Making the Great Escape

Mexico's economic crisis is not just a matter of concern for big-city bankers. It has also hit Maria Luisa de Lopez, the mother of seven children, who has illegally crossed the Rio Grande in search of a day's work as a maid in El Paso. Said she: "Potatoes, beans and chili peppers--that's all we can afford to eat. There's no meat, eggs or milk for us. I'm giving my children only one meal a day."

Mrs. de Lopez is one of a record number of illegal immigrants pouring daily across the 2,000-mile-long U.S.-Mexican border in search of new jobs and new lives. Before the recent economic troubles began, there was a steady stream of aliens entering the U.S. from Mexico. Now this stream has become a flood that is deeply disturbing U.S. labor leaders, who fear that the new arrivals will accept low wages and take jobs from American workers at a time of high unemployment. More than half a million Mexicans made the crossing in 1981, and border police expect a much greater influx this year. Says William Chambers, director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Dallas: "Mexicans are now in a situation where they can hardly exist. They are desperately trying to make a living."

U.S. Border Patrol agents caught more than 34,000 illegal aliens trying to enter Texas last month, or about 23% more than a year outside. Last week agents armed with infrared scopes that can spot movements in the dark apprehended nearly 1,200 Mexicans near San Diego in one day alone.

Women, children and grandparents are caught regularly, but most of the immigrants are young men of working age. Jack Richardson, chief patrol agent of the Del Rio, Texas, sector on the border, recently polled 364 arrested aliens and found that 67% were under 26.

Droughts at this time of year have dried the Rio Grande to a trickle at many points and turned the riverbed into a soggy avenue of escape. Illegal aliens, who are disparagingly called wetbacks because they have to swim across the river, can now cross at El Paso by wading through knee-deep water. Once on the other side, they dash into town and quickly melt into the general population. In other places the immigrants must still swim, row boats or paddle across the river in rubber inner tubes. Their greatest worry is always the border agents patrolling in vans, helicopters and light aircraft.

A breed of entrepreneurs has sprung up along the river to make the crossings easier. At El Paso, Manuel Banuelos Rubio carries people over the border on his back for a few pesos a ride. He has found that some people try three or four times before they eventually outwit agents. Mexicans who are arrested in the U.S. are given the choice of either returning home or facing trial. Almost all choose to go back and then simply cross again and again, until they finally make it.

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