“Tony & Janina’s American Wedding” Trailer from Ruth Leitman on Vimeo.

The Exploring Amor and Exile Last Thursday Series, in partnership with Boise City Arts and History Dept. Artists in Residence Program at 8th Street Marketplace, will present Ruth Leitman’s award-winning immigration documentary Tony & Janina’s American Wedding this week.

Film Premier Details
What: Tony & Janina’s American Wedding
When: 7-9 p.m., Thursday June 30, 2011
Where: The Cole/Marr Photography Workshops, 8th Street Marketplace, Lower Level, 404 S. 8th St, Boise, Idaho
Suggested donations of $7 – $10 will benefit the filmmakers as they take the film across the country and fight to reunite Tony and Janina. Or support the film on its IndieGoGo page.

Tony & Janina’s American Wedding is a feature length documentary that gets to the heart of the broken, red-tape ridden U.S. immigration system. After 18 years in America, Tony and Janina Wasilewski’s family is torn apart when Janina is deported back to Poland, taking their six-year-old son Brian with her. Set on the backdrop of the Chicago political scene, and featuring Illinois Congressman Luis Gutierrez at the heart of the immigration reform movement, this film follows the Wasilewski’s three-year struggle to be reunited, as their Senator, Barack Obama, rises to the Presidency. With a fresh perspective on the immigration conversation, this film tells the untold, post-9/11 human rights story that every undocumented immigrant in America faces today, with the power to open the conversation for change.

Read an interview with Leitman and Tony Wasilewski at the Baltimore City Paper and a profile in the Chicago Tribune.

(Cross posted at Amor and Exile.)

So if books and films were the ultimate goal of the journalism, what were we to call the smaller works created along the way. The idea forced me to consider what the essential, elemental unit of journalism should be (besides facts), and I concluded that it is something that does not yet exist. So I gave it a name: the trope.

In the last week, since New York Times reporter Brian Stelter blogged about his experience tweeting the aftermath of the Joplin tornado, there has been a flurry of discussion surrounding the units of journalism. Jeff Jarvis posited that the “article” was merely a luxury (the time to read articles certainly is).

Articles are wonderful. But they are no longer necessary for every event. They were a necessary form for newspapers and news shows but not the free flow, the never-starting, never-ending stream of digital. Sometimes, a quick update is sufficient; other times a collection of videos can do the trick. Other times, articles are good. —Jarvis

This led to much semantic back and forth, summarized well at Nieman. But no one has answered the question as to what a post-article journalism will eventually look like.

Last week, at the Knight Digital Media Center, Amy Gahran posted a call for a lego approach to storytelling that contains some really good specs for programmers.

A good modular content management tool would make creating stories more like playing with Legos: journalists and editors could movie pieces around, add context and updates, and otherwise play with the content (perhaps in response to how people are using it), without disturbing the permalinks for each content piece and without having to rework all the navigation manually. — Gahran

The trope, as I thought of it a year ago, is a journalistic process that lives on the web, but challenges the boundaries of both the web browser and the screen. It almost has to be 3D. It’s the entire body of research and reporting that goes into a non-fiction book. It contains text, video, photos and audio and, most importantly it’s collaborative and interactive. I think of it as a mind map of the reporter, marked up by the audience. Also, it grows as the project grows; we played around with Google Wave a bit for this, but alas, that is gone.

So how do you display a constantly shifting cache of information like this?

I originally sketched it out like this:

Original sketch of the trope, the new basic unit of journalism. Starts with a tweet at the top and ends with a full, published book .

Now I am thinking the user interface might work a lot like an iPod Twitter app like Hootsuite or Seesmic works, where short posts and commentary on a single topic are linked to longer “articles” and eventually chapters and full books. I think of those apps starting with a tweet and then taking the reader deeper and deeper into the story with the swipe of a finger. I really don’t know how to describe this graphically at this point. It goes beyond Storify [my first attempt at using the site], which does allow a writer to assemble bits from all over the web into a timeline of sorts.

I also really like the idea proposed by Gerry Marzorati, a former New York Times Magazine editor, of cultivating a “hive” of long-form, nonfiction writers. This is what I envisioned for Retroper as well: a hive of reporters working on big stories and shepherding the efforts of citizen journalists, sources and readers as they work toward nailing the story.

You will have to at least start by building the brand around a handful of these writers, and then, how I would go about it, would be just: Surround, immerse each of these writers in social media tools. The writers would sort of be the hive, and the experience people would be coming for would be not only to read and encounter the writer, but also the community that this writer had created. —Marzorati, via Lois Beckett at Nieman

I’ve tried to do some this in a very small way with my own book, but frankly, it’s really hard to write a book and to do journalism without any institutional backing, and my blogging about the project took a backseat to research, writing and seeking an outlet for the finished project. So I still think a lab of sorts—complete with editors, designers and access to printing presses—for reporters working on books would be a worthy experiment. Perhaps when Amor and Exile is published I’ll take up the idea again, but I’d also be happy to have someone else do this and then hire me to write my second book. Any takers?

Ben "Chupacabras" Reed and Deyanira Escalona

Exploring Amor and Exile #1

Question: What would you do if your fiancée was detained at LAX and deported?

Come meet Idahoan Benjamin Reed and his wife, Deyanira Escalona, one of the couples featured in the upcoming book Amor and Exile, by 8th Street Artist in Residence Nathaniel Hoffman. The book is co-authored by Nicole Salgado, an American citizen living in Mexico.

Participate in a live Skype video interview with Ben and Deyanira from their new home on the Yucatán Peninsula. Bring a mobile device so that you can help Hoffman crowdsource the interview and share your reactions live, providing valuable input as the book is drafted.

Hear all about American love exiles, experience participatory journalism, have a hot beverage and overcome the national immigration stalemate all in one evening.

Find Amor and Exile @amorandexile on Twitter or, soon, on Facebook.

González had been talking to his family and apparently drinking on Sunday afternoon when he got up and left without a word. The next thing the family heard was a single gunshot, according to the news accounts.

The news comes via Burro Hall, a Querétaro-based blog.

I’m working on finding out more details about the case, but this is the first such deportation-related suicide I’ve read about, though I’m sure there are more instances. It’s another potent reminder that people’s lives are at stake in this immigration game. Real people’s lives.

U.S. Consulate waiting area in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

Two stories caught my attention this morning in the feed reader (I’m still catching up with my feeds after the Mexico trip).

Change.org has the story (and petition) of a couple caught unawares by the ten-year bar when he self-deported to Mexico a year ago with hopes of returning with a marriage visa in short order.

Miguel Moreno was not aware that he was subject to a ten-year ban from the United States based on his illegal presence here, and he is not alone. Many people assume that once they marry a citizen (like Moreno did) or permanent resident, it is a simple process to immigrate legally. It’s not. When I was in Mexico last month I visited two couples who are living in “exile” because they cannot right their partners’ statuses, one gentleman living apart from his American wife since he was deported two years ago and a man who spent three months away from home, in Mexico, and was recently granted an I-601 waiver from the Consulate in Juarez. He is now home near Minneapolis planning for the rest of his life.

Moreno has four kids to take care of in California and had a good job. Now he is in limbo in Mexico, unsure if or when he might return to his family.

The Change.org post cites some older stats for I-601 waivers—a hardship waiver that erases the three- and ten- year bars for some immigrants if their U.S. partner can prove extreme hardship.

USCIS says that between 2005 and 2008, the number of these waivers, called I-601 forms, submitted in Juarez rose by 570%. To help eliminate the backlog, the agency hired two additional adjudicators and enlisted additional offices to review applications. But as of 2009, USCIS reported that only half of the I-601 forms submitted in Juarez were approved within a few days. The rest required further review and took 12 to 15 months to process. For families like the Morenos, that wait has dire consequences.

I have some newer stats to add: According to USCIS public affairs officer Tim Counts, there were 22,000 I-601s filed in FY 2010, 75 percent of them filed in Ciudad Juarez (the largest U.S. Consulate in the world). Fifty percent of the 601s filed in Juarez were approved within two weeks (although the total wait time for a visa is closer to three months; applicants must wait for an appointment at the Consulate first). At the end of FY 2010 (September 30), there were 3,900 pending 601s in the hopper, Counts told me via e-mail last month.

Not all of these applications are for spouses, but a large percentage definitely are; there are a ton of people in Badillo’s shoes.

Then there is the wrong way. L.A. Weekly has the juicy story (and juicy photos) of Fernanda Romero, who pleaded guilty to a marriage of convenience last week in L.A. last week.

It could earn them some pity in front of the judge; still, at worst, their consequences could be up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fees.

According to City News Service, “prosecutors claim the pair were living in separate homes and dating other people when they tied the knot.”

The question is, who is worse off? The guy who did it the right way has been separated from his family for a year, causing a major loss of income, stress and suffering for his wife and kids (and other friends and family). The woman who tried to sneak it lives in Westwood and stars in movies. I’ll bet she will not serve much time either, if any.

For this proposal, I need to consider the market for my book, draft a basic marketing plan and assess the competition. I’ve been monitoring immigration-related books for a while now, trying to read as much as I can, but I finally got over to Barnes and Noble in Boise last weekend and had a surprisingly good time. First of all, the place was packed on a Sunday afternoon. The coffee shop was full of people going through stacks of books, there was a steady line at the cash register and I came across some interesting reads.

So did my almost 6-year-old daughter. She spent an hour with a picture book of U.S. presidents (so far she only knows George Washington and Barack Obama, but I made her look up Lincoln and Roosevelt (Teddy) and she told me the relative era of each based on the clothing styles and modern conveniences depicted). My first experiment was to ask a clerk where the immigration books were. He sent me to “Current Affairs” where I immediately spied several books by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. Current Affairs is a dumping ground for books by politicians and pundits, which probably sell pretty well, but I’m not sure if that’s where my book will belong. [Strangely enough there is no Current Affairs section online at barnesandnoble.com ... perhaps it only has relevance in a dead tree context, whereas everything online is current?]

In Current Affairs I found a wave of new books on human trafficking (The Slave Next Door and Disposable People, both with Kevin Bales of the NGO Free the Slaves and Not for Sale by David Batstone). These books all argue strongly against human trafficking—not a very difficult position to take, and perhaps it’s their strong point of view that lands them beside Beck and Palin.

My book—called Amor and Exile for now, a working title—will have several strong points of view. My own, of course, those of the couples I’m profiling and the strong, first-person views of one heretofore source with whom I’m discussing a potential collaboration (more on that soon, when the proposal is done). After mulling it over, I do like the idea of appearing as a counter to Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (my wife points out it will be closer to Sean Hannity because of that pesky alphabetical order thing)—offering a mountain of truth, personal experiences and facts to counter their emotional ideologizing.

There are some great looking immigration books in Current Affairs as well, including The Devil’s Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea (Humingbird’s Daughter) a border crossing tale that I have yet to read. (I read two books in this genre a while ago: The Death of Josseline, a worthwhile investigation by a fellow reporter into the death of a young migrant in the Arizona desert and Border Crosser, a mendacious—he claims to have crossed illegally, but never actually does so—and self-absorbed book by a guy calling himself Johnny Rico.)

[Notice in the right hand sidebar appears growing list of books that I need to read and that you are most welcome to buy for me if you are ever in the mood.]

Another book in Current Affairs is Charles Bowden’s Murder City, which is top of my reading list since my return from Juarez. Bowden and I have some mutual friends there and I readily admit he has much larger cojones [scary read, behind a paywall] than I.

There are a ton of immigration/latino studies books in “Cultural Studies,” another section that at first blush does not appeal to me because of it’s overly academic tone. The book Hispanic Nation by Geoffrey Fox is 15 years old, but still appears on the shelves here … it looks a bit outdated, and has one of those über-academic subtitles: Culture, Politics and the Constructing of Identity. Mexican Enough by Stephanie Griest, a memoir by a bi-cultural journalist who covers immigration and Latino Affairs looks good as does Mexican Lives by Judith Hellman, another 15-year-old book that is still on the shelves (the publisher intrigued me as well, a nonprofit publishing house called The New Press).

Jesus this is a long post … I hope it’s helpful to someone out there. It’s definitely helping me out …

There is a fat book in the “History” section called Imperial, about the generations of migrants in California’s Imperial County. I should probably read it, but probably will save it for my graduate school backup plan. I picked up two books in “Journalism,” which might be a good fit (it’s right next to Current Affairs): Samantha Powers Chasing the Flame because I like her writing and her point of view, and Our Patchwork Nation, a demographic study that got a lot of press when it came out.

That’s what I found at Barnes and Noble. I did not find books about immigration outside the Mexican context, an unfortunate gap. I did not find books about mixed-immigration status families, though I’m sure some of the above do mention the phenomenon. Again, this is just what was available on a given day at a chain bookstore in Boise, Idaho. There are plenty of other good reads out there (any suggestions?), but it did make me want to buy a book (I bought one for my kid—Barbie related—ugh).

Frankly, I was not sure if people were still buying paper books in chain bookstores. I have not done that for many, many years, preferring local used bookstores or the convenience of Amazon.com (usually to find used books).

I’m curious how many blog readers regularly browse for titles at their local chain bookstore (or any brick and mortar bookstore) and come home with an actual book?

I met John once, in 2006, when I was in Mexico City on assignment for the former Knight Ridder newspaper chain. I was covering the Mexican presidential race for about a month and had read, most likely on Narco News, that Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista rebellion, was running an alternative presidential campaign, traveling around the indigenous heart of Mexico and making an argument that progress in Mexico would not be found in the mainstream electoral process (or the mainstream media). He had changed his name to Delegate Zero and was calling his effort La Otra Campaña – The Other Campaign.

I have been trying to reconstruct my meeting with Ross, an expert on the Zapatistas, and the story on La Otra that I eventually wrote, but I have not been able to find my notes from the time. I remembered meeting him at a restaurant near the Zócalo in Mexico City and after reading Tim Johnson’s post on Ross’s death, I recalled that it was Cafe La Blanca, pictured below. (Johnson is now working the job I was trying out for, as Mexico City correspondent—KR became McClatchy, the Mexico Bureau was left open for a few years, I moved back to Boise, etc.)

An empty Cafe La Blanca in Mexico City where John Ross ate almost every night. Photo from juliette_y_cristian_en_méxico on Flickr.

At our meeting, Ross and I talked about San Francisco’s Mission District, where I was living at the time, and a place where Ross wants his ashes scattered. We talked about Mexican politics and journalism a bit. I think he was testing me out a bit before giving me any info on Marcos, which I respected. I think that Ross then put me in touch with Al Giordano, a founder of Narco News, who sent me the schedule for The Other Campaign in rural Mexico State, with a harried note saying he didn’t really know where San Antonio Pueblo Nuevo was and that it’s near Atlacomulco, but that there were four San Antonios in the vicinity. I told him I’d see him there.

So on April 22, a Saturday, I hired a cab for the day and took my wife and one year-old daughter to find the Zapatistas. I think the map below shows where we went, but I’m not sure. The cabbie had no idea where Pueblo Nuevo might be and we drove west of Mexico City, onto dirt roads. We were trying to get there at 9 and I think we finally found it closer to 11, or later, as it was just about lunch time, which is late in Mexico.

View Larger Map

I thought of myself then—and think of myself now—as a journalist of John Ross’ ilk: rugged, independent, more interested in the people than the politicians, willing to go places at personal sacrifice for a story. But I was also in Mexico on an expense account with a major U.S. newspaper chain where I could do things like hire a cab for a day (oh to be on an expense account again)! Part of the Other Campaign was a fierce commitment to the alternative press and indeed, there was a caravan of lefty journalists from all over the world following Marcos across Mexico. We saw their ragtag caravan in the parking area and then walked through some brush to reveal a large tent, mostly full of Indians and campesinos, listening to speaches. In front, on a raised platform, sat a masked Marcos and several other Zapatistas. It was a surreal scene.

La Otra Campaña in rural Mexico State, April 2006

I asked for an interview with Marcos and was told he does not speak to the mainstream media, which was a bit of a bummer. I think I’d be more aggressive about it today … I’ll admit now that I really had no idea what was going on at that meeting, who was speaking, what the purpose was. Perhaps that came through in the article I eventually filed. I believe it was more of a listening tour, where the Zapatistas were building capacity in rural areas by listening to the complaints of the indigenous populace.

We stayed for a communal lunch (chicken, beans, sweet local mushrooms), I interviewed a few campesinos and snapped a few pics and then we loaded into the cab for the long ride back to La Zona Rosa, stopping for pulque along the way, real homebrewed pulque, which also made it into the article.

My family, eating lunch at Zapatista political rally, Mexico State, April, 2006

This is where the problems started. As I stated in the article I wrote, the mainstream press did not really care about Marcos anymore, but I was trying to get the mainstream press to run a story on his Otra Campaña anyway because I thought it was interesting, I thought he was a significant historical figure since the outset of the Zapatista rebellion on the eve of NAFTA’s inception and frankly, I sympathized with many of the values and ideas of the movement.

Unfortunately, none of that would come across in the final version of the story. The Zapatista sympathizers hated the story (the only archived version I can find online comes from a Chiapas web archive and is headlined: “Knight Ridder Trashes Marcos.” I’m pretty sure Giordano sent me an e-mail saying he regretted helping me get to the rally (he never found it), but I can’t find the e-mail anymore. And I fully admit the headlines sucked, and I won’t even use the excuse that I didn’t write the headlines. I wanted to emphasize the marginalization of Marcos in the Mexican and international press and the co-opting of indigenous issues by the other candidates and by Vicente Fox. But the final draft of the story does read like a marginalization of Marcos and indigenous issues, and for that I have felt badly for four years.

I never saw Ross again, but I’ve always been inspired by his willingness to write what he wanted, when he wanted and how he wanted, outlets for his work be damned. His vision of Mexico is part of mine. And whether he likes it or not, the mainstream media, in the guise of Knight Ridder and it’s wannabe foreign correspondent of the moment, bought John Ross dinner at La Blanca that night.

PS I did find an early draft of my story and it was much better and more balanced than the version that was eventually published. Too bad.

Mexico City is an amazingly functional place for such an expanse of humanity. It is hard to comprehend 20 million people in one ancient valley—civilizations on this scale are supposed to fall, torn apart from the inside or invaded by conquering forces. But drive—or better yet, take the newish Metrobus from the southern reaches of the city, Xocimilco, or even Coyoacan, into the Centro Historico and the scale becomes clear. The long boulevards heading north and south along the valley floor take literally hours to navigate. Insurgentes Sur, like boulevards that lead into or out of towns anywhere, is blanketed with restaurants, hotels, dry goods stores, car dealerships, colleges and housing projects. But in most cities that pattern repeats only once or twice. Along Insurgentes, the evidence of urban development, waves of Mexico City’s growth, can be seen time and again, like shards of pottery in an archeological dig. There are even successive waves of Hooters and McDonalds and Burger Kings as the boulevard climaxes at La Paseo de Reforma.

Disembark at Reforma and it’s obvious that all roads lead here. One friend described it as the center of the Spanish speaking world, which is certainly true. But it also seems to be the center of many different universes, with a consciousness and vibration older and deeper than any to be found in the United States. It is at once New World and Old World, a mash up of the European sensibility for lifestyle with the American pursuit of progress. And the indigenous creativity is still alive here as well. This combination of old, new and really old is what makes the culture of Mexico so intoxicating and relevant. It is properly strong coffee (Europe), a million choices for lunch (America), and a stack of piping hot tortillas (Indigenous), to put it in culinary terms. It’s going to the grain mill in the morning to make masa for tamales and then going to Costco for butter and wine. It’s stamped on the music as well: European instruments, American rhymes and industry, indigenous storytelling. Even the language—Spanish was a European language once—incorporates the Indigenous sounds and descriptions of earthly things, and the American (in a broad sense here) drive to innovate, invent, improvise.

And politics here is at once democratic, pragmatic, socialistic and very tribal. Until recently teachers and other functionaries could pass on their civil service jobs to siblings and children (so I’m told). Wherever the increasingly potent battles over the drug trade lead, the solution lies in some combination of democratic bribery for all.

An unexpected benefit of this mission I’m taking is the experience of Mexico in her various forms. I walked across the border from Texas, where a legitimate cross-national mind exists, despite the fog of violence that has infected it in the last decade. I’ve crossed the interior cities and countryside, where generations of migrants have jumped over that border-space to the northern interior, to places like Chicago and North Carolina and inland California and Idaho, where they find fields and hills and dales much like the ones they leave behind, the same fertile valley to which they hope to return.

And now I’ve been to cosmopolitan Mexico, where people on the train bury their noses in their cell phones, commuting to who knows how many jobs in the new economy and the old economy. Where meals cost 6 pesos or 600 on the same block.

And now, I’m heading to tourist Mexico, the beaches of the Yucatan Peninsula, where I expect to find a fourth sensibility, one imbued with dependency and caricature. I’ll try not to have too much fun.

This is my computer setup for traveling in Mexico

I decided not to lug my laptop to Mexico for this reporting trip. Instead I´m working with my iPod Touch (4th Generation) and an external bluetooth keyboard.

It´s worked really well so far. I upgraded my iPod before I left so that I could make use of the on-board microphone and the bluetooth support that the newest iPods have. I picked up a Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 the night before I left because I like the key action better than the Apple keyboards, which must have been made for graphic designers who can´t speal anyway. And I use a cheap plastic stand for the ipod while I´m typing.

I am using the PlainText app for typing up my notes every night and for drafting blog posts. I like the clean interface but wish I could figure out how to use bullets and maybe even embed hyperlinks. It also syncs with my Dropbox account, which is where I access all of my notes for the book anyway. That is really convenient (when I have wi-fi).

I´m using the WordPress iPhone app to blog, mostly, but again, it seems to be lacking in its ability to handle photos and links and character styles like bold, etc. Maybe there is a better one out there? I´ve had to go online to fix a lot of issues with my posts. (Right now I´m using a PC at a public library somewhere in Mexico City … I´ll have to geotag the post to find out where I am, actually.)

It also seems like PlainText screws up the hard returns on my blog posts, but I have to experiment more with that.

The new iPod takes really nice little videos, but again, I have not had stable enough wi-fi anywhere to upload them. I am using HootSuite to post to Twitter and Facebook, Skype to call home and now TextFree to send free texts (otherwise they cost me at least 50 cents apiece). I am also using SpanishDict, which does not require wi-fi and has proven pretty thorough and even hip to the times.

Oh, and most important perhaps, I use iTalk light to record interviews, though I might buy the full version when I get back.

I like the little plastic base for the iPod (from XtremeMac) but I think a sturdier one would help. There is alot of pushing on the screen even when I use the external keyboard. If I need to plug in, I just put the iPod upside down and work near an outlet.

There are only two problems: (1) A frequent lack of wi-fi and (2) the inability to transfer photos from my digital SLR camera to the iPod (computer). I toyed with the idea of using the Eye-Fi memory card in my camera, which can connect to wi-fi, but I could not figure out a good system before I left. I also found a card reader that fits in the iPod on Amazon.com before I left but I can´t find it again.

I know others are doing this type of thing, but it took me a long time to figure out all the peices in an economical way, so I thought this might help other reporters or travelers out there. Let me know if you have other suggestions or techniques.

While I´m here, I am trying to contact American clubs and associations in Mexico City and academics at the Universidad Nacional Autonomo de Mexico. The only problem I´m having is a lack of wi-fi (and figuring out certain punctuation on Spanish keyboards).

Wi-fi is everywhere, but many networks, both open networks and places like this library that provide passwords, do not have stable connections to the internet. I even paid for a month of Boingo wi-fi access but it has not helped me, failing in the airports in Juarez and Monterrey and Queretero, where I expected it to work.

I might have to go to McDonalds or Starbucks, even though I hate to do it. Sanborns, a chain of Mexican breakfast places/coffee shops also has wi-fi, which I am going to check out first. I went to a Pollo Feliz, which is owned by my host´s family, but no one knew the wi-fi password there this morning.

But more importantly, I´m still working out what I want to know about the Mexican perspective on bi-national couples. One thing is already clear: Mexicans “get it” much more rapidly than Americans when I attempt to explain the book. A few nights ago I was in the little town of Santa Gertrudis in the state of Michoacan [that is an awesome link, there, by the way]. We went to get tacos at 9 or 10 at night and there were a bunch of folks sitting around under the bright lights drinking beers and eating tripe. I just started talking about the plight of Americans who marry undocumented Mexican immigrants and they started gossipping about all of their friends. (While we sat there, trucks with license plates from Idaho, California and Illinois drove by.) The women all knew people with American spouses living here and there (acá y allá). They even told me to go out to an indigenous Purépecha village to find some mixed-status couples.

In the U.S. when I talk about the book, people are not aware that there are any issues with immigrating a spouse.

So I want to ask Mexican officials about options for spouses of Mexican citizens living here in Mexico, about the demographics of the returned Mexican population (through either forced of self-deportation) with strong ties to the U.S. and about Mexican foreign policy toward U.S. immigration affairs.

Last time I was here I was affiliated with Knight-Ridder and had some pull to arrange interviews. This time it´s like pulling teeth, but it is still fun to try.