It said that US census data for the same period shows an estimated 870,000 Mexicans entered the U.S. In fact, there has been so much of them crossing the border back to Mexico that the US has experienced a net loss of 140,000 immigrants between 2009 and 2014.
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The North American Free Trade Agreement also led Mexicans out of their country’s farm sector, Gonzalez-Barrera said, and the US border was so porous that there was little disincentive to stay in Mexico. Only 14% of the one million who left the United States were deported, the majority did so of their own accord to reunite with family.
A large number of Mexicans don’t see life in the U.S.as better or worse than in Mexico. One outcome of that can be seen the Mexican birth rate, In 1980, the fertility rate in Mexico was 7.3, meaning that the average Mexican woman in that year could expect to have seven children in her lifetime.
More Mexican immigrants are leaving the United States than coming in.
There are several reasons for the phenomenon, according to the PRC study, which cites a 2014 survey from the Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics, showing that 61 percent of returnees said they had done so to reunite with families or to start a family.
Whatever the reasons, the trend throws a wrench into the machinery of xenophobia and complicates Donald Trump’s plan for a 1,954-mile wall to keep the hordes of undocumented Mexicans and others from South and Central America out of the United States.
“The Mexicans are going!” could well be the parting cry from many Americans after a new Pew survey released this week revealed that more Mexicans have been leaving to return home than arriving in the United States.
“Although the number of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico has been declining, they still amount to about half of the total USA unauthorized immigrant population”.
Mexican nationals still represent the largest number of immigrants into the United States.
Pew’s Director of Hispanic Research, Mark Hugo Lopez, said that the era of mass migration from Mexico is “at an end”.
The study notes that 28 percent of all US immigrants came from Mexico in 2013.
In addition, the same data sources from Mexico and the US showed that the overall flow of Mexicans between the two countries is the smallest it has been since the 1990s.
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That historical shift comes at a time when immigration is now a bellicose focus in the 2016 presidential race, as Democrats and Republicans argue over how best to modernize the country’s immigration system.
