U.S.-MEXICO FUTURES FORUM: Immigration Viewed From the Other Side

Graduate student Jude Joffe-Block covers a special session of the 2010 U.S.–Mexico Futures in which participants met with some of the townspeople of Jerez, Zacatecas.

Over the past nine years, Armando Fernández has helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for public works projects in his hometown of San Juan del Centro in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas. But 35-year-old Fernández lives in Corona, California, and left Mexico at the age of 13. He and other migrants from San Juan del Centro pool their earnings in the U.S. to build public works projects back home. They are organized as a hometown association, a club of migrants dedicated to working together to improve their native communities.