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 News from Around the Americas | February 2007 
Why Immigrants Come to America
 Anthony Welsch - Albert Lea Tribune
| | Pedestrians wait in line to enter the United States at the border in Tijuana, Mexico. (Sandy Huffaker / Getty Images) |
Each day the U.S. Border Patrol catches more than 3,000 people trying to get into the United States illegally. But there are still thousands who come over and follow the laws each day — especially along the Mexico-Texas border.
Literally, many are just running errands. Most come up to El Paso from the city of Juarez to shop. Prices are better in El Paso than in Juarez. Despite lower wages in the Mexican city of 1.7 million.
For some it’s become routine to buy clothes and even toilet paper north of the border — but for others like Cindy Barrientes, they’re buying time.
“I’m originally from California but I’ve been in El Paso so for almost a year,” Barrientes said.
Today, she works at a clothing store literally a stone’s throw away from the border. She waits for her husband on the other side of the Rio Grande.
“He’s a Mexican and we’re getting his papers in order, legally, to get him over. That’s why I moved here,” she said.
She spends most nights with her husband south of the border. But she crosses the border nearly every morning to get to her job in El Paso. Wages are better and as a U.S. citizen she says she’d be a fool not to do it.
Others though are more entrepreneurial. While they come to El Paso to buy things, then, they go back to Juarez and sell it. For many Mexican shop owners, they can buy products in El Paso cheaper than they can from distributors in Mexico.
Many believe it’s because the middle class in Mexico is non-existent when compared to the United States.
For these people who cross over every day, increased border security means an hour wait to cross into the United States. Many see the National Guard soldiers on duty as a bit of an extreme measure — some even call it a “slap in the face” to law-abiding Mexicans. Many say, while drug smugglers aren’t uncommon, the majority of those who living the border communities rely on each country to provide what they need to live.
Still, each year about 1.2 million people are arrested along the border trying to come into the United States. Of those, 200,000 are caught in the El Paso area, where Minnesota National Guard soldiers are stationed. |
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