Ricardo's Blog

I was dissapointed to learn last night that the immigration reform got killed in the US Senate.  The reality now is that it will pass some good time before a new attempt is done at this, since George W. Bush will not have another chance at it.  For me, the failure to get approval is both a testimony to George W. Bush's lost political influence as well as the profund divide that the topic has on the United States.

The worst outcome of this is that now without a framework the temptation to try to orchestrate smaller actions on both ends of the issue will become very real.  To put it simply, the migrants are now more legally vulnerable to a sudden change on their situation. 

Will somebody else step up to the plate to do a reform?  I think this is highly unlikely since democrats also have high hopes for the next presidential election.  Unfortunatey is going back to the shadows for the millions of working migrants in the US.

Posted by rcarreon at 06:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Globalization has made immigration between countries a very common and growing phenomenon.  It goes well beyond the traditional migration from low wage areas to high wage areas.  You can easily see other, sometimes opposite, trends like Americans and Canadians living in Mexico; or regional trends among countries with similar standards such as Argentinians living in Brasil and many others.

There is a website called Face of Tomorrow in which they take real pictures of multiple people in each city and generate composite images of what the typical person in that city would look like in the future. The resulting image is not from an actual person, but a computer generated average. Rio, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Lima and Quito are on the site.  Bogota and Mexico City are coming soon.

Do you agree with the computer-averaged look of your City? If not, why? 

Posted by rcarreon at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Remittances to Mexico from the US reached $25 Billion USD in 2007, according to Reforma (I'd love to link but their information is closed).  This is the highest level ever.  Mexico is by far the largest recepient of such money flows in Latin America, but the money is also significant in all the region.  Mexico's Economy is larger than 700B USD so the amount is relatively small (around 3%).  However, in some smaller Central American countries the amount could be a big chunk of the whole economy.

Remittances have become a common sign of a globalized world.  Labor has been pretty mobile to go where the jobs are located.  The US economy produces many good paying jobs (as compared to salaries in Latin America).  Therefore the incentive to migrate to the United States is very large.  The same phenomenon can be seen in Europe with people from Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe. 

Are remitances bad?  Not necessarily.  They evidence symptoms that can be considered negative, such as the lack of a more robust labor market in Mexico.  However, the money flows have helped millions of families make a living back home in exchange for work.  Let's hope that in the long run the level of economic disparity between the US and Latin America gets reduced in such a way that remittances naturally go down, without causing disruption.

Posted by rcarreon at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As a Mexican, you face stories like this all the time.  Stories about people being deported out of the US and Mexico back to Central and South America. Unfortunately, tougher laws are forcing a growing number of children to do the dangerous journey alone, as their parents that reached the US do not want to risk going back and forth. This Washington Post article talks about the human drama for Guatemalan children going all the way to the US: Young Migrants Risk All to Reach the US.

Related Posts:

-         Very touching pictures of the immigration rallies

-         We have a dream

Posted by rcarreon at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

 I blogged about the relevance of the immigration rallies back in April and May.  I think it is great that immigrants regardless of origin or what prompted their situation become active participants in the debate on them. 

I just ran across a picture in flickr that touched me very deeply.  It is from the May day protest in Chicago. Imagine this: the Federal Plaza in Chicago, early in the morning, the Plaza is basically empty.  Half a million people will fill the plaza in a few hours.  But now, a lady and her two girls are there, standing in the middle of the vastness of the Plaza, waiting for their people to show up.

The picture is by jvoves and is released under a Creative Commons license.  You can also look at his picture set on the May 1st rallies.

Posted by rcarreon at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Vicente Fox, which is currently touring several of the states in the West Coast of the United States was very pleased with the reform and called Bush to express his gratitude.  Beyond the impact in the United States, this victory seems also to be a great win for Fox’s party to consolidate their current lead over the Mexican presidential race.  

But most importantly, the reform opens the door for good hard-working people to get a chance to get their US citizenship.  The law that was just passed will allow most of the people that have been living in the US for more than five years, have a clean record and pay their taxes to apply to get the citizenship.  It will also create a program for temporary workers to come work during a season (let say for the cotton-picking season on some states) and then come back.  This is great news for the many agriculture workers who today get illegally into the United States looking for a better paying job, but who really want to come back to their home towns in Mexico and Central America.

All in all great a great step for both sides of the border, as millions of people from Latin America will have a way to work and live legally in the US, while the US begins to build a framework to get its house in order.  I assume this is only the first step of many as immigration flows continue to shape the face of this globalized world.

Posted by rcarreon at 04:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I felt pretty silly.  I felt pretty silly sobbing in front of the USA Today in my hotel room in Houston this week.  I went there for a “quick” customer visit – two days of travel in-and out of Brazil frame what can be considered “quick” when flying all over the vast territory of the Americas.

And yes, I had a good reason to become emotional on that morning of April 11^th reading about the many protests that Latinos made throughout America on April 10^th, 2006.  The protests took place equally in the nation’s capital than in large and small cities.  In huge urban areas the same as in small rural communities.  In those protests, thousands of Latinos (Mexicans being the largest group among them) went and protest for fair immigration laws.

But what was I touched?  Why did I became emotional on the topic?

To start with, I found it wonderful to see my fellow countrymen actively engage in defending their rights.   I know the immigration issue is a very complex one and there are no easy answers, but everybody deserves to be heard on this debate.  Second, as a Mexican there were simply too many episodes in my life in which I was touched by the sadness that immigration that is not supported by the law creates.

A few ones come to memory: the small town in Tlaxcala in which all you could see in a Saturday morning were dogs, little kids and women; the thousands and thousands of cars driving south from the Mexican border to Mexico each year (about 4 million people do that trip every year) and the pain closer to home, such as the former caretaker of the first building I lived in Mexico City who went to the US to work for a while and ended up staying there for more than four years.  Every year his wife would be hopeful that he will come back to Christmas only to found out that he couldn’t… fortunately he is now reunited with his family in Mexico.

Whatever solution is found I think that the demonstrators deserve to be heard.  These are good hardworking people who contributes to the American economy.  They have their dreams and they work really hard at making them happen.  

USA coverage of that day: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-04-10-immigration-rallies_x.htm

Posted by rcarreon at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)