The intersection of 43rd Avenue and Thomas Road on the west side of Phoenix is lined with the same monotonous range of petrol stations, fast-food outlets, pharmacies and clothes stores that you'll find in any modern city in America's heartlands. It is distinguished only by the exceptionally mundane.
Look closer, though, and a disturbing pattern emerges. Here is a real estate office that is shuttered and empty, here a panaderia – a bread shop – that has closed, and next door to that, a children's clothes store also shut. Across the road a cellphone outlet is boarded up and a large grocery store has vanished. A Mexican restaurant still has its sign proudly boasting "Tacos Since 1975", but there are no tacos being made here any more. A rival restaurant nearby, Marly's Mexican Food, has a sign saying "Drive Thru Open", yet the building has been stripped bare. A handwritten note in the front entrance says "Se cierra el negocio porque nos mudamos de estado" – the restaurant is closed because we've moved out of the state.
It's as if the whole area is turning into a tourist ghost town, for which the west is renowned. But this is not supposed to be a ghost town. This is bustling Phoenix, capital of Arizona and one of America's fastest growing and most dynamic metropolises.
Why this is going on is the question put to Sergio Diaz, the owner of an English language school next to Marly's restaurant, where a room full of young students are practising English verbs. "We've been in business since 2000," Diaz says. "At the end of this month we are going to close."
"My students are about 90% undocumented," he says, referring to the largely Mexican illegal immigrants who attend his school. "Three months ago we'd have up to 200 students every day; now there are only 15. They are all leaving, or preparing to leave."
