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José Antonio Pérez remem- bers as a child seeing mi- grants climbing onto La Bestia ("The Beast"), the train that carries Central American migrants north to the state of Oaxaca, and wondering where they were going. An uncle told him the migrants were "traveling to El Norte," the United States.
"I didn't understand," Pérez recalled. "I only understood when I was older."
At the age of 14, he joined them. He left his hometown of Arriaga, Chiapas, in 2003 and found work in a green- house in Chestertown, Virginia.
Six years later, after struggling to find stable work in Virginia, he was home again. Now 24, he has found work helping out at local farms. But, unable to match the paychecks he received while working in the U.S., Pérez decided to make the journey north once more. This time, he wasn't as lucky. In 16 attempts to cross the border over the past two years, he was stopped or detained every time. He hasn't given up. Noting the differ- ences in wages between Chestertown and Arriaga, Pérez is contemplating trying to cross into the U.S. again.
"We'll see, but I think I'll go. It's more comfortable there," he says.
In Mexico City, a very different dy- namic is emerging. Walk into the of- fices of Teletech, one of the growing number of firms in the capital in- volved in business process outsourc- ing (bpo), and you will see rows of young people seated at computer workstations dressed in chic capital- ino clothes or baggy California hip- hop gear. They handle tech support and social media for a variety of re- tail and telecommunications clients. About 40 percent of the office's em- ployees are returned migrants who previously worked in the United States.
One of them is Liz Barron, a 23-year- old whose parents migrated to Colo- rado when she was a toddler. Barron, who returned to Mexico City after high school to study psychology, now works at Teletech as a quality analyst. Like most of the return migrants at Teletech, she attended a U.S. high school but was discouraged by the high cost of pursuing a university ed- ucation there. She hasn't returned to visit her family in the U.S. and now plans to...