Last night I went with a couple of friends to see the movie Norteado which is about a guy in Tijuana, Mexico as he tries several times to cross the border into the US. (REALLY good movie by the way, I definitely recommend it.)

Andres tries to cross several times but is always found by border patrol (whose office is set up with a huge pictures of George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger) and sent back to Mexico. During this time, he works in Tijuana at a fruteria run by two women whose husbands "crossed" and then were never heard from again. At the end of the movie, Andres and his friends finally get the idea to build him into a big armchair and someone drives him across the border in a truck.

For me, the movie was really powerful because it deals with such a touchy topic between Mexico and the US. I don't pretend to know much (if anything) about the politics of immigration, but it really saddens me to think that we as humans can treat one another in such an inhumane way.

After the movie, Julieta (a friend from Argentina) asked me why everyone wanted to go to the US if immigrants are treated as badly as they sometimes are. I gave her the normal answers of job opportunities, education, etc., but it sounded really shallow, even to me. Why do people want to move to the US? I'm not too sure...

Armando, a Mexican who also went with us to see the movie, said that it didn't really shock him as much as it did us because in the news there are always reports of immigrants who were sent back across the border, some mistreated. Once again, I was shocked that this is some people's reality: constantly hoping for a "better" life and repeatedly being thwarted in their search for the "American Dream."

Again, I don't know exactly how I feel about all of this, but I wish it wasn't such a harsh reality.