- Harsher in Hindsight: Enrique getting snitched on at work for being an undocumented immigrant becomes a lot worse with all of the raids on such immigrants by the U.S.'s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency starting in 2017.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- Enqirue and Rosa crawling through a long and dark sewer pipe in order to cross from Mexico to California. And then they get attacked by sewer rats, who are infected, causing Rosa to die from their bites later down the line.
- The final shot of the film is a severed head on a noose that comes out of nowhere. A common interpretation of this is that Enrique was Driven to Suicide, and given that the film ends with Rosa dead and Enrique in a manual labor job much like the one he had back home, that scenario is very much possible.
- Realism-Induced Horror: For many Latinos fleeing from horrific conditions in their home countries, what Rosa and Enrique go through in their quest to settle down in the US is reality.
- Values Resonance: To this day, the film still has some very important messages about how emigrating to the United States in hopes of a better life isn't all fun and games and most likely will not lead to the life of freedom and prosperity that one had on mind. And as of The New '10s and The New '20s, police squads who raid homes and businesses looking for undocumented immigrants to kick out of the country, much like what happened in the movie.
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