Ask a Mexican in the Swedish press

Click on image to enlarge.

I could scarcely believe my lying eyes when I landed on the article. ¡Ask a Mexican! By Gustavo Arellano in the Swedish press. I have known of this column since the blogsphere presented it to me some two odd years ago. I had reservations at first but somehow I still keep on reading it as many chances I get to read it. It’s funny, what can I say.

Mexicans in the Swedish press tend to be quite either the exotic beings with a rich cultural past or the more gringo traditional take on the mexican, a burden like a pest.

When Swedes speak of mexicans in the US its more like two birds of a feather flocking togehter, the Swedes, the US. Like Swedes saying we understand your dilemma. From a law perspective off course. The focus lies on the illegality of things.

One seldom sees an article explaining the phenomena or the causes of immigration in the nordic press but rather one hears through the Swedish language the ailing and wailing of the American conservative outcry (a phenomena that started out in the middle of the 80’s) that mexicans are running over the USA. Perhaps that is to change?

The present article brings the aforementioned forth adding that to its merit that is precisely what Ask a Mexican! does: pin point the absurd in gringo mentality by declaring some aspects of an equation in immigration as illegal [mexicans crossing illegal into the US] but never what other aspects contribute to the equation, in this case, that employers that hire illegal immigrants don’t get the notion of illegal either since it is illegal to hire illegal immigrants.

Source: Image in blog comes from a photo taken on Monday the 30th of April and the article thereby presented appears in the printed Sunday edition of the Swedish newspaper Svd on page 21 in the International section.