A recent Sacramento Bee story continues the story line that things are so wonderful in Mexico that illegals are going back:
There are fewer undocumented immigrants in California – and the Sacramento region – because many are now finding the American dream south of the border.
“It’s now easier to buy homes on credit, find a job and access higher education in Mexico,” Sacramento’s Mexican consul general, Carlos González Gutiérrez, said Wednesday. “We have become a middle-class country.”
Mexico’s unemployment rate is now 4.9 percent, compared with 9.4 percent joblessness in the United States.
While I’m sure there’s something to this, note that the person quoted is the local representative of the Mexican government, who has an interest in portraying his country as positively as possible. Buried in the story, and not highlighted in the headline or the lede, is this comment from someone a whole lot more likely to know what ordinary illegal aliens are actually thinking:
Some aren’t sticking around for the upcoming tomato harvest, said Sylvina Frausto, secretary of Holy Rosary Church in Woodland. “Some have a small parcel in Mexico. They own their own home there, so instead of renting here they go back to their small business there.”
Many raise animals, run grocery stores or sell fruits and goods on street corners.
“They’re going back home because they can’t get medical help or government assistance anymore,” Frausto said, “And when it’s getting so difficult for them to find a job without proper documentation, it’s pushing them away.”
“Pushing them away” — that’s what attrition through enforcement is all about.