. Many of his friends and relatives had made the journey across the border illegally to find jobs that allowed them to both survive and send money home to Mexico. Money remitted to Mexico by relatives working U.S. jobs is a critical source of income for many families here. Some 1.25 million households received remittances in 2000, according to CONAPO. In the first nine months of 2001, Mexicans working in the United States sent a total of roughly $6.7 billion south across the border. The average single remittance was $300, and most migrant workers sent money home once or twice a month. "I looked at what I could give my family while working here; it was very little. Then I considered what people who'd gone to the United States had told me-how much more money I could make there," Lopez explains. "It was a huge difference-eight to 10 times what I was making in Oaxaca. I knew I had to leave." In the spring of 1999, he hopped a bus with his uncle for the border state of Sonora. They arrived at a relative's Sonoran home two days later with $150 in their pockets and began looking for a coyote (paid guide) to take them across the border. "It was a hot, dusty, desolate place. While we waited to find a coyote, we were trying not to spend the little money we had," Lopez recalls. "We ate only when we were very hungry." Three weeks later, Lopez had made two grueling northward trips through the desert. Both trips ended in the back of U.S. Border Patrol pickups. He and his uncle were processed in Tucson, Ariz., then dropped off at the border. "I was very discouraged. The trips had been very hard-and for nothing. But I had to try again. I'd come so far. But I had no idea how bad the next attempt would be," he says. A Desperate Crossing After failing twice, Lopez and his uncle learned of another crossing being planned. They went that evening to find the coyote, who said it would be an easy trip, mostly in pickups-there wouldn't be much walking. And he was willing to be paid after successfully getting them across the border. They left at dawn the next day in the back of an old pickup. A few hours later, the truck pulled to a stop. "We're going to walk a little," the coyote said. It was late morning, and already the heat was stifling, Lopez recounts. Following the coyote, the would-be migrants set off, each carrying a 5-liter bottle of water, a few cans of beans, and some tortillas. After trudging five hours, Lopez asked the guide how much further they would be walking. "Not much further," the coyote replied. Several hours later, Lopez asked again, pointing out they'd first been told most of the trip would be in pickups. "No, we're going to walk a lot more," the coyote said matter-of-factly. Lopez realized it was going to be a very difficult crossing. Their water grew scarce. "My mouth was so dry, there was no saliva. We were getting desperate," remembers Lopez. "The coyote knew he had to do something. He looked all around, and finally found a kind of cactus. He cut it open and pulled out the pulp inside, cut it into pieces, and gave a piece to everyone. It helped a little, but we were still thirsty. There was no other cactus like that around." That night, they started out again, walking in the desert cold, stopping to rest 20 minutes every four hours. "My body hurt all over, and there were times when I needed to rest-we all needed to rest. But the coyote said there were migra (border patrol officers) around, and that we had to keep moving," Lopez says. Eventually, they heard the distant rumble of a pickup. When it pulled up, the coyote directed the women to get in the back, and told the men: "Wait here. Don't move. I'll be back soon." He jumped in the passenger seat and soon the pickup disappeared into the distance. "That was a very desperate moment. Several guys were saying he wouldn't be back, that we should start walking, take our chances. I was afraid. We were so exhausted," Lopez says. "But we decided to stay and wait. We had no idea where we were. I was so hopeless then, very hopeless. I was thinking of my home, of my family. I was asking myself, "What am I doing here? I want to be with my Mom, drinking cold water," remembers Lopez. "And we didn't know if the coyote was coming back. It was anguish." But the coyote kept his word. After a day of anxious hiding in the desert heat, the truck came back again the next night. "Hey raza, vamonos, let's go!" the coyote whispered from inside. Elated, the men jumped in the back of the pickup-but their relief was short-lived. "I was in the back of the pickup, holding my medallion of the Virgin de Juquila, thanking her for getting me across," says Lopez. "All of the sudden, the truck pulled over and the coyote told us to run." Within a few minutes, they'd all been rounded up by Border Patrol agents. The next day they were in Mexico again, exhausted and reeling from yet another failed crossing. A few days later, he says, Lopez and his uncle crossed again with a different coyote-this time, the trip was easier, and they made it, first to Tucson, then to Los Angeles, then San Francisco, where family members put them up. It took Lopez four attempts spread out over two months to finally cross. He was lucky. Hundreds of migrants who've made the same attempt have died trying. In 2001 alone, at least 490 people lost their livings trying to cross the border between Mexico and the United States-106 in the Arizona desert where Lopez made his four tries. Some estimates double that figure, however. When asked about how he felt crossing in an area where so many have died, Lopez says that he knew the trip was dangerous but tried not to think about it. "There were times during the trips when I thought of the people that had died. And I was afraid. But I would think, 'I've come so far. It's cost me so much. I have to go on,'" he explains. The New Border Lopez's hope to find a better future working in the north-a hope fueled by desperation-is shared by many of his fellow Mexicans. Their numbers are growing, day by day. Mexicans are finding it harder to make ends meet due to the country's current economic problems. More than 500,000 Mexican workers were laid off last year as the economy entered a recession. Those layoffs are closely linked to the downturn of the U.S. economy, the destination of 88% of Mexican exports, and 95% of goods produced in maquiladoras. After 12 years of steady growth, many maquiladoras along the border are now drastically cutting production and engaging in massive layoffs-and industry officials see no end in sight. By conservative estimates, more than 200,000 workers in assembly plants lost their jobs last year as payrolls were reduced. Nearly 100 maquiladoras in Mexico have closed, at least 70 of them near the border. Worse still for the nearly 1.5 million Mexicans employed in maquiladoras, the economic downturn has prompted many foreign factory owners to increase the intensity of their complaints regarding what they say are excessive taxes and tariffs, an overvalued peso, and high wages. Many have threatened to move their facilities to other sites in Latin America and Asia, where labor costs are lower. Assembly workers in El Salvador, for example, are paid an average of $1.59 an hour. In Indonesia the same job pays roughly $1.19, and in China about 43 cents per hour. "Even after the U.S. economy improves, and the demand picks up, it will be cheaper for manufacturers to produce in regions of the world," noted Juan Pablo Fuentes, an economist at the consulting firm DRI-WEFA in Philadelphia in a recent New York Times article. [1] To address claims by industry leaders that wages on the border are becoming too high for low-skilled assembly outfits, President Fox is urging such factories to move south. "In southern Mexico we are establishing the same conditions as in Guatemala or China. Maquiladoras do not have to leave Mexico. We can offer them the same level of competitiveness," Fox has said. [2] That statement speaks a bitter truth: With the highest rates of malnutrition and illiteracy in the nation, Mexico's impoverished southern region has much in common with its neighbors to the south. Desperation and the low wages so attractive to maquiladora owners, it seems, go hand-in-hand. Meanwhile, with maquiladora laborers in Mexico's northern border zone in danger of being priced out of the global labor market, the industry's race for the lowest wage may in turn mean a race across the border by displaced workers. Agricultural producers and workers in Mexico are desperate as well, adding to emigration pressures. Roughly 25% of Mexicans depend on agriculture for their livelihoods; in recent years they have seen their incomes shrink due to rising costs and falling prices-often because of cheaper farm commodities imported from the United States and other countries. Many analysts predict that Mexican agricultural workers who can't survive the current recession and global competition will inevitably try crossing into the United States to look for work. Officials in Mexico's agricultural states agree that the farm crisis has created new waves of migration to the United States. What Next? While the U.S. economic downturn and post 9-11 security consciousness has been seen as having had an impact Mexico migration, many experts argue that the worsening Mexican economy will likely eclipse that phenomenon. "As Mexico's economy contracts-dragged down by the recession in the U.S.-this will generate stronger pressures for emigration," Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC-San Diego, recently told the Los Angeles Times. "Even with the greater competition for jobs in the U.S., most migrants will still have a better chance of finding adequately paid employment north of the border than if they remained in Mexico."[ 4 ] Indeed, while not back to pre-September 11 levels, the number of apprehensions of undocumented migrants trying to cross the border is on the rise again, according to recent reports. For his part, Juan Carlos Lopez Ramirez had planned to work four or five years in the United States until he saved enough money to return to Oaxaca and open a small restaurant with his mother. Two months ago, however, he got the news that one of his brothers was ill and in the hospital. Within a week, Lopez was back in Oaxaca. He's not sure when, if ever, he'll return to the United States. He's thinking again about a career in architecture. But his younger brother is planning an illegal trip across the border next week. "We recently talked to a friend who had crossed without any problems. He said things are more or less back to normal. And everything is arranged for my brother to cross. He's leaving in a few days," Lopez says. "[Due to the U.S. recession,] one of my uncles there has had to pick up another job, and another is only working four days a week. "It's still worth going," he adds. Jonathan Treat, a journalist and independent documentary filmmaker with extensive experience in Mexico and Central America, writes regularly for the IRC's America's Program. Based in Oaxaca, Mexico, he also works with the Spring Institute, a Denver-based nonprofit corporation offering ESL and job training classes to immigrants and refugees. Notes: Links:Center for Immigration
Research (CIR) Consejo Nacional
de Población Migration News "Study Finds
Maquila Wages Insufficient" "Forging a
New U.S.-Mexico Migration Relationship" "Free Trade
and the Economic Underpinnings of Mexico-U.S. Migration" Contacts:Victor Clark Alfaro
| Centro Binacional de Derechos Humanos, A.C. Isabel Garcia |
Coalición de Derechos Humanos/Arizona Border Rights Project Rev. Robin Hoover
| Humane Borders Gilberto Martínez
| Casa del Migrante, A.C. Spring Miller,
Program Coordinator | Mexico-US Advocates Network Published by the Interhemispheric Resource Center's Americas Program. All rights reserved. Recommended citation: "Political Support for Immigration Pact May Have Evaporated, but in Mexico, Migration Pressures are on the Rise," Americas Program Feature (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, February 1, 2001). Web location: http://www.americaspolicy.org/articles/2002/0202immigration.html |