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Links to the BorderDarlene Wright Our group traveled through Nogales in Borderlink (an organization that educates people about border issues) vans that were driven by people who had made this trip many times before. The driver pointed out landmarks such as the border wall that was being constructed as we made our way past the tourist centers and into the center of Nogales. This is a part of the city that many of us onboard had never seen.
The assembly was comprised of students from Dr. Koptiuch’s Migration and Culture class at Arizona State University, west campus. Most of us are young students. I am the oldest one of the group, with children a lot older than my fellow students. Several in the group told humorous stories of seeing Nogales under conditions of celebration and coming of age. We were about to see a more sobering side of the city. The disheveled collection of people who were gathered outside Grupo Beta (a Mexican government funded organization that assists migrants through education, shelter, and food) looked at our vans with apprehension. Later, a family explained that they had not been well treated by Americans, so they were worried about our presence. It was disturbing that Mexican nationals were concerned about our group while they were in their own country. I can not imagine having those concerns in the U.S., but then, of course, my country is not being invaded, despite accusations to the contrary by the popular press. In Covering Immigration, Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation, Leo Chavez (2001) discussed the “demonization” of the Mexican immigrant in Business Week, U.S. News and World report and other magazines. He notes the use of the terms “crisis,” “war zone,” and “invasion,” as descriptions that denote a combative atmosphere on the border. These images depict a border that is out of control and a boundary that can not be maintained. The “invaders” are depicted as people who are out to harm U.S. citizens. However, in the same book, President of Mexico, Jose Lopez Portillo dismisses the United States government’s punitive response to illegal immigration. He advises a healthier relationship of mutual benefit because the immigrants are just people looking for work. That view was evident in the small family group we met at Grupo Beta. An old man, a twelve year old boy, two teenage girls, and their nineteen year old aunt made up the family who had been repatriated to Mexico the previous day. They had spent four days traveling in the desert before being caught by the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol took their pictures and fingerprints before releasing them in Nogales. If they try to cross the border again, they will be prosecuted because entering the United States after being repatriated is a crime. It may have been difficult for this family to see the crossing as a crime. They were trying to reunite with the teenage girls’ father who was living in Florida. The girls had not seen their father for seven years. The aunt mentioned poor wages as a motivator, but the money sent by the father to sustain his children financially and the draw of family support in a foreign country must have been incentive to make such a long and dangerous trip as well. One member of the party was still in a hospital in the United States and the family did not know his status. They were reluctant to go back to their home state without him or at least knowing his progress. Money was an issue as well. The family was hoping that the girls’ father would be able to send them money, which they said would be used to return home. Money is the foundation of movement from both sides of the border. This money is in the form of profits from the maquiladoras that fly north without hesitating in Nogales to pave roads or provide clean water, remittances that travel south to the home state for support of the community that remains behind, and gifts. Gifts that can not be purchased in Mexico by the standard wage lure the worker north again. This is an ebb and flow over the border rather than what has been described as a flood of Mexican immigrants. Whether we like it or not, the U.S. calls Mexicans to come to us by our business practices, familiar and cultural links, lure of employment and by the fact that we have made ourselves at home in their country by setting up maquiladoras to harvest cheap labor and ignore the disruption of the local economy. If we want to stop the tide of illegal immigration we will have to stop swimming against it.
Bibliography Chavez, Leo R. (2001). Covering Immigration Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation University of California Press, California Schiller, Nina G., Basch, Linda, Blanc-Szanton, Cristina (1992). Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 645: 1 - 24
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