A recent study from Pew Research has produced an interesting finding. The total number of Mexican immigrants in the United States has decreased:
Mexico is the largest birth country among the U.S. foreign-born population – 28% of all U.S. immigrants came from there in 2013. Mexico also is the largest source of U.S. unauthorized immigrants (Passel and Cohn, 2014).
The decline in the flow of Mexican immigrants to the U.S. is due to several reasons (Passel et al, 2012). The slow recovery of the U.S. economy after the Great Recession may have made the U.S. less attractive to potential Mexican migrants and may have pushed out some Mexican immigrants as the U.S. job market deteriorated.
In addition, stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, particularly at the U.S.-Mexico border (Rosenblum and Meissner, 2014), may have contributed to the reduction of Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S. in recent years. According to one indicator, U.S. border apprehensions of Mexicans have fallen sharply, to just 230,000 in fiscal year 2014 – a level not seen since 1971 (Krogstad and Passel, 2014). At the same time, increased enforcement in the U.S. has led to an increase in the number of Mexican immigrants who have been deported from the U.S. since 2005 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2014).
A majority of the 1 million who left the U.S. for Mexico between 2009 and 2014 left of their own accord, according to the Mexican government’s ENADID survey data. The Mexican survey also showed that six in ten (61%) return migrants – those who reported they had been living in the U.S. five years earlier but as of 2014 were back in Mexico – cited family reunification as the main reason for their return. By comparison, 14% of Mexico’s return migrants said the reason for their return was deportation from the U.S.
That’s a substantial drop—about 10% of the total. There are some other interesting things in the article. For example, the degree to which the Mexican population and the Mexican-American population are diverging is substantial. There’s been a dip in the number of Mexicans who have friends or family in the U. S. and vice versa.
Maybe Mexico is beginning to appear like a better place to live than the U.S.
As an example of that possibility, the two employees working for us are Mexican. We sponsored them both for citizenship. One was able to gain legitimacy via the Dreamer’s Act, the other through a lengthy immigration process. However, some of their relatives have relocated back to Mexico — a daughter, nephews. From conversations we’ve had with them, life is “better” there than here — at least in the rural areas.
Work is good. It’s peaceful, with more traditional lifestyles. They show me photos of their homes, local parades, churches, and no where is there the turmoil or tension that seems to be consuming the American progressive lifestyle.
The note at the bottom of the link made an interesting observation that China may have overtaken Mexico as the leading source of immigrants. I’ve had some sense that there has been a lot of reverse migration to China over the last 10 years are so as China has enticed former citizens to return, and that many of the Chinese students in U.S. colleges profess to have no interest in staying in the U.S. after graduation and express confidence that China will be the world leader in the near future.
If illegal immigration is slowing it simply supports the axiom that immigration is encouraged or discouraged by a variety of push and pull incentives, coupled with transportation cost. Increasing the cost of moving to the U.S., and diminishing the perceived value of living in the U.S. as an illegal immigrant will mean less illegal immigration and maybe even reverse immigration.