After historic high numbers of northward migration, more Mexicans appear to be returning home than arriving in the United States, spurred on by family values and declining economic expectations, says a new analysis by the Pew Research Center. A recent report by the Census Bureau found more Asians than Latin Americans were migrating to the USA, until in 2013 China replaced Mexico as the top country sending immigrants to the United States.
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This means that the net flow from Mexico to the U.S.is now negative, with a net loss of about 140,000 from 2009 to 2014.
During the same time frame, an estimated 870,000 Mexican immigrants left Mexico to come to the U.S.
According to the census data, 61 percent of Mexicans reported returning to Mexico to reunite with their families, but other researchers have suggested that the U.S.’s sluggish economy could have impacted immigration as well. According to a previous Pew report, border apprehensions in 2014 fell to a 1971 level, indicating that relatively few Mexicans were even trying to cross.
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. “I would not say that Mexico has more of a pull”, Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, Pew research associate and author of the study, told the Los Angeles Times.
From 1965 to 2015, upwards of 16 million Mexican immigrants came to America in what the Pew Research Center calls “one of the largest mass migrations in modern history”. It is hard to determine who enters the United States, when counting both illegal and legal immigrants. The total Mexican immigrant population in the United States peaked in 2007, at 12. But the image of the USA has been tarnished among Mexicans, according to opinion polling cited by Pew.
An appeal’s court decision recently blocked a series of executive orders signed by President Obama in November 2014 that were created to protect a few 5 million undocumented immigrants from the immediate threat of deportation. The slow recovery after the 2008 recession, particularly in construction and other low-paying jobs where many Mexicans had worked, is also a factor, she said.
However, the report found that the majority of Mexicans in the U.S. who returned home did so “of their own accord”.
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-There’s been stricter enforcement of USA immigration laws, especially at the U.S.-Mexico border. More and more people believe that “it is neither better nor worse” than in Mexico, with over 30 percent saying that those who move to the USA lead a life that is equivalent to that in Mexico.
