>Just out of curiosity, is there much immigration INTO Mexico?
This is from an article Mike Davis wrote earlier this year:
>What few people -- at least, outside of Mexico
>-- have bothered to notice is that while all the
>nannies, cooks, and maids have been heading
>north to tend the luxury lifestyles of irate
>Republicans, the Gringo hordes have been rushing
>south to enjoy glorious budget retirements and
>affordable second homes under the Mexican sun.
>
>Yes, in former California Governor Pete Wilson's
>immortal words, "They just keep coming." Over
>the last decade, the U.S. State Department
>estimates that the number of Americans living in
>Mexico has soared from 200,000 to 1 million (or
>one-quarter of all U.S. expatriates).
[.....]
>In essence, Alta (Upper) California is beginning
>to overflow into Baja, an epochal process that,
>if unchecked, will produce intolerable social
>marginalization and ecological devastation in
>Mexico's last true frontier region. All the
>contradictions of post-industrial California --
>runaway land inflation in the coastal zone,
>sprawling suburban development in interior
>valleys and deserts, freeway congestion and lack
>of mass transit, and the astronomical growth of
>motorized recreation -- dictate the invasion of
>the gorgeous "empty" peninsula to the south. To
>use a term from a bad but not irrelevant past,
>Baja is Anglo California's Lebensraum.
[...]
http://www.tomdispatch.com/indexprint.mhtml?pid=122537
Davis has a new book out called "No One is Illegal"
>In No One Is Illegal Mike Davis and Justin Akers
>Chacón expose the racism of anti-immigration
>vigilantes and put a human face on the
>immigrants who daily risk their lives to cross
>the border to work in the United States.
>Countering the mounting chorus of anti-immigrant
>voices, No One Is Illegal debunks the leading
>ideas behind the often violent right-wing
>backlash against immigrants, revealing their
>deep roots in U.S. history, and documents the
>new civil rights movement that has mounted
>protests around the country to demand justice and dignity for immigrants.
>
>No One Is Illegal features moving, evocative
>photos from award-winning photographer Julián Cardona.