Mexican migrants, coping with U.S. border security crackdowns and economic needs, are less likely to return home for Christmas, fearing they will be denied reentry.

BY JUSTIN PRITCHARD
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - An increasing number of migrant workers and other illegal immigrants from Mexico who used to go home for the holidays are spending Christmas in the United States, largely because of tighter security along the border.

Many of them could cross into Mexico easily enough if they wanted to. But they are afraid they would not be able to get back into the United States.

It is a sea change in the once-predictable flow of migrant workers and other mostly unskilled, seasonal laborers.

The effect is clear in Northern California's Napa Valley, where farmhands once packed for Mexico after harvesting prized wine grapes. The vines are now bare, but many workers are still hanging around, looking for odd jobs and finding refuge at the Rev. John Brenkle's St. Helena Roman Catholic Church.

''It's supposed to keep people out,'' Brenkle said of the more muscular border security, ``but it's locking people in, no question about it.''

In Northern California, it was once hard to find Mexican workers in December. Now, sign-up lists for odd jobs are twice as long as usual. This year, for the first time, the church let eight men take shelter in a donated trailer.

BEFORE 9/11

Experts say the phenomenon was taking shape before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks prompted a heavy crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The tighter security has led illegal immigrants to try to sneak into the United States at more remote points along the border, making the crossing more difficult, more expensive and more dangerous, as they are easier prey for bandits and the elements.

Deaths among Mexicans illegally crossing into the United States are three to four times higher than they were when the crackdown accelerated six years ago. The death toll for 2003 stood at 392 as of the end of October, according to Mexican consulates.

Those who stay in the States will be missing a lot of excitement at home. In heavily Roman Catholic Mexico, towns that are all but abandoned during the American growing and construction seasons come to life during Christmas as workers return from America with gifts and money.

The U.S. government budgeted $9 billion for border protection in the current fiscal year, up $400 million from last year.

The number of Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexican line rose from 8,500 in 2000 to at least 9,500 today.

In the year leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, illegal migrant workers stayed just under a year on average, according to a survey by a Mexican think tank. The most recent figures, from 2002, show the average stay surpassed 70 weeks -- the longest since the Tijuana-based Colegio de la Frontera Norte began keeping track in 1993.

The reasons for the shift go beyond the border crackdown, according to American and Mexican researchers.

Among them: a wobbly U.S. economy means Mexican workers might be staying longer to reach their savings target; the deterioration of subsistence farming in rural Mexico weakens the pull home; Mexican workers have fanned out to states thousands of miles from the Southwest border, making a trip home a more arduous journey; and Mexicans now work in factories and construction, jobs that are less tied to the seasons.

WRONG MOVE

In the Mexican border town of Agua Prieta, Miguel Garcia Romero sat in a park and wished he could return to the sheepherding job in Ogden, Utah, that paid him $900 a month.

He went home to see his family in Mexico and then tried for two weeks to cross back into the United States, only to get caught by the Border Patrol.

Garcia, 43, said that if he could make it back to Utah he would stay as long as he could and send money back every month to his wife and three children in Chihuahua.