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To: FITZ
Another aspect of this is that the Mexican rural workforce is almost nonexistent, because almost all of them have already crossed the border.

If I dropped you in any little Mexican town, especially in the states of Michoacán, Guerrero and Oaxaca, and you ask every family in town if they have relatives "al otro lado" (at the other side, which is the almost Eldoradesque name they give to the United States), most likely 90% of them will say "yes".

The money transfers are, as it has been explained, most of the livelyhood of rural Mexico, thus sparing the elitist Mexican government from taking care of its populace, since the "migrantes" have already done that.

But there's a flipside to this: Mexican workers coming from the same town form "civic organizations" in the United States that pool and send money to the municipal administration, so it can be spent in infrastructure projects (parks, sewage, schools, roads...), and this takes away from the Mexican Federal government. Mexican state governors would rather cater to their communities overseas than to the instaters.

But the Mexican government is no fool, and hasn't conceded the right to vote to its citizens abroad, because if the government did so, it'd be giving away the influence to the citizens abroad, which have both political and economic power (just try to stop money transfers to Mexico for one month, and see what happens...).

The Mexican government has awoken to the fact that 15 million Mexicans mainly in the United States are a formidable political player, but now they'll have to mess with an 800-pound gorilla.
54 posted on 10/04/2003 6:22:14 PM PDT by El Conservador ("No blood for oil!"... Then don't drive, you moron!!!)
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To: El Conservador
Half of the state of Zacatecas is in the USA. Instability is all that all this is doing ---- to both countries.
59 posted on 10/04/2003 7:01:51 PM PDT by FITZ
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