Mark Hugo Lopez, manager of Hispanic research in the facility, said the net decline in Mexicans was driven by the Great Recession in tighter border security, an improving market in Mexico and America that made it more hard to find occupations.
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The findings are based on U.S. Census Bureau surveys that measure immigrant inflow from Mexico along with data from the National Survey on Demographic Dynamics (ENADID) conducted by Mexico’s chief statistical agency (INEGI) to measure migration back.
Despite the downward trend, Mexico remains the world’s largest source of new immigrants to the United States, the report said. The sluggish US economic recovery and tougher border enforcement are the other key factors.
The North American Free Trade Agreement also led Mexicans out of their country’s farm sector, Gonzalez-Barrera said, and the USA border was so porous that there was little disincentive to stay in Mexico. Most people went back to their home country of their own accord, with the stated objective of reuniting with their families.
“Mexico has an aging population, just like the United States”, said Leo Chavez, a UC Irvine professor who has written on immigration patterns.
In the 50-year wave of migration since 1965, more than 16 million Mexicans came here, far more than from any other country, Pew has reported.
The numbers of immigrants from both China and India have increased in recent years, and may have passed up Mexico. Dealing with the flow of undocumented Latino immigrants into the United States has been a key issue of debate among democratic and republican presidential candidates vying for the nomination.
Mexicans have long represented the largest proportion of immigrants in the United States, but migrants from Asia are now neck and neck with them, according to the study. Because they are born to parents of Mexican nationals, Mexico considers Mexican-American children also Mexican nationals, so they were included in the overall total.
Mexicans who remain in the USA are more settled than before, Pew said: Their median age was 39 years in 2013, compared to 29 in 1990. Family. Over 61 percent of those who returned to Mexico cited family reunification as the main reason. Only 14 percent surveyed said it was worse.
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“Many (Mexicans) were expecting immigration reform, which has not happened here, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon”, he said. Most of the decline can be attributed to a drop in the number of Mexicans here illegally, to 5.6 million past year from an estimated 6.9 million in 2007.
