Education, middle-class status don't stop illegal immigration

By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press Writer

While many Americans associate Mexican immigration with poor, rural laborers, a large number of those seeking work in the United States these daus are better-educated and hail from relatively well-to-do, middle-class backgrounds in the city.

Many set aside years of training and education to illegally clean houses, take seasonal landscaping jobs or accept positions at meatpacking plants - all of which pay better than most white-collar work in their homeland.

Many obtain visas to work, study or join family members already there. Hundreds of thousands do not.

"Before, we saw only rural people with little education," said Efrain Jimenez, vice president of a Los Angeles group serving migrants from the northern Mexican state of Zacatecas.

"Now we see young professionals or those who, after years of working (in Mexico), haven't been able to save up much money and look for other options."