Immigrants and NC

Today’s Charlotte Observer has the first of three installments on the trek of illegal immigrants to Carolinas. This first part mostly highlights stories of Mexican immigrants and the routes they are taking. I think it’s a useful thing to read, though I found it curious that the paper labels it as a “rare glimpse” at illegal immigration. Maybe it reflects some naivete, since reporters here know very little about the phenomenon in general, and so feel like these first analyses are the first being done, when in fact there are more descriptions than can be counted (for a great recent one, read Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway). There have also been many studies about how immigration reform, especially in the mid-1990s (with names like Operation Gatekeeper) pushed migrants eastward to more dangerous areas to cross. So none of this stuff is really new.

But it’s a good piece nonetheless, if only to provide North Carolinians with a more holistic view of the issue, rather than the mostly uninformed declarations we’re too often getting. I’ll be interested to see how the rest of the series goes.