Well yeah I guess I expected nobody in here to understand NM and I honestly have trouble with it sometimes.
When I moved from here, two rich retired doctors from Williamsburg bought our house (and ruined our immaculate yard...) so it definitely has an appeal to retired folks but New Mexico has always been a frontier in the middle of the nation with a distinct culture that many have difficulty understanding. When my family moved to NM it was for work and we were extremely skeptical about it. The beautiful landscape and the delicious food made us stay.
So yeah the answer really is that it only attracts people working for national labs or companies like Intel (in Rio Rancho) and the artsy kind of folk who enjoy the culture there. It isn't like Phoenix and Denver which get people for all sorts of reasons. New Mexico and its cities don't have any mass appeal to most people to want them to move to the state, and I think we like it that way
