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Hundreds more Mexicans and other Central Americans, having successfully gotten across, have died in truck crashes, forced marches through mountainous territory east of San Diego in winter storms, or trying to cross the desert in remote areas without adequate water or maps. The U.S. Border Patrol's more aggressive apprehension procedures force them away from safer paths, and as high-speed chases grow more common, and as armed vigilante groups take the current atmosphere of anti-immigrant hysteria as a license to hunt, the death toll mounts.

I have participated in all the arguments about the sovereign right of the U.S. -- or Mexico, for that matter, which excludes undocumented laborers coming in from it's storm-ravaged southern neighbors -- to protect its territorial integrity and its workers from un-tax-paying illegal competition, and the pro-closed-border position clearly has merit: as long as there are borders, a country has the right to enforce them. And although it is easily arguable that the current U.S. position on foreign workers is stupid, shortsighted, and counter-productive, such a policy is certainly legal. Legal policies that do not work, and/or cannot work, need to be constantly re-examined, and the causes of the problem need to be taken into account.

Interdiction of illegals by the U.S. Border Patrol has yielded increasing numbers of deportations, setting records all the time. Never before have so many foreigners been sent back home, in so short a time, with such efficiency. Of course we have no figures as to how many have NOT been caught, but if we assume the Immigration and Naturalization Service's estimates are correct, the vast majority of the cross-border traffic gets through, which means that more, not less, illegal aliens are currently residing in the U.S. For the illegal immigrant, increased interdiction has meant higher prices, more violence, and increased crime.

The price to cross the border has gone up, to as much as $6,000 dollars per person (it is possible to cross through San Ysidro in a car trunk for $1,000 dollars, but the ring that does it is inclined to be very careful about whom they take, and crossings are limited). The only way to get a better price is to cross in a larger group. The larger the group, the more chance of getting spotted and caught. The more people, the more crowded the truck or railroad car, and the more danger of being abandoned by the "coyote" (smuggler), as jail sentences are handed out with quantity in mind. Still, for most who come to the border, such high prices are out of the question. For many, the answer has come in "swarming", a practice where hundreds of aliens line up on one side of the border, dozens of Border Patrol on the other, and everyone runs like hell, figuring that at least a few will get through. It's cheap (but not free: nobody gets to hang around the border without being "protected" by somebody, most often the local fuzz), but it's the most dangerous, because if you do get through you don't know where you are or which way to go: on your own, a stranger in a very strange land. Others might make arrangements to work off their passage, either by carrying drugs (prison time if caught by the authorities; murder if caught by one of the roaming gangs who prey on "mules"), or by agreeing to hand over most of their wages for a certain period once they reach the end of the line.

O.K., so now you have made it to the promised land, have a job and a place to live, and are sending money back home (remittances from foreign countries to family in Mexico are the one of the largest source of foreign currency in Mexico, right up there with oil, dope and tourism). A few years ago, you would have worked a season or maybe two, and returned home for a while to be with your wife and children, parents and cousins; to participate in the life of your family and community. Then, when the need arose, you would have returned to the U.S. for a little more cash infusion. Now, faced with higher fees, a more dangerous border (on both sides), and more massive interdictions, you are forced to stay put. Thus is the very specter that drove the push for a larger Border Patrol and more aggressive INS is created: an ever-growing population of unemployed foreign workers, hanging out between seasons, putting down roots with new families, using the medical and educational facilities more. This is not a new idea: Daniel Patrick Moynehan, ex-Senator from New York, predicted it years ago.

If it's so alienating, difficult, dangerous and expensive, why do they keep coming? Partly, it's NAFTA (which created new jobs in the export sector while destroying a large part of the domestic industrial sector, resulting in a net loss of as many as a million jobs), and other "economic dislocations" including loss of family farms. Partly it is a desire for a better life "up there". There are many reasons, and mostly they have to do with desperation, because for a Mexican campesino to tear him/her self away from the protection and succor of the family (I know a young man who refused to "baby-sit" a house in California because he had never in his life lived in a house alone and it terrified him to think of it), is an act of desperation.

Near Oaxaca city, where I live, is a mountainous region known as the Mixteca Alta (the high Mixteca). Centered around the regional market town of Tlaxiaco, and populated mostly by peoples of the Mixtec and Trique language groups, it has suffered unimaginable depths of erosion. Heavy rains have denuded huge areas of arable land, driving whole villages (in Mexico, as in much of the world, the rural pattern is for farmers to live together in a village and to commute to their land) to empty of all workers for all or much of the year. There are no choices, as the land is unable to support even the simplest agriculture. Most of the migrants find work in the cities or the northern industrial farms of Mexico. Those who cannot, go "North".

For those who die so far from home, without money or connections, the cost has yet to be totaled. Rural Mexicans believe that the spirits of the dead cannot rest if they are too far away from their families (that is part of what Days of the Dead are about), and closure cannot happen unless the mourners can see and touch their dead. Yet, laws and customs in the U.S. result in the need to spend thousands of dollars to bring loved ones home, often resulting in eternal separation, a last and final humiliation on their nightmarish road to the dignity and sense of self-worth which most of us obtain from exercising what we would consider our right: to work in order to support ourselves and our families.

If you have comments or suggestions for Stan, you can contact him at: stan@realoaxaca.com

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