A new study finds more Mexicans are leaving the United States than coming to the country, marking a reversal to one of the most significant immigration trends in USA history.
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From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families (including U.S.-born children) left the US for Mexico, according to data from the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID). In the same period, an estimated 870,000 Mexicans came here, resulting in an outflow of about 140,000.
Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center, said he doesn’t know how much of an impact the Pew findings will have in this presidential race.
“This is something that we’ve seen coming”, Lopez said. The Mexican data sources – a national household survey, and two national censuses – asked comparable questions about household members’ migration to and from Mexico over the five years previous to each survey or census date.
The Pew study estimates that there are 5.6 million illegal immigrants now residing in the USA, down from 6.9 million in 2007.
01ay be playing a role in deterring illegal immigration, but emphasizes that a struggling USA economy is the primary factor driving the exodus.
Mexicans are the largest immigrant group in the US, accounting for 28% of all immigrants in the nation in 2013.
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. After seven years living illegally in Arizona, Quiroz has returned to Mexico.
Those who are still coming to the USA are doing so for the money, Gonzalez-Barrera said. Fourteen percent left after being deported.
The findings comes as the Washington Office on Latin América (WOLA), in conjunction with shelters and organizations that help migrants, reported that Mexico detained 73% more migrants since increasing enforcement along its southern border and roads used by migrants throughout the country. That’s a big change from the 1990s, when many people entering the workforce felt they had no choice but to migrate north of the border, Myers said. They support immigration reform with a path to citizenship and agree with Obama’s recent executive actions to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
It is not the sort of news you would learn by listening to numerous leading U.S. politicians.
A federal law passed in 1986, four years after Mexico’s economy convulsed, led to a more fortified border and legal status for millions of migrants. The latest effort has been blocked in the courts by Republican governors. Pew said their median age was 39 years in 2013, compared to 29 in 1990. And only 35 percent of adults in Mexico say they have friends or relatives they regularly communicate with or visit in the USA, down 7 percentage points from 2007, Pew found.
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Guadalupe Romo, 49, has lived in Fresno, California, for 26 years and has no plans to leave.
