In the first of two reports on Mexican immigrants, NPR's David Welna visits a poor town in the Mexican heartland which for the past fifty years has had a steady stream of its young men leave for the United States. Some of those who left Cotija (coh-TEE-ha) are undocumented workers; others have legal status. Most of those who leave return home in the winter months, when work is harder to find. By working the US, they have incomes many times greater than what they could make back home. The migration to the U-S has created a shortage of men in Cotija, but the money they send back is crucial to the town's survival.
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