South Park

I watched the South Park episode "The Last of the Meheecans", and many elements from the show reminded me of the migration topics we covered in class. The episode centered around a mass exodus of Mexican emigrants back to their home country. This results in a labor shortage in America, which severely cripples its economy. As more and more Americans are forced to pick up the menial labor tasks vacated by the Mexican migrants, the American sentiment towards immigration (including illegal immigration) dramatically shifts towards an attitude of welcoming embrace. Border patrol agents no longer enforce policy, and the U.S.-Mexico border becomes an open border. The episode makes a compelling case against anti-immigration sentiments in the U.S. As we learned in this course, the flow of immigrants into America in the 21st century is largely composed of folks of Mexican descent (35%), more so than any other ethnic group. Eliminating such an essential component of the American labor force would undoubtedly have a negative impact on our economy. Furthermore, we learned that immigrants are positively selected from sending countries today, including Mexico. In fact, one of the lecture slides indicates that the net difference index for Mexico is positive (0.2), indicating that twenty percent of Mexican migrants actually possess education levels exceeding that of natives. This aspect of positive selection is also reflected in the South Park episode, as it depicts some Mexican migrants working in high-skilled jobs, such as hospital technicians.

Source: http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e09-the-last-of-the-meheecans