Militarization of the border and illegal immigration: Tamaulipas laborers

<span>Tamaulipas presents a long tradition of rural migration to the United States in search of farm employment. Until the eighties Tamaulipas’ undocumented workers crossed the border easily. However, from the nineties, as a result of a restrictive migration policy centered exclusively on the “supply–side” to cross the border has become intricate. As a result, most part of immigrants is using the services of “smuggles”. This paper analyses the impact of the militarization of the frontier on the emigration of Tamaulipas’ illegal rural workers seeking for farm jobs in the United States.