A Day Without a Mexican

A low-budget independent film released in 2004.

Latin Americans mysteriously vanish all over the state of California. The California borders are hidden and obscured with a thick, impenetrable mist.

Suddenly the rest of the Californians, even those with animosity toward immigrants, are forced to cope with their absence when they realize how much they relied on them.

Mostly Played for Laughs, although it doesn't shy away from its own opinion on the matter.

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Tropes used in A Day Without a Mexican include:

• Be Careful What You Wish For
• Border Patrol: The "pink fog" that cuts off the state's communications from the rest of the world, and of course the real life one.
• Children Are Innocent: The child of the anti-immigrant activist.
• Deus Ex Machina: Type 3. It's established that mass disappearance is possible.
• Fake Nationality: It becomes a Running Gag in the way the film plays with it. It's stated that the Latinos are disappearing, Mexicans being the most notable case. When a character is surprised that her white friend Monica was Latina, it's because they say she is Argentinian. Argentina has a very large white population, mainly from Italy, Spain and Eastern Europe.
  • After the disappearances, some Europeans and Middle Easterners are shown saying that they are sick and tired of being confused with Mexicans, and then this is parodied later in the film when it shows a spoof ad for the Border Patrol with the very same aforementioned people standing in for illegal immigrants.
  • Then there's the "last of her kind" reporter mentioned below who is believed to be the last Mexican in all of California... until it is revealed to both her and the audience that she is in reality an Armenian adopted by a Mexican couple (who also vanished), then she says that her whole life she had considered herself Mexican and that she will continue to do so in her heart, and then she starts vanishing in front of the cameras.
• Human Interest Story: the sort of reporting one of our leads was forced to do until she became the apparent Last of Her Kind.
• Last of Her Kind: People believe there to be exactly one Mexican in California for most of this film.
• National Stereotypes: Parodied and subverted.
• Played for Laughs
• South of the Border: Lampshaded.
• Space Whale Aesop: Respect Hispanic immigrants -- all of them -- or you will find that they are all gone and your state is cut off from everything.
• We Want Our Jerk Back -- several groups. For instance, what's the Border Patrol to do when the border is gone?