Here, people live on each side, without feeling especially divided. Here the contrast between poor and rich is omnipresent but on the same time seen as normal. The desert is just as dry, the horizon just as long, the weather just as unreliable no matter where one stands. Here, daily life takes on a quality that is different from the life in either country the region is said to divide.

There are people on the U.S. side who speak no English, read no U.S. newspapers, watch no U.S. television. On the Mexican side, consumer tastes and social trends reflect those of the land to the north.

The U.S.-Mexico border is a region where the social dynamics of integration are clearly evident. The border provides a prime opportunity to examine the benefits and problems associated with the current project of social and economic restructuring.

For all of its specials and mysteries, the border region could become the

On the other side, important sectors of the Mexican-born population in the United States resist emotional and cultural isolation by consuming cultural products made in the U.S. Mexicans in the United States are also culturally strengthened by further immigration of Mexicans to that country and by relationships formed with populations on the border . In these cultural interactions, as in the consumption of Mexican cultural products , and in the immigrants' implication in social and political processes in Mexico or in transnational processes such as undocumented migration, relationships between the Mexican and the Chicano populations in the United States are shaped by what happens south of the border .

? Cross-Border Links: Where the Action Is

http://www.irc-online.org/bordline/1992/bl1-main.html

With the onset of World War II, demand for migrant labors strengthened, and the flow of Mexican labor across the border increased. Mexico declared war on the German nation on May 22, 1942. The following August, the U.S. and Mexican governments set forth conditions under which Mexican labor might be recruited for wartime employment, beginning the bracero program. The number of Mexican farm workers in the program soared from 4,203 in 1942 to 120,000 in 1945, with most workers returning to Mexico at the end of each season. While the initial "war-time" farm-labor importation program ended on December 3, 1947, the bracero program continued until 1964.

After the war, these same attitudes were directed against Mexicans who had lived in the Southwest for generations. Homeless in their homeland, they went to Mexico or to states like Louisiana, where cultural diversity was accepted. Some Mexicans remained in the Southwest, however, becoming citizens of the United States or its territories; and they were joined by others who migrated northward in the wake of revolution, famine, or other catastrophes that beset Mexico in successive decades.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Mexico Louisiana, Diego Blocking, Rio Grande, Nuevo Laredo, Catholicism Anglo-Saxon-Protestants, Mexicans Mexicanos, Brownsville-Matamoros Illustrat1, Industrialization Program, Naturalization Service, Mexican Chicano, border region, northern mexico, rio grande, mexican government, el paso, immigration policy, cultural products, bracero program, percent due, mexican border, percent due immigration, northern frontier spain, due natural increase, maquila employment rose, people speak english,
Approximate Word count = 3920
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page double spaced)