Who’s Trying to Cross Our Southern Border? Everyone

“Last month, when President Bush was promoting what he called a “comprehensive strategy” on border security to prevent “people from coming here in the first place,” few Americans had any doubt to whom the president was referring: undocumented Mexicans. Ignored in the rhetoric, as well as in U.S. policy, is a far more complex reality — that the southern border is no longer just a border with Mexico. It is a global frontier that has become a conduit for illegal immigrants from all over the world.

A snapshot of this reality was provided to me during a recent trip to Mexico when officers from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a group committed to managing the global migration crisis, showed me a classified official list of undocumented migrants held in Mexico City’s migrant detention center during one day last April. On that day the estacin migratoria housed some 630 people from nearly 60 countries — about a third of the nations in the world — most of whom had hoped to use Mexico as a gateway to the United States….”

Please note some (many) sites require registration. Many times it is free.

• Ricardo Salinas Breaks Ground for What Will Be the Most Modern Television Studio in Latin America – Mexico City
• Brazil replaces Mexico as China’s top market in Latin America and boosts its surplus as well.
• The mayor of a wealthy suburb (San Pedro Garza Garcia) of Monterrey said Monday that he has sent his family to the United States for their own safety as he pursues his campaign against extortion and kidnapping gangs.
• Expert: Juárez violence a ‘terrorist war’
• Mexican Mennonites Impacted by Drug Violence
• Mexican farmers reeling from worst drought in decades
• Mexico City’s famed dance-for-peso halls fading
• Americans Running South: Why We are Flocking to Mexico for Work
• On the mayor’s agenda: ‘Civilize’ Mexico City – Marcelo Ebrard
• Juárez violence: Drug-war brutality persists despite presence of military
• Mexican doctors pointed to parents as the reason Mexico leads the world in child obesity, a problem made worse in this country by the lack of sports training.
• Mexico’s top domestic security official said Friday that sectors of the general public have cooperated with drug cartels in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez, and the government is about to launch new social programs there to combat gangs.
• Susana Iglesias, writing from the streets – Mexico City native is winner of the first-ever Aura Estrada Prize, an international competition for young women writing literature in Spanish.
• Mexican authorities predict fewer Mexican immigrants will be back home for Christmas
• Mapping Out Mexico – Navigating your way through Mexico can be tricky business sometimes – MexicoMaps.com
• Mexico City Noir and the Six Word Story
• Mexican migrants are spending more money on taxes in the United States than on the remittances they send home to relatives, according to a new study by Mexico’s largest bank, BBVA Bancomer.
• Ana Maria Perez Gonzalez, said to be the oldest woman in the world, died in Mexico this week. She was 119.
• Welcome Ceremony for José Hernández Moreno, NASA Astronaut in México
• Mexico’s Drug Violence Gives Rise To Vigilantism