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Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die
Bill Maher: The Zombie Life Cycle Of Republican Lies. They Never - Ever - Die
Why fewer Mexicans are leaving their homeland for the U.S.
To its southern neighbor, the United States once represented hope, safety and prosperity. But with the effects of the Great Recession still lingering and tougher enforcement along the U.S. border, fewer Mexicans see a reason to leave their homeland.
Workplace raids by immigration agents, nose-diving birthrates at home and the economic slowdown north of the border have convinced nearly half of Mexicans surveyed that life in their native country is as good or better than what would await them if they crossed into the U.S., according to findings released Thursday by the Washington-based Pew Research Center.
In 2007, 23% of Mexicans told Pew researchers that life is neither better nor worse in the U.S. than in Mexico. By 2014, 33% made the same assessment.
“I would not say that Mexico has more of a pull,” said study author and Pew research associate Ana Gonzalez-Barrera. “But the United States isn’t as attractive.”
The report echoes studies that had recorded drops in illegal immigration, but it delves into the reasons driving the trend and contrasts the drop with the number of Mexicans who leave the United States.
According to census numbers from the U.S. and Mexico, since 2005 Mexican nationals have begun to leave the U.S. in greater numbers than at any point in history, and the largest share of those who return to Mexico are immigrants who had been in the country illegally.
The number of people leaving the U.S. began to fall off in 2010. By 2014, fewer Mexican nationals were leaving the U.S. than a decade earlier, but even fewer were entering the country from Mexico. The result, Gonzalez-Barrera argues, is the first modern instance of the migration scales tipping: More Mexican nationals are leaving the U.S. than the number of Mexicans entering the country.
“We haven’t seen that since the 1930s,” Gonzalez-Barrera said.
The report focused on migration of Mexicans, not other nationalities. Last year and this fall, U.S. immigration authorities detected an uptick in illegal immigration from Central America.
Mexico has not become more alluring, Gonzalez-Barrera said, despite the presence of more jobs in the country — and fewer births means fewer people in the labor pool. But the image of the U.S. has been tarnished among Mexicans, according to opinion polling cited by Pew.
About half of all adults in Mexico still think those who have left Mexico for the U.S. lead better lives than those left behind, but the growing share who don’t see much of a difference is the key to understanding the most recent cycle of immigration.
In the 1990s, Mexico was slammed by an economic downturn, and a tremendous number of people born in the 1970s was finally entering the labor pool. Seeking a way to earn money, children and adults younger than 30 made up 50% of immigrants into the U.S. from Mexico in 1990, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and its American Community Survey.
The North American Free Trade Agreement also led Mexicans out of their country’s farm sector, Gonzalez-Barrera said, and the U.S. border was so porous that there was little disincentive to stay in Mexico. “Anybody who could come across could get in,” she said.
In the 2000s, the U.S. began to change its border policy. It now criminalizes people who cross the border more than once. Highly publicized workplace raids that rounded up scores of unauthorized workers — for example, at a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa — reinforced the idea of a more watchful federal government.
From 2005 to 2009, census data from the U.S. and Mexico cited by Pew showed about the same number of Mexican nationals entering the country as leaving.
Those who are still coming to the U.S. are doing so for the money, Gonzalez-Barrera said.
“U.S. wages are still attractive to migrants,” she said. “There is still much more to be earned here than in Mexico.”
The Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics found that the pull of family factors most into Mexicans’ desire to return home. The survey, conducted in 2014, found that 6 in 10 Mexicans who moved to the U.S. after 2009 and returned to Mexico before 2014 said they returned to reunite with family or start a family of their own.
Far smaller shares said they had been deported (14%) or returned to look for work (6%).
For news on immigration and other issues in the Southwest, follow@nigelduara on Twitter.
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