E/CN.4/1503
Annex II page 40
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Many of those who leave are reportedly farmers who brought in little more than $ 500 a year working on an "ejido" and who know through the Hispanic information network that they can expect to earn $ 150 per week in the United States.
127. It has frequently been said that migration, like elec- tricity, needs two poles of attraction before a flow can exist. It has also been said that like water, migration flows will find their own level. Much of the current debate on immigration in the United States includes consideration of the "pull factor" and of the apparent acceleration in the flow across the southern border in recent years, despite an intensification of efforts to discourage clandestine border-crossers.
128. One "pull" factor is indubitably the existence of what have variously been termed "well-entrenched kinship networks", "Hispanic beacheads" and "well-organized ethnic constituencies". Indeed migration from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries of the American continent, which goes back several decades, very largely accounts for the presence in the United States of 14.6 million Spanish-speaking persons, (1980 Federal census figure). Federal estimates add at least 7.4 million undocumented aliens to the 1980 census, for a total of some 22 million. Of that number, about 15 million are believed to be of Mexican birth or extraction. Thus there are in most urban areas of the United States these groups responsible for the free flow of information back to the home country and for giving active help to newcomers in finding accommodation and employment.
129. Another "pull" factor is of course the prospect of earning a wage packet considered substantial by local standards, which the migrant, who has accepted the inconveniences of uprooting himself (which may include the payment of a considerable sum to be smuggled across the border) may expect will enable him to amass a certain capital sum before returning to an improved lifestyle at home. In practice, the cost-of-living differen- tial combined with the propensity of accompanying younger family members to assimilate may mean
assimilate may mean that he never returns home. Studies have shown that many employers in the United States actively seek to employ Mexicans, knowing not only that they are generally prepared to work long hours for low pay in jobs largely shunned by US citizens, but also that they do not air grievances, being loyal and anxious to please. In any case, the newcomers rarely
rarely know sufficient written English or Spanish to understand written contracts.
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