Illegal Immigrants Returning To Mexico For American Jobs

[undeterred]

MEXICO CITY—As dozens of major American corporations continue to move their manufacturing operations to Mexico, waves of job-seeking Mexican immigrants to the United States have begun making the deadly journey back across the border in search of better-paying Mexican-based American jobs.

"I came to this country seeking the job I sought when I first left this country," said Anuncio Reyes, 22, an undocumented worker who recrossed the U.S. border into Mexico last month, three years after leaving Mexico for the United States to work as an agricultural day laborer. "I spent everything I had to get back here. Yes, it was dangerous, and I miss my home. But as much as I love America, I have to go where the best American jobs are."

Reyes now works as a spot-welder on the assembly line of a Maytag large-appliance plant and earns $22 a day, most of which he sends back to his family in the U.S., who in turn send a portion of that back to the original family they left in Mexico. Like many former Mexican-Americans forced by circumstance to become American-Mexicans, Reyes dreams of one day bringing his relatives to Mexico so that they, too, may secure American employment in Mexico. Despite the considerable risk illegal immigrants face in returning across the border, many find the lure of large U.S. factory salaries hard to resist—at 15 percent of the pay of corresponding jobs in America, these positions pay three times what Mexican jobs do.

Still, the danger is very real. When 31-year-old illegal Arizona resident Ignacio Jimenez sought employment at an American plant in Mexico, he was shot at by Mexican border guards as he attempted to illegally enter the country of his citizenship, pursued by U.S. immigration officials who thought he might be entering the country illegally, and fired upon again by a second group of U.S. Border Patrol agents charged with keeping valuable table-busing and food-delivery personnel inside American borders.

A group of Mexican workers make the dangerous trek home across the Rio Grande for their lunch break.


http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47978