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DOUGLAS MASSEY, Jorge Durand, and Nolan Malone (2002) have depicted the social and economic process of Mexican-US migration as a machine that was working properly until US governmental actions upset its internal mechanisms. The massive legalization of undocumented migrants and the criminalization of unauthorized hiring by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), together with intensification of border enforcement in 1993 and the enactment of new penalties for immigration violations in 1996, were intended to reduce the stock of undocumented migrants in the United States while limiting their inflow. Rather than achieving these aims, however, US policies appear to have upset the smooth workings of the North American migratory system. Aside from the apparent contradiction of trying to stop flows of labor within a free trade zone in which the movement of goods and capital are encouraged, Massey, Durand, and Malone (2002) argue, US immigration policies have failed in their own right. Not only have they failed to curb unauthorized migration, they have actually encouraged more rapid growth of the undocumented population, for two reasons. First, IRCA's amnesty and other policy initiatives fortified migrant networks by augmenting the number of US citizens and legal residents among Mexicans living in the United States, thereby increasing the amount of migration-specific social capital accessible to friends and relatives still living in Mexico (Massey and Phillips 1999). Second, by raising the psychic and economic costs of border crossing, US policies paradoxically lowered the likelihood of return