In an ironic twist, residents of Mexico City have been protesting and criticizing the influx of Americans moving to their country, complaining that “gentrification is colonization.”
Trouble started during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 when remote workers from the United States grabbed their laptops and began moving to lower-cost Mexico. There were “an estimated 1.6 million Americans” living in Mexico as of 2024, according to Go Banking Rates, a financial news site. Americans can live and work in Mexico for up to six months without a visa, making it an ideal location for snowbirds and people who have the flexibility to work remotely.
But these Americans are changing the culture of neighborhoods and driving up the cost of living, leading to frustration among the locals. Protesters directed phrases including “Gringo, go home!” and “Speak Spanish or die” at the “influx of foreigners” during a July 5 protest in Mexico City, according to The New York Times. Others carried signs reading “Mexico no es ‘cheap,’” and “Pay taxes, speak Spanish, use pesos or get out of here!!!” as seen in videos posted by NBC News.
Some activists also “began smashing the windows of storefronts, including a Starbucks and a bank, and graffitiing walls and ransacking stores in the high-end neighborhoods of Condesa and Roma,” during the July 5 violence, the Times reported.
Mexicans, according to the Times, complain that neighborhoods, “have developed into bastions where more English than Spanish is spoken in some sidewalk cafes, and in which co-working spaces, Pilates studios, specialty food stores and clothing boutiques have sprouted, catering to the recent arrivals.”
One 34-year-old resident complained to the Times how “waiters were now expected to speak English to serve foreign customers.” Another Mexican said the Americans should learn to speak Spanish if they want to be “good neighbors.”
At issue as well is the rising cost of living driven by real-estate developers, who locals complain are changing the character of some neighborhoods.
“There is already a lot of real estate speculation derived from Airbnb rentals and all these digital platforms,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said. “We cannot condone the rising cost of the city.” Still, Sheinbaum, who herself used to serve as the mayor of Mexico City, has said that “Mexico is a country open to the world” and condemned protesters who want anyone to “leave our country.”
The mounting unrest in Mexico City represents an ironic twist on the immigration crisis plaguing the United States. The complaints about American immigrants refusing to learn the native language and changing the culture of entire communities directly mirror the complaints of American citizens about mass numbers of migrants settling in ethnic enclaves – complaints that the corporate media and elected Democrats have relentlessly decried as racist and xenophobic.
Mexico City is also experiencing economic upheaval as a result of migration. While high-income American immigrants drive up the cost of living in Mexico, foreign laborers who pour across the U.S.-Mexico border are undercutting American wages and squeezing the housing supply, pushing the American Dream further out of reach for native-born Americans.
Of course, while migration from the United States to Mexico is legal, much of the migration from and through Mexico to the United States is illegal. For decades, Mexico has acted as a conduit for illegal aliens from all over the world, along with failing to stop the flow of deadly drugs like fentanyl that kill tens of thousands of Americans every year.
Mexican locals are right to be concerned about how an “influx of foreigners” is changing their culture. People who have lived in the same place for generations are not going to respond favorably to the entire character of their neighborhood changing as outsiders with different customs and cultures flood the area without any regard for established traditions – nor should they.
Imagine waking up one day and seeing not just new neighbors across the street but ones who speak a different language and fly the flag not of the country they live in, but the one they left.
Of course, that’s the exact reality facing many Americans in the United States. Just a few weeks ago, mask-wearing rioters waving Mexican flags took over the streets of downtown Los Angeles, attacked police, and burned cars in broad daylight. While Mexicans in Mexico City decried Americans moving in, Mexicans in Los Angeles effectively claimed sovereignty over American territory. (Recall also the throngs of protesters waving Hamas flags in New York City and on college campuses nationwide on dozens of occasions in recent years.)
But this cognitive dissonance is apparently lost on Mexican leaders. Mexico Senate President Gerardo Fernández Noroña said he told President Donald Trump in 2017 that he would support a border wall if it used the borders from 1830, according to Fox News. “Yes, we’ll build the wall. Yes we’ll pay for it, but we’ll do it according to the map of Mexico from 1830,” Noroña recounted. Such a redrawing would mean ceding Utah, Nevada, California, New Mexico, and Texas.
Once again, it seems, Americans are expected to embrace what no other country tolerates. The backlash in Mexico proves what should be obvious: no country benefits from unchecked migration when it starts to erode its culture and way of life. Maybe it’s time our leaders learned the same lesson – before there’s nothing left of our own culture to preserve.
Matt Lamb is a contributor for AMAC Newsline and an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
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