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And, of course, millions of us cross the border to work in US homes and gardens and factories and carpentry shops and restaurants, and if you go to a restaurant pretty much anywhere in the United States, the chances are that the dishes will be washed by a Mexican.

What I wonder is what would happen in California, say, if all the Mexicans left from one day to the next?

Well, one of the things I discovered in the course of looking back and writing about what I saw in my memory is that I was a closely observant person long before I became a reporter.

I'm an efficient, good, professional reporter. But I also write. And so what I try to do is write about places that I know that I care about intensely and write about them in a way that conveys the fact that I care.

Peron had a wise saying. In politics, you can recover from anything except looking like a fool.

So, you know, I always say that I'm a Mexican, but if I had to be a citizen of anywhere else, I'd be a citizen of Manhattan. I feel very much a New Yorker.