Less a border all the time

ARTICLE: Money Trickles North as Mexicans Help Relatives, By MARC LACEY, New York Times, November 15, 2009

Interesting phenomenon:

Unemployment has hit migrant communities in the United States so hard that a startling new phenomenon has been detected: instead of receiving remittances from relatives in the richest country on earth, some down-and-out Mexican families are scraping together what they can to support their unemployed loved ones in the United States.

Another sign of the growing irrelevance of the border between the U.S. and Mexico. It is becoming our Durand Line.

(Thanks: Kenneth Nalaboff)

Comments

[Hugh]

I don't recall you referring to the US - Mexican border as irrelevant. But no kidding, you are more right than you may realize. My friends in Mexico are very offended by the whole fence thing, so am I. Why we try to isolate ourselves from very good people is beyond me.

[Tom Barnett]

Guess I sort of just bumped into that statement.

[Petrer]

I see integration maybe 30-40 years in the future, maybe 20 years for the northern states. There is simply too much corruption, and poverty, and nationalism in Mexico. Too many of these Mexicans are incredible, with their "poor migrants" (They DO benefit by dumping their poor- with the larger welfare state- here and getting the remittances at the same time treating central Americans going through Mexico like crap.They make Texans look like Swedes, always worrying about not looking "compassionate."