The Border Patrol reported 320 migrants died from Oct. 1, 2001 to Sept. 30, last year, and 340 in the fiscal year ending last month. From Oct. 1, 2000 to Sept. 30, 2001, it counted 336 deaths.
The Mexican government counted 371 for the last calendar year, and another 371 so far this year.
Those numbers are higher because they include deaths that occur farther from the border, such as the 19 migrants found in a locked truck in Victoria, Texas, this year, or the 11 found dead in a rail car in Iowa last year. But they don't include non-Mexicans who die making the trip.
While the Border Patrol says the fewer apprehensions indicate slowing migration, the number of illegal migrants in the US doesn't appear to be dropping.
Victor Clark, a Tijuana anthropologist who studies migration, said that if illegal migrants weren't getting in, there would be a severe labor shortage in farms along the US West Coast, where Mexican migrants make up much of the labor force. There isn't.
In fact, some figures indicate the number of illegal immigrants may be rising. The money Mexicans send home from the US, often used as an indicator of Mexican migration to the north, reached a record US$12 billion this year, compared with US$10 billion last year.
And across the border, migrants say as long as the job markets in the two countries remain unequal, the flow of people will continue no matter how hard anyone tries to stop it.
``It's all about the money,'' said Zenon Hernandez, 35, jealously watching a pigeon fly across the fence separating Tijuana, Mexico, from San Ysidro, California ``We have to keep fighting to get across, however many times it takes.''
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