NEW REASON FOR MEXICAN IMMIGRATION TO U.S.: DRUG VIOLENCE

MEXICO CITY -- Mexican immigration to the United States has been
almost entirely an economic issue for the past few decades.
Politicians have fine-tuned their positions around what to do about
illegal immigrants who supposedly take jobs from Americans.

Now, however, as violence on the border continues to increase, a new
kind of immigrant to the United States is appearing: people seeking
asylum to escape the drug-fueled brutality in Mexico.

More than 5,400 people were killed in the violence last year, and
more than 8,000 in the two years since President Felipe Calderon sent
thousands of troops into the drug war zones.

"Some families living on the frontier are leaving, and the easiest
way to live in the U.S. for them is by asking for the status of
refugee," said Damaso Morales, a professor of international studies
at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, the largest
university in Latin America. "It's a way to get into the U.S. in a legal way."

Already, there have been two celebrated cases of asylum-seekers: a
journalist who fled the northern state of Chihuahua after drug
cartels threatened him, and the mayor of Ciudad Juarez, a major
border city opposite El Paso, Texas, who pulled out when drug
traffickers threatened his family. Though both succeeded in getting
into the U.S., their tactic is still relatively untested in U.S. courts.

Ana Maria Salazar, a U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense
during the Clinton administration who's now a political commentator
in Mexico City, said that people were moving away from the country's
crime-plagued border towns, if not yet to the U.S.

"Many people fearing for their lives in border towns are moving to
big cities within Mexico," said Salazar, who has Mexican and American
citizenship. "As descriptions of the violence continue to become
public, there will definitely be talk about the refugee status" in
the U.S., although she added that the violence would have to be "very high."

The increase in violence, experts said, has replaced immigration as
the major source of friction in U.S.-Mexican relations. In March,
Mexicans ranging from Calderon to local editorial writers were
outraged when a U.S. official suggested that the government had lost
control of some parts of the country to the drug lords.

The incident wasn't smoothed over until Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and President Barack Obama visited Mexico and acknowledged
that the U.S. bore a share of responsibility for Mexico's drug wars,
not only from the billions of dollars sent south to purchase illegal
drugs but also because of the high-powered weapons that are purchased
legally in U.S. border towns and sold to Mexican gangs.

The fear created by this border violence, Morales said, is "a real
problem, as Mexicans are coming in to the U.S. claiming asylum. These
people would rather be in jail in the U.S. waiting to see if Uncle
Sam grants them mercy than be in Mexico, where drug traffickers are
killing family members."

Although the number of people entering the United States may increase
if the violence continues to escalate, the number of Mexican citizens
emigrating to the U.S. has dropped almost 25 percent within the past
five months, according to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. Though
it's hard to say why, the faltering U.S. economy most often is blamed.

"The economy here is really tied up in the economy of the U.S.,"
Morales said. "Things are very different and are changing in this
economic crisis."

Francisco Gonzalez, an associate professor of Latin American studies
at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International
Studies in Washington, said that officials on both sides of the
border now worried more about the drug wars than about immigration.

"The country has become very violent," Gonzalez said, "and it is very
easy to see that things there could get even worse."

(Wolf is a student at Penn State University. This story was reported
from Mexico City for a class in international journalism.)