To reach their conclusion, Pew researchers looked at numerous sources of available data, including a Mexican national household survey, two Mexican censuses and U.S. Census data.
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A new study has found that a longstanding flow of immigration has been reversed – more Mexicans are leaving the United States than migrating there.
Although the Obama administration has deported more Mexicans than any other president, the Pew study found that only 14% of those who returned to Mexico between 2009 and 2014 were deported.
The rate of undocumented immigrant Mexicans entering the US has been decline for the last eight years. The largest changes came from 2009 to 2014 when approximately 1 million Mexicans (including American-born family members) left the US while about 870,000 came here. Other reasons included the slow recovery of the U.S. economy in the wake of the recession, as well as stricter enforcement of USA immigration laws at the US-Mexican border.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson recently promised Arizonans during a tele-town hall that, if elected, he could get a double-fenced, 2,000-mile wall built on the U.S.-Mexico border within a year. The number of apprehensions of Mexicans illegally crossing the border has fallen sharply, to just about 230,000 in fiscal 2014.
He further said that the number of Mexicans might increase again in the coming years if the USA economy continues to improve. Earlier this year, it was reported that the United States was welcoming more immigrants from China and India than from Mexico, not withstanding the vast differences in distance and means of arrival between the three nations. About 6 percent said they had found jobs there.
Despite the drop in immigration, the USA has become increasingly diverse, with Latinos making up the country’s largest minority group.
First of all, the claim of negative Mexican immigration is only possible because Pew counts the U.S.-born children of Mexican immigrants as “Mexicans”.
“Asian immigrants are rising, and they are mostly coming here legally”, Gonzalez-Barrera said. “They are getting assistance and a lot of help setting up businesses and they also get financial help”, said Arturo Sanchez, consul for economic and media affairs at the Mexican Consulate in Santa Ana.
While nearly half (48%) of adults in Mexico believe life is better in the USA, a growing share says it is neither better nor worse than life in Mexico.
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The flow of immigrants between the United States and Mexico was at its lowest since the 1990s, the data showed. 8 million, and it has dwindled to 11.7 million in 2014.
