Coming from a life of poverty and despair would cause anyone to search for a better life; a life in which there is the belief that all of your dreams can come true. This is the belief that many Mexican immigrants had about "El Norte," they believed that the north would provide them with the opportunity that their life in Mexico had not. Many Immigrants believed that the United States was "the land of opportunity," a place to find a successful job and live out the life that one only dreamt about living. The North was an open paradise for the immigrants. They were told by the people who had already ventured to the north that the United States was a "simple life, in which one could live like a king or queen, but in reality immigrants were treated like slaves in the new country that promised them their dreams.
             Most Immigrants who enter the United States are searching for work and the opportunity to live a better life. They are from small towns deep within Mexico that do not offer much opportunity for the people of the town to live a prosperous life and to provide for their family. In the small town of Sierra Mixteco, men women and children arrived in town at various times of the day bent over loads of fire wood gathered from the mountains to sell in the town market (King, 14). For those who did not sell fire wood, they spent their time making straw hats to sell in the markets of larger towns, both of these jobs only provided pennies a day for the families to survive on. So the stories that the men brought back from the North gave the people of the small towns the hope that a better life did exist.
             It was typical for the men to travel to the north first in order to find a job and set up the life for his family. In the town of San Jeronimo, 85% of all men over the age of 15 had left the village in search of work in other parts of Mexico and in the United States (Light, 14). The men would make the t...