Some say controls on border keep Mexican workers stuck in U.S.

By ALFREDO CORCHADO / The Dallas Morning News

ROSARIO DE COVARRUBIAS, Mexico – In this village surrounded by strawberry fields, locals may have the answer to a question that has puzzled U.S.
immigration authorities.

From October through January, the Immigration and Naturalization Service made 181,497 arrests, the fewest for a four-month period in at least 17 years.

It's a 45 percent decrease, from the same period last year, leaving immigration experts and the INS pondering why fewer people are crossing over.

Is it due to increased enforcement along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border after September's terrorist attacks?

Or is the drop a result of what Washington policy wonks call the "Fox effect?" They theorize that Mexican President Vicente Fox's determination to root out
corruption and create job opportunities may be influencing more Mexicans to stay home.

Here in this close-knit community of about 70 families, residents have their own explanation. Last Christmas, only people legally working in the United States came
home for the holidays. Those who work illegally in the United States haven't returned in years, and anxious family members aren't sure when they'll see them again.

"People aren't staying away from the United States," said Fernando Galván, who works as a temporary guest worker in Pittsburgh. "They're staying away from
Mexico."

The explanation offered by Mr. Galván tracks with Mr. Fox's view, Mexican officials say.

The Mexican leader is expected to reiterate his position when he meets with President Bush in Monterrey this week to discuss a host of bilateral issues, highlighted by
migration.

U.S. border policy, the Mexican government argues, is having the opposite effect of its intended goal. Rather than locking immigrants out of the United States, it is
keeping them stuck in their new U.S. communities, unable to visit home.

Mr. Galván, for example, says his relatives and friends have been deterred from returning because the trip back to the United States is costly – smugglers demand up
to $2,500 – and dangerous. More than 1,600 people have died crossing the border since 1997.

INS officials have said they started seeing declines in arrests shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. They also point to the suddenly tightened job market.

But daily polls conducted by Mexico's census agency, CONAPO, found that only 10 percent of those who were returning to Mexico said they were frightened by
the terrorist attacks, or were thinking twice about returning to the United States to work illegally.

Mexico's chief demographer, Rodolfo Tuirán, said he's not surprised that U.S. immigration officials and other proponents of tighter immigration believe that the
border enforcement strategy is working.

"The optimists would lead us to believe that enforcement and more job opportunities at home are keeping them out," said Mr. Tuirán. "This is what I call the perverse
effect. Maybe it had some effect, minimal at best. But overall, there is simply no pattern of circularity."

University of Pennsylvania sociologist Douglas Massey has interviewed hundreds of migrants and concluded that apprehension rates are down because fewer
border-crossers are going back and forth. "You don't discourage them from coming," Mr. Massey said "You discourage them from going home."

The consequences are visible across Mexico's dying heartland.

A tour of Covarrubias in central Mexico reveals who's coming home and who isn't. For instance, the homes of Mr. Galván's cousins, all working illegally in the United
States, appear abandoned. The houses badly need paint, and weeds bloom wildly in the yards.

The rundown church's renovation project is on hold until its parishioners return. Weddings have been postponed, as have the baptisms for children who haven't seen
their fathers in years, if at all. Mothers and wives peek through the doors when trucks rumble by, hoping for reunions.

Rosa Galván, Fernando's cousin, hopes the next phone call she receives will be from her husband. But he's been gone for more than six years, and she knows it's
possible that he either has a family in California or has disappeared like so many other men who never return.

"What's so sad here is that women like me get married only to separate, or to divorce," said Ms. Galván.

Two months after she married, her husband headed north to seek a better future for the children they had planned. "They leave us with so many dreams," she said.

The story is much different for those who get temporary legal jobs in the United States or Canada.

Vicente Galván and his four sons – Fernando, Vicente, José and Pablo – are the envy of the town. Since 1987, Mr. Galván has been working as a guest worker in
Canada with the same employer.

For six months, he lives legally in Canada, after arriving by plane. When winter weather blows in, Mr. Galván returns home.

When his sons began hinting that they, too, wanted to head north for work, Mr. Galván laid down a rule: They would do so only through a guest worker program –
"too much danger, too many deaths along the border," he explained.

It takes time to land coveted guest worker program jobs. The U.S. government allows in an estimated 66,000 people per year.

But two years ago, Fernando Galván, 22, signed up to work for a Pittsburgh-based landscaping company. He prunes trees and mows lawns for eight months, then
returns to Mexico. His younger brothers soon followed.

Annually, the brothers work abroad, while their wives, mother and sister await their return, taking care of their small farm.

By Christmas, the entire family gathers for the holidays. They work on their home with the money they save. They also toil in the strawberry fields, earning up to $7 a
day, a drop in the bucket compared to the $80 to $90 they earn daily in the United States.

And unlike some of the other homes in the neighborhood, the Galván house, sitting on an acre, is surrounded by barking dogs, mooing cows and cackling chickens.

Then there are the cries of the newest family member, 4-month-old Leonardo, who arrived one month before his father, Fernando, returned from Pittsburgh.

Holding her baby, Fernando's wife, María Guadalupe Vásquez Jaramillo de Galván, 23, said she didn't mind her husband's absence.

"At least he comes home every year," she said, adding that she hasn't seen her two brothers and sister in nearly three years.

"At least we can build as normal of a life together as possible."

KHOU-TV Mexico City bureaucChief Angela Kocherga contributed to this report.