386 WESTERN HEMISPHERE IMMIGRATION

New restrictions, it will be remembered, began to apply after the February
meeting of American consuls in Mexico City.
At the port of El Paso, where the new restrictions were applied with greatest
vigor, this still sharper contrast is shown:

Month

I eee
Augast_____......__. TTC mm tee eno
September... lll III eee
October... J TTT A HR TR Hm my mt er
November... I rma
December... I ene
lommary.. III ene i ———
February__..__...__.____. ec meee
March... .____. meme ————— sm AS RET Soren
April... mm meme emo mea
May oo TD mean mmm — em ema
lune... -

Total. _ «eee.

1927-28

1928-20

1, 267
1,373
1, 307
1, 269
1,034
825
730
729
571
412
708
446
21,274 | 10,381

2, 63¢
5197
675
. 580
461
492
"81
n3€
32
50C
,22¢
L, 258

Continuing the restrictions through the last half of the calendar year 1929,
the port of El Paso permitted these numbers of entries: July, 447; August, 389;
September, 457; October, 498; November, 354; December, 303.
From January 1 to December 31, 1927, 40,854 aliens—98 per cent of them
Mexicans—were admitted at the port of El Paso alone. The El Paso immigration
 district, under the old regulations, admitted from one-half to two-thirds of
all Mexicans crossing the border.
As it has applied the new restrictions, while Mexican immigration in general
was being reduced 33 per cent under the previous year and 44 per cent under
figures of two years before, the port of El Paso has eut its admissions to one-sixth
of what they were a year ago and to one-eighth of its figure during the year of
its peak load.
While the bulk of new Mexican immigration in recent years has drifted into
the interior to get railway or industrial jobs, the number who have stopped on
the border or drifted back from the interior after no more than periodie employment
 have so swelled the Mexican population of border communities that many
of them are predominantly Mexican.
It is the combination of effects growing out of that condition that has created,
in these border communities, a rapidly growing demand for greater restrictions
on_Mexican immigration.
In El Paso, for example, the only big city in the United States with more than 50
per cent Mexican population, there are now 65,000 Mexicans. Mexican families
supply ‘three-fourths of the children of public-school age but Mexican-named
baxpayers pay but 6 per cent of the city’s taxes.
Six years ago, when Mexican immigration wag at its peak, El Paso’s baby death
rate was the largest in the United States. A city-wide health crusade, general
clean-up of the tenement district, and reorganization of the city health department,
 with city nurses systematically instructing Mexican mothers in the care
of children, has materially reduced infant mortality here. But South El Paso,
with its tenements many times crowded 6 and 10 to a room, still is a lively breeder
of disease. For example, El Paso had a short-lived smallpox epidemic last fall,
starting in Juarez, just across the Rio Grande ; all of the cases on this side of the
river were in South El Paso.
At least 75 per cent of El Paso’s charities donations go to Mexican families
and at least 80 per cent of the city’s erime, from police court to Federal docket,
involves Mexican defendants.
Up to 1929, during the at least half-dozen years preceding if, it was practically
impossible for an American to get a job here as a comion laborer—although
they were applying at labor bureaus ab the rate of from 300 to 500 a month——
because Mexicans were numerous and would work for wages no American could
live on and sustain a family.
That condition doesn’t exist here now, because work is more plentiful and the
city is enjoying more prosperous times. Partly, that condition is due to the coming
 of several new industries; partly, most any El Pasoan will agree, it is due to the
fact that at least 20,000 fewer Mexican immigrants were admitted during the vear