Burning Atlanta

MY ASS. Yeah, some might but think about this: You and your family live in some shithole. You sneak into this country, find a job at 8 or 10 dollars an hour, which is 8 or 10 times more than you made in your shithole country. Here, there are nice paved streets, street lights, hospitals, schools, good police and fire departments, etc.. Would you want to go back? More likely you'd want your family to join you, here.

Pay attention to this story. Yes, there are those that come here, work, send money home, build a house and business there, then return. But in this story it tells of uncompleted homes because the illegals changed their minds and decided to stay. Also, this typlifies a kind of chain migration. One gets established here and sends for everybody. "Hey, man. I've got an apartment and can get you a job, so get here ASAP."

Go home.

From the sidewalk outside his small liquor shop, Edmundo Cruz takes in the vast emptiness, pointing out one house after another left vacant when families headed north — to Seattle.

It is said more Loretito people now live in the Seattle area than currently live here.

Loretito, a town of a few hundred, is like many across Mexico, where large numbers of men — and increasingly women — journey to the border and slip illegally into the U.S. in search of work.

What they leave behind is a town of small children, a few women and older people.

"There are whole towns like these all across Mexico where kids haven't seen their parents in four, five years," said the Rev. Walter Coleman, pastor of a Chicago church and a pro-immigrant activist who's visited some of these towns.

"They are totally dependent economies, waiting for money to come from the states to finish the next wall for the new room."

Towns like these are fertile ground for smugglers — so-called coyotes who come recruiting for the journey north. For $3,000, they usually take people from here to the U.S. via the Arizona town of Nogales.

Some settle in Phoenix. Others go on to Colorado. And many end up in places like Federal Way, Tukwila and Kent, where uncles and cousins are already settled and ready to help them get work.

Hernandez, 32, was deported from Seattle last summer and occasionally visits his grandparents here. But he finds the town, where he spent many happy childhood days, sad and depressing.

The portrait shows his grandparents, his own mother and 10 aunts and uncles — all but one currently living in the Seattle area.

"They all left when they were teens," he explained, "now they all have children there."