Stricter policing of the U.S. border -- begun in the 1990s and reinforced in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001 -- was supposed to stem the flood of illegal immigrants arriving in the U.S. Instead, in Stockton and other places, it is having an entirely different effect. Illegal immigrants are still willing to risk crossing the border between the U.S. and Mexico, arriving at a rate of about 400,000 a year, by some estimates. But as the number of border-patrol agents has doubled since 1995, the price of an illegal crossing has roughly tripled to about $1,500 for a three-day trek across the Arizona desert. As a result, many immigrants have cut out much of the back-and-forth travel and decided to stay put in the U.S. < -snip- > "The militarization of the border hasn't stopped the people from coming. It just drove up the cost and the risk," says Mr. Massey. "The response of migrants was to stop going home, and the result was a big growth of the Mexican population here."
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