Download The Other Side of Immigration. A film by Roy Germano. (Winner

The Other Side of Immigration. A film by Roy Germano.
(Winner, 2009 Politics on Film Founders Award and Official Selection, 2009 Global Peace
Film Festival.)
“…does more than any other work to give people otherwise disparaged as ‘threatening’ and
‘illegal’ a human face…”—Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University.
The film consists of six parts. The Fantasy; The Rural Economy; The Politics; The Money;
The Families; The Way Forward.
Sample quotes/paraphrased statements from people in Mexico interviewed in this film,
many of them having worked in the U.S.
The Fantasy
People that come to the U.S. to work tell us how great opportunities are in the United
States, how easy it is to make money. They don’t say how hard life can be. It’s a fantasy but I
say it’s a necessary evil.
The Rural Economy
There used to be a thriving rural economy here. Now, after NAFTA. agriculture has mostly
collapsed, so many goods that we used to produce can be imported from the U.S. where
farmers have economies of scale and are subsidized by the government. So where could our
people go to make a living? Farmers in Mexico cannot recover their investments. We can no
longer compete in grains, pork production.
The Politics
Some government programs are supposedly designed to help diversify the rural economy,
but the government does not look out for farmers. Some are scared to invest, because they
fear they won’t recover their costs. Politicians don’t tell farmers of programs that exist.
They just tell their friends, bribe people for votes, then they claim that the funds were
distributed fairly. Politicians worry about themselves; we don’t take care of each other.
Every six years (Presidential elections) you forget that they screwed you. Protests are very
rare. We depend more on our brothers [working] in the U.S. than on the government. It’s a
vicious circle: the government relies on this (so it does not have to do anything).
The Money
Everything we have here [in rural or small-town Mexico] depends on money earned by
family members working in the U.S. Migrants in the U.S. deprive themselves by only
consuming only a small part of what they earn and sending the remainder to their families
in Mexico. Without money from the U.S. the rural economy in Mexico would totally collapse
or there would be a revolution.
People die crossing the desert [north of the U.S. border]. I almost didn’t make it on one trip.
One of the guys in my group carried me.
The Families
Those who stay in Mexico empathize so much with the struggles of their family members
who have migrated that they feel emotionally as if they themselves had migrated.
Families are divided when family members work in the United States. Often the men do not
return. Many of the women to whom they were married or engaged lose their youth. The
men often meet and marry women in the United States.
Kids grow up without their dads. Nobody is here to keep them in line or to introduce them
to paid labor. It used to be that kids spent the time from 10 years to 18 years of age with
their dads; they often worked together. --- Some kids thought their dads were working at a
factory in Mexico, when they were actually migrants in the U.S. Some kids barely remember
their dads and don’t recognize them when/if they return. Those who migrate go for years -up to ten years. They don’t return to visit as they would like. It is too risky making the
crossing back into the U.S.
Those who migrate would like to return to Mexico to see their families but it is so
expensive and so dangerous to migrate illegally that once there they stay often for ten
years. It would be OK to work in U.S. half a year and live in Mexico in the winter, but it now
costs $3000 to get into the U.S. and takes three months wages to pay that off.
The Way Forward
Twenty years after NAFTA, all our strategies [in Mexico] have failed. We need to develop
the rural economy. We need fair trade. The developing world has been forgotten. If we
invest in Mexico people won’t want to leave. The problem is global. We have to think on a
scale bigger than one country—the U.S. and Mexico in effect make up one economy. Spain’s
development came with the support of France and Germany, which provided Spain with
capital and technology [at reasonable rates?]. -- We cannot be individualistic and so
independent. Mexicans need to work together.