the Wired Press > Archives

MEXICALI, Mexico - Javier Perez lights a cigarette atop the guard tower in a remote stretch of land near Mexicali, 50 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. “At night they move down through that gorge over there. They’re like cockroaches scurrying from bush to bush.” He takes a long drag off of his cigarette and shakes his head slowly in disgust. “Dot-Comers.”

Miguel Ponce dot-comer patrol

“They round them up in trucks in San Jose and San Francisco, the headhunters. Anderson consulting or whatever they’re called now, and others. They promise them work over the border, harvesting venture capital or mining for e-mail addresses. Some of them end up whoring themselves on the streets of Mexico City for porn sites or doing tech support for a finance company. It’s so sad.”

When we reached the U.S.-Mexico border we found several webmasters that had been turned back at the border and left there by their handlers. Ben Ing makes his way to our car between lines of traffic. He was promised work engineering software at Volkswagen’s Mexico factory, a dream job that would never be realized.

“Now I’m just trying to get enough money to get a bus ticket back to San
Mateo. Chiclet?”

Jo Jo Espanol, chip designer from Mountain View, California, tried to get us to buy some hand-carved wooden AMD Athlon chips. “Best price for you. Buy two and I throw in the wooden sailboat. How about a Mexican Rolex?”

The Mexican government has expressed concern over the loss in public health services and entitlements paid to dot-comers living illegally in the country. Recently a top Mexican official was caught in a career threatening scandal when it was learned that her housekeeper was one Jennifer Scott, a web designer from Palo Alto, working illegally in Mexico.

George Bush’s home state of Texas is often the focal point of the nation's concerns about immigration, prompting the President to pledge full support for beefed up border patrols. Dogs at the border will be trained to sniff out dot- comers hiding in secret compartments of cars. Portable machines are to be employed by agents that will fill the air around a suspicious vehicle with the scent of Starbucks coffee, an odor that the unemployed techies find irresistible.

- Clark Brandon