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| 183 Conclusion Predicting the future of border crossing is risky business, but demographics and history seem to point to several trends. In the southbound direction, as the U.S. Anglo population grows older,1 and as the U.S. economy swings wildly as it has in the last decade, no doubt U.S. retirees will continue to flock to the border seeking a cheaper retirement on the warm shores of some Mexican beach.2 The escalating drug war in Mexico may imperil this migration, but if violence crosses the border north, economics may nonetheless hold sway in the choice of locale for retirement. Moreover, regardless of location, the preference of U.S. retirees for the sterility and security of gateguarded communities will mute any war outside the walls. Heading in the other direction, immigrant labor pipelines to the United States arguably may slow considerably, even in the face of rising U.S. labor demand. Supporting this prediction is the decline of the Mexican birthrate— from 6.1 children per Mexican woman in 1974 to just 2.3 children on average by 2009.3 U.S. labor relies on the youngest members of the Mexican labor force, luring workers in their youth into stressful, dangerous labor that the participants likely cannot endure for more than a few years. As the Mexican population itself begins to age, some observers predict that the labor pool will shrink. Still, should a U.S. labor shortage ensue, younger Mexican workers may prove vulnerable to depart from Mexico for the enhanced salaries that a shortage presumably would spur. Others point to the longstanding history and culture of Mexican immigration into the Southwest and the rest of the United States and suggest there will always be occasion for considerable Mexican migration, even if it consists of older Mexicans joining relatives in the United States for retirement. Some researchers also have forecast mass migration from Mexico prompted by global warming that devastates crop yields and further weakens Mexico’s reeling agricultural industry.4 Myself, I envision a future with the possibility of signs at the U.S.-Mexico border quite different from the 1990s highway billboard an anti-immigrant group erected inside the California border near the Arizona state line that 184 | Conclusion warned: “Welcome to California—The Illegal Immigration State. Don’t Let This Happen to Your State!” Rather, a couple of decades from now the billboard, placed just inside the Mexican border in border towns such as Tijuana, might read: “Empleadores estadounidenses le ruegan que se una a sus compatriotas que han encontrado nuevas opportunidades y un brillante porvenir en los Estados Unidos. Para más información llame al 1-800-SI VENGA.” (United States employers urge you to join your fellow countrymen and women who have found new opportunity and bright futures in the United States. Call 1-800-Come Now for further information.) Elsewhere I predicted a continuation of the gradual blending over time of U.S. and Mexican cultures—language, music, food, history, architecture, and more.5 Our economies and futures, too, are increasingly tied together. About 80 percent of Mexican exports head to the United States, and U.S. employers depend on Mexican labor as they have for at least the last century. Tourist destinations in both countries rely on border-crossing visitors, with the reciprocity of the United States as the primary destination for Mexican tourists and Mexico as the country most visited by U.S. residents.6 As friendly neighbors, cultural blending and economic interdependence will promote cross-border travel to the point that the international line between the two countries may eventually fade to something akin to a state boundary. U.S. retirees might escape to the sunny beaches of Mexico as they often do now to landlocked Arizona. Mexican immigrants will migrate as needed for job opportunities. Mexican-grown marijuana might come north through lawful distributors as Corona beer does now. Differences in law will fade some with the intermingling of people and cultures. Perhaps, eventually, the border will become less of the open wound that Gloria Anzaldúa wrote of where “the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.”7 Rather than a horizontal gnashing, the border might become a cultural waterway, navigable with ease as local economies, cultures, and priorities dictate. As they ignore state lines within their own countries, U.S. and Mexican residents will continue crossing the U.S-Mexico border as they have for decades in the pursuit of vice and...

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