Archive for May 28th, 2010

From our friends at Inside Tucson Business:

The reality is that we Mexicans will still shop in Tucson
 
OPINION
Published on Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Editor’s note: While there’s been much publicity about boycotting Arizona to protest passage of the state’s anti-illegal immigration law, this commentary from the Sonora news website www.entretodos.com.mx offered a  perspective for its Mexican audience. It appeared in Spanish and is translated here.   

Don’t listen to me, be true to yourself. Are you sure you are going to participate in a boycott because of the “Arizona Law?”

I can’t see people from Sonora not going to the other side of the border to do their famous summer, winter or any kind of shopping. Print this storyEmail this storyPost a CommentShareThis
 
I can imagine a family gathered around the table, deciding whether to support the boycott or just go discreetly without letting their friends know so as not be subject of jokes and comments.

Their decision will be “let’s go early in the morning so nobody will see us.” The curious thing is that once you get there, you will find all of your friends from Mexico, and you’ll no longer need to justify the trip so as not be the subject of their jokes and comments.

In Arizona, merchants, hoteliers and restaurateurs are biting their nails being nervous of a boycott. They are doing their own efforts and offering deals upon deals.

That means the average 65,000 Mexicans who cross legally on a daily basis will continue. And the $7.3 million that we Mexicans spend are still being spent.

That is why a boycott of Arizona is not feasible.

Perhaps that’s the way the media sees it but that can be deceiving. In real life, things continue as usual.

What’s worse though, is the boycott has electoral “stains,” as in the case of Representatives of Congress using the media to try to convince people not to shop in Arizona. That is something really ridiculous, because who in their right mind is going to believe them, that they or their families will no longer go shopping?

It seems that few understand the real problem. It is not the people who occasionally are going shopping or vacationing in Arizona. The problem is people who live there and those who work there.

The problem will be seen in Nogales and other border cities that will become filled with unemployed people fleeing to avoid being held in jail.

I understand that those of us who go to Arizona occasionally will now have show our visa and that will be enough. And, of course we will have to be careful when we’re among friends and family who have no papers.

But something that I can be sure of is that we will not change our habits by what is happening.

Now that I’ve written these lines, I ask you again. Will you stop going to Tucson?

This commentary appeared as a column called El Serrucho (The Saw) on www.entretodos.com.mx in Sonora. Author Victor Mendoza is a TV commentator in Hermosillo who has also written columns in the city’s daily newspaper El Imparcial.