Already, about 443,000 Mexicans regard Dallas County as home, according to figures provided by the Mexican Consulate office in Dallas. As Mexican immigrants continue to provide inexpensive labor that will keep the city competitive in the global economy of the next millennium, ethnic tensions may arise as a once-silent minority gradually finds its political voice. And the children of these immigrants will crowd into local schools and provide tough new challenges for educators, such as keeping Latino students from dropping out and falling into poverty. Education, said Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, will be the key to defuse any potential ethnic tensions. The public education system is the greatest opportunity we have to come to know one another, overcome our fears about one another and learn from each other.
Education can be the single greatest common denominator for all minorities.
In many ways the story of how and why Dallas began to embrace, or at least tolerate, Mexican workers parallels Texas' efforts to lose an image some historians once saw as racist. In the early 1900s, for example, many Mexican immigrants fled Texas and its Rangers, who had a reputation of being less than friendly to Mexicans, for California, seeking better jobs and treatment. These days, the ties between Mexico and California are frayed, though they're on the mend, while the historic courtship between Mexico and Texas has thrived even during rocky times. And like all marriages, there is good and bad, but the fact is the relationship between Texas and Mexico has matured, as evidenced by the example of Dallas. To critics, labeling Dallas as a genuine immigrant-friendly city may be premature, even though Mexican immigrants began trekking here at the turn of the century during the railroad boom and later during the great Mexican exodus that erupted after the 1910 Mexican Revolution.