Younger, more educated migrants follow dreams, leaving voids at home

By ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News

ARANDAS, Mexico – Sandra Zavala Escamilla is 14 and has dreams that are ambitious for a resident of this poor community in central Mexico. She'd like to work in Dallas as a dishwasher or hotel maid.

"When the boys come home every year, they drive new trucks and show off their wads of dollars," said Sandra, whose uncle and cousins work in Dallas. "And I ask myself, 'Why not me?' "

For decades, Mexican migration has mainly meant men heading north and women staying behind. Across the country, many communities would be virtual ghost towns if not for the remaining women and girls.

But a Pew Hispanic Center survey suggests a significant rise in the number of women leaving Mexico to work in the U.S. And while many women used to leave Mexico to reunite with their husbands or seek temporary work, the new female migrants are leaving on their own and are younger, more educated and staying away longer than the men.

"Mexican migration is feminizing," Katherine M. Donato, a sociologist at Rice University in Houston, said during a recent migration conference sponsored by CONAPO, Mexico's population and census center.

And some say the trend could have serious consequences for Mexico, including further disintegration of the nuclear family.

"This is a tremendous social problem for Mexico, and it is one that has not been under focus," said Agustín Gutiérrez Canet, a spokesman in the office of President Vicente Fox and a former professor of migration at Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. "Many kids were raised without a father figure. Now there's this new trend."

Arandas, in an area of Jalisco state known as Los Altos (the highlands), shares in a national trend in which a growing number of teenage girls like Sandra are either planning their exodus or have already taken the dangerous journey north, lured by the promise of higher wages, opportunities and independence.

Trend spreading

The trend also is visible in states such as Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas, known over the years for sending large numbers of citizens to the U.S.

About 40 percent of Mexico's migrants to the U.S. are now female, the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center found in a survey conducted with the help of the Mexican government. A decade ago, about 22 percent were female, according to a study by the University of Guadalajara.

Last year, 319 Mexicans died trying to cross the border. Precise figures aren't available, but many were female, according to Mexico's Foreign Ministry.

Many, including officials at CONAPO and the Foreign Ministry, consider the Pew survey the most comprehensive recent profile of Mexicans living abroad.

Released last month, the survey was of almost 5,000 Mexican immigrants in the U.S., interviewed at Mexican consulates in Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Fresno, Calif., and Raleigh, N.C.

The survey also showed that Mexicans tend to be employed in construction and the booming hospitality industry. The latter has become a big source of employment for women, and those available jobs are helping draw more female Mexican migrants, said Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center.

The women are better educated than most Mexican males who migrate but are poorly educated by American standards, Mr. Suro said.

"We're talking about an entirely different migration phenomenon here," he said, "one that is a real loss for Mexico," socially and economically.

Workforce affected

Foreign Ministry officials said they have no statistics about the migration pattern, noting that it is a trend they're just beginning to witness.

Some business operators in Arandas already complain about a shortage of workers, which they say has been exacerbated by the departure of more women.

"You could always depend on women here," said Imelda Hernández, 25, manager of a dress shop. "Not anymore. I've lost two to the United States this year."

Analysts say women generally have been strong defenders of tradition and family and have been at the center of economic life in communities. They have been the ones who milk cows, pump gasoline and run local businesses, often with the help of remittances sent by loved ones abroad. Last year, Mexicans overseas sent an estimated $16.6 billion home.

Germán Vega is an immigration expert at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Baja California whose continuing fieldwork in Los Altos confirms the growing exodus of women.

"The women form the nucleus, the backbone of these immigrant communities," he said. "Without them, we're talking about a breakdown of society, of communities."

Mr. Gutiérrez Canet said the rise in female emigration reflects the introduction of tougher migration measures along the U.S.-Mexico border, noting that it is much harder now for Mexican workers to come and go.

"There used to be a circularity," he said. "The men used to go get the money and come back. Now the cost of migrating is higher and it is more complicated. So now people, men and women, go and they don't come back."

Women interviewed in Arandas, Guadalajara and Dallas say they regard immigration as an opportunity to gain independence and put food on the table.

In 1998, Nora – she asked that only her first name be used – left her husband, two children and a university education in Monterrey. She journeyed to Dallas, where she has cleaned homes, sold tacos and worked as a telephone marketer.

The aspiring teacher says she's never regretted her decision. And she became a magnet for others, including her 18-year-old daughter, Ana, who arrived two years ago. Ana has helped pay for the two-bedroom apartment she and her mother share by working various jobs, including cleaning homes. She's now a secretary.

Emigrating to Dallas, said Nora, 43, has been "the best decision I've taken in my life... At first, I was little embarrassed, but then I realized that it was honest work and well-paid."

Looking northward

Lupita Rodríguez, 32, lives in Guadalajara, a single mother with four children. Last year, to help make ends meet, she took a job as an attendant at a Pemex filling station outside Guadalajara. She earns 1,200 pesos weekly, about $110, in wages and tips.

But she's eyeing a trip across the international border.

"I've been calculating that I can probably bring in about $50 to $60 a day cleaning homes in Southern California or Chicago," said Ms. Rodríguez, who said she is about $600 short of the money she needs to pay someone to smuggle her across the border.

She plans to head north in the summer, leaving her children behind with her mother. "Mexico has jobs, but it doesn't have wages to make ends meet," she said.

Meanwhile, marriage, once the cornerstone of a young woman's life, doesn't necessarily have the same appeal.

Sandra Zavala and her friend, 16-year-old Liliana Aguirre, said they have seen the marriages of their friends and neighbors suffer because emigration keeps the couples separated for most of the year, if not longer.

Besides, said Liliana, "Even if you do want to get married, there aren't many boys to choose from. In fact there isn't much of anything here. It's eerily quiet, way too quiet for me."

Staff writer Lennox Samuels in Mexico and Al Día staff writer Patricia Estrada in Dallas contributed to this report.

E-mail acorchado@dallasnews.com