Profile of immigrants changing: More women, kids coming from Mexico.

Byline: Hugh Dellios

Feb. 12--JOMULQUILLO, Mexico -- First it was the men. Now the women are disappearing too. The sewing machines sit quiet in the workshop where this little village dreamed of creating jobs and keeping its residents at home. Of the 15 women who started out in the sewing co-op two years ago, only six are still around. Most of the others have gone north, following their husbands and sons and nephews in a great exodus that is emptying entire towns in central Mexico as immigrants illegally cross into the remotest corners of the U.S. The U.S. Congress is debating whether to build more border fences to keep them out. But since the first fences were built under President Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, the flow of illegal immigrants has increased--and the profile of those immigrants has slowly changed to include more women, more children, more skilled workers and overall more Mexicans heading north to stay permanently. Townsfolk and immigration experts here in poor Zacatecas state, the source of many…