Thread: 'Immigration does not solve problems for Mexico'

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

'Immigration does not solve problems for Mexico'
Author, journalist talks about Mexican immigration and his books at the Columbia Forum

By CASSANDRA PROFITA
The Daily Astorian

Wednesday, April 25, 2007


ALEX PAJUNAS — The Daily Astorian
Sam Quinones, an author and journalist from Southern California, has written a pair of nonfiction books, “True Tales From Another Mexico” and “Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream.” Quinones, the featured speaker at Tuesday’s Columbia Forum talk.


ALEX PAJUNAS — The Daily Astorian
Sam Quinones makes a rifle gesture as he tells the tale of Antonio’s gun. The story described a boy named Antonio who went to the United States to save up for a gun before returning to his home in Mexico to avenge his father’s death.
When Antonio Carrillo left his Mexican village of Michoacan for the United States, he left in pursuit of a gun to avenge his father's murder.

According to Sam Quinones, a reporter for The Los Angeles Times and author of two books on Mexican immigration, Carrillo was looking for something a lot of Mexicans seek in the United States: "An alternative to submission, and an answer to the deal he was dealt."

Before an audience of about 50 at the Columbia Forum in Astoria Tuesday night, Quinones shared his wisdom from 10 years of freelance reporting in Mexico, along with excerpts from his second book, "Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream."

Carrillo wanted to prove "he's not just a poor guy who's going to sit there and take it," said Quinones.

In villages across North-Central Mexico, similar forces are driving people to the United States in droves. By looking closely at their motivations, and the empty houses they build in their home towns, observers can see how immigration has drained much of Mexico of its most valuable assets - "the people with energy and drive," Quinones said.

They leave to escape the "old world repression ... the constraints of power concentrated in a few people and a few places ... the reverence for privilege and pomp," said Quinones. Once in the U.S. they send their hard-earned money home to build the perfect retirement home. But by the time they're ready to live in it there is little reason to go back.

The more Mexicans venture to the U.S. from their villages and return to show off what they have accomplished, the more people they inspire to migrate. The influx of dollars into the local economy raises the cost of living to the point where ordinary villagers cannot survive without a "dollar connection."

"It never stops," said Quinones. "Immigration does not solve problems for Mexico; it does not change the conditions that push people to leave."

Instead it drives the most industrious, risk-taking people away from their communities, and "a precious commodity bleeds out of Mexico across the border," he said.



A better life
While Quinones was in Mexico City, he became fascinated by the "hillbilly kids" who came from small villages to work. His fascination led him to Delfino Juarez, a brave young man with "pluck and gumption" who left his village of Xocotta alone at age 12 to find a better life in Mexico City. He was the first boy to go alone, leaving behind his poor, disreputable family, his rickety old home and his cloistered town. In Mexico City, thousands of young boys work construction and girls work as maids, said Quinones. They make four times what they could make in their villages.

When Juarez returned to Xocotta for the first time three years later, he sported a Mohawk, a leather jacket and a spiked dog collar.

The men insulted him, the women giggled, and the little kids thought he was an alien. His mom cried.

But kids his age thought he was "the coolest thing ever," said Quinones. They followed his lead to Mexico City, and soon the cost of living in Xocotta was so inflated no one could live in town without the Mexico City economy.

A similar effect ripples through Mexican villages when young people discover Mexico City as when they begin migrating to "El Norte" from Jalisco, Michoacan, Guanajuato, Zacatecas and Oaxaca, he said. Many Mexican immigrants in Astoria are coming from Oaxaca and a town called La Noria.

Returning to their villages after working in the U.S., many Mexicans are like adults returning to their hometown for a high school reunion, said Quinones. "Everyone wants to show what they've done."

They throw lavish parties, buy nice clothes and improve their homes. Pretty soon, everybody wants to go north.

The remittances sent from the U.S. help "prop up a large, large area of Mexico," said Quinones. Without the influx of U.S. money - a national income second only to oil revenues - the government would have to make serious, wrenching changes.


What the money means
As more dollars come in, dollars become essential to living in many Mexican villages, and people can't live on pesos alone. More immigration follows - and more, until the only people who remain are the elderly and the very young.

"The people with energy and drive, those folks are here," said Quinones.

Many immigrants want to come back but find they can't stand to work for $10 a day after working for $10 an hour in the U.S., he said. Instead, they use the U.S. money they earn to build lavish retirement homes.

The workforce left at home isn't trained for modern industries, said Quinones. There are few educational opportunities and no jobs to keep people in their villages. In Mexico City, where there are jobs, the workers are treated with disrespect and are paid poorly. That's what eventually drove Delfino Juarez to the U.S. after working in Mexico City for 10 years with "little to show for it," said Quinones.

Juarez got a job in Los Angeles installing flooring and bought fake identification. He learned English and the bus system. He found a way to make extra money gleaning side jobs off his company. He started building a house in Xocotta to replace his family's old shack. His brother soon joined him, and they started their own business.

The next time he returned to Xocotta "everybody said hello," said Quinones. The villagers now saw him as someone who could find them a job, get them across the border.

"He changed the town a second time," said Quinones. Villagers started moving to the U.S., and soon there was a building boom in Xocotta. In Los Angeles, nine men would live in one tiny house, but each man was sending money home to build his own mini palace.


The picture of Mexico
The empty, picture-perfect houses that have sprouted up in Mexican villages "tell the story of immigrant Mexico," said Quinones.

They are "standing monuments to what a poor man can do if given a chance," he said. They also symbolize "a promise to return someday," but it is a promise few Mexicans fulfill anymore.

"The moment he finishes the house he realizes his kids are here, his grandkids, doctors, the local Safeway is so convenient, he likes the roads," said Quinones. "And he has built a home in a place where no one lives."

Mexico is filled with houses no one is going to live in, he said. Some parts of town "look like movie sets. No one's home. You can hear the rooster across town. You've got these beautiful, gorgeous homes built with such love, such care. Never to be occupied."

As a country, Mexico hasn't found a way to use the incoming dollars to keep people in their villages.

He left the audience with one unanswered question: "How can Mexico change to become a place people don't want to leave?"

http://www.dailyastorian.info/main.asp? ... M=19741.76

And we thought the money was for food because everybody was starving!!?

Returning to their villages after working in the U.S., many Mexicans are like adults returning to their hometown for a high school reunion, said Quinones. "Everyone wants to show what they've done."

They throw lavish parties, buy nice clothes and improve their homes. Pretty soon, everybody wants to go north.

...and from the looks of things they ARE going north ..............BUILD THE FENCE NOW!!!

Well what a story, I'm not sure how he wanted us to feel, are we suppose to feel bad because they spent their money building a house they were never going to live in, while living on food stamps complements of the U.S. Citizens, free medical, complements of the taxpayers of the U.S..

Well at least we know when they get sent home they have a home to go to thats more than a lot of our poor homeless people have here in their own country.

Build the fence post haste!! and for gawd sakes enforce the laws these people have spunged off of us long enough!

So, they're building lavish homes in mexico for their retirement. They're trashing our neighborhoods, living 9 to a house in the meantime. They break a ton of our laws to get here and continue to live here, they take social services while they work under the table. They insist we change our laws to suit them so things are easier on them while they break the laws of our land. They commit untold crimes and kill American citizens. They're wasting the money they send home if they don't return and live in them when these 'palaces' in mexico are complete.

...and Americans lose their jobs every day and burn through their retirement savings just to survive.

Yeah, that's fair.