It is hard to find a family in Mexico that doesn't have relatives in the US.
Even Mexican President Felipe Calderon says he has distant cousins, uncles and in-laws scattered in Chicago, Los Angeles and other US cities, many of them living "a salto de mata," a Mexican phrase that translates roughly as "on the run."
In other words, Calderon acknowledged that his own relatives may be violating US immigration laws.
But Calderon also maintained he doesn't know their legal status -- and that's plausible because the Calderon clan has lost touch with its migrant relatives, family mem-bers interviewed by the Associated Press said.
And that illustrates another trend: As the immigration boom enters its third decade, many Mexicans have committed themselves to one side of the border or the other, weakening family ties, often forever.
Like the crumbling rows of low stone walls that mark abandoned family farm plots in this village where generations of Calderons once lived, the passage of time has disrupted once close-knit families.
When a reporter confronted Calderon about his relatives during a news conference in Mexico with US President George W. Bush, he refused to share what little information he had about his family, saying he wanted to avoid drawing unwanted attention to them.
"It was an insult to the American people," said Stephen Eichler, executive director of the Minuteman Project, a citizens' group that monitors immigration.
He said Calderon's response showed the US can't enforce its laws.
Calderon's aides told the AP they don't know the names of the president's relatives in the US. And Calderon family members in Mexico who agreed to be interviewed for this story -- one in his mother's hometown of Puruandiro, the other in his father's town of Morelia -- said they didn't know of any relatives in the US at all.
A third cousin on Calderon's father's side, Jose Calderon Zendejas, who lives in Monterey Park, California, provided details that match the Calderon family tree -- the grandfather's birthplace and the school the president attended. But the president's close relatives in Mexico don't recall Calderon Zendejas, who crossed illegally in 1985 and is now in the process of becoming a US citizen.
About 1.2 million Mexicans -- including many who live in the US illegally -- return to Mexico for the holidays, despite increased border security. But the visitors say ties to their extended families are weakening.
"Life is up there. The job is up there. The opportunities are up there," said Adrian Alvarado, 29, a bakery employee who has lived in Omaha, Nebraska, for 11 years.
He brought his sons to Puruandiro, in western Michoacan state, but said he has no plans to return permanently.
"We won't come back until they start paying the same here as they do there," he said.
Even as Alvarado enjoyed a stroll around Puruandiro's main square, his grade-school sons spent their time speaking English, appearing bored and uncomfortable.
While Mexicans have long emigrated to the US, there was a notable boom in the mid-1970s, as the US agricultural industry increasingly recruited Mexicans.
A 1986 amnesty encouraged many more other immigrants to bring in relatives, and the US immigrant population boomed from 10 million in 1970 to more than 28 million today, the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates tighter immigration controls, said.
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