Illegal US immigrants go north 

Illegal immigrants from Latin America are heading deeper into the United States to find work and avoid deportation as crackdowns in border states like Texas and Arizona make life more difficult for them.
   
The US Border Patrol has ramped up surveillance along the porous Mexican border aided by National Guard troops since 2005, while police and state legislatures have increasingly targeted illegal immigrants in some border states.
   
"Texas is crawling with Border Patrol agents and the locals are so tuned in that if they see you walking down the street, they phone the Border Patrol, who come and deport you," said Joe Reyes, 45, who lived for seven years in Houston before being deported in November.
   
"I'm heading for North Carolina if I can get back across," he said at the Catholic-run migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, across the border from Laredo, Texas.

Washington hired thousands more Border Patrol agents last year to help deport immigrants who entered illegally or outstayed their visas, carry out workplace raids, jail illegals and push police to enforce immigration laws.
  
While workplace raids are common in central and northern states, Arizona and Texas are now arguably the toughest places for undocumented immigrants.
   
In Arizona, once a popular state for fresh arrivals due to its desert border with Mexico, companies are laying off undocumented workers after a new law came into effect on January 1 punishing companies who hire illegal immigrants.
   
Family networks in border states are still a strong pull for new immigrants and some are willing to risk living in Texas, which has a Hispanic heritage and big Hispanic population.
   
But migrant shelters and people smugglers are warning illegal immigrants that they need to go farther north to last long in the United States.
   
"Our message to new migrants, and those trying to get back to the United States after being deported, is that if they really want to go, avoid California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas," said Eduardo Carrera, a volunteer at a shelter in Nuevo Laredo, where migrants stop on their way to the United States.
   
Better pay up north
   
For decades, illegal immigrants have crossed the border into the United States, where an estimated 12 million live and work in the shadows.

Many would traditionally settle in the four border states, where there are plenty of temporary jobs on farms, in construction and in the service economy.
   
But better wages in northern states - such as Virginia, Maryland and Washington - amid a slowing US economy are also changing that trend.
   
"There is a growing economic incentive to migrate to non-traditional destinations. The fact that surveillance may be less intense in these areas is an added benefit," said Wayne Cornelius, an immigration expert at the University of California, San Diego.
   
According to a study by Pew Hispanic Center research institute, some 57 US counties in mainly northern and central states doubled their population of Hispanics, including both legal and illegal immigrants, between 2000 and 2006.
  
"Very few are in the traditional Hispanic areas of the southwest," said Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at the center.

"There is a very big concentration in Virginia, mostly in the Washington DC suburbs," he added.
   
People smugglers in Tijuana near San Diego say they are taking more migrants north to Oregon and Illinois, bypassing California.
   
"We are charging $3,000 a crossing instead of $2,000 for California and it means more time on the road, but people can expect better wages and will see less of the Border Patrol," a smuggler said.