Weekly Report - 03 May 2012 (WR-12-17)

Immigration is always a hot topic in Mexican and US politics, especially during an electoral year for both countries. US President Barack Obama stoked the fires by promising during the VI Summit of the Americas last month to push for an immigration reform in the first year of a second term. This is a promise he would be unlikely to be able to keep, as the Republicans would have to suffer a serious reverse in congressional elections, but it was designed as a gesture to the large Latino vote in the country. Immigration is one of three topics, along with Cuba and drugs, which the US-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue argued in a recent report “stands in the way of a real partnership” between the US and Latin America, and yet given the highly charged political debate over the issue the average voter in the US would probably be amazed by the findings of two recent reports, both of which claim that Mexican migration to the US, historically very high, has halted, and might even be reversing.

A report by the Pew Hispanic Center found that from 2005 to 2010, a total of 1.4m Mexicans emigrated to the US. A fairly substantial figure. It also found, however, that over the same period 1.4m Mexican immigrants returned to Mexico from the US. Net migration flow: zero. There are, according to the report, several factors at play: “weakened US job and housing construction markets; heightened border enforcement; a rise in deportations; the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings; the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates; and changing economic conditions in Mexico.”

The fall in net migration from Mexico over the last five years has also had an impact on the number of unauthorised Mexicans living in the US (see overleaf). As of 2011, some 6.1m unauthorised Mexican immigrants were living in the US, down from a peak of almost 7m in 2007, according to calculations in the report based on data from the US Census Bureau. Just over half (51%) of all current Mexican immigrants are unauthorised. Over the same time span, the population of authorised immigrants from Mexico rose from 5.6m in 2007 to 5.8m in 2011.

To some extent tightened US border security measures have contributed to the fall in the number of unauthorised Mexicans entering the US. Apprehensions of Mexicans trying to cross the border illegally, according to the Pew report, have fallen by more than 70%, from more than 1m in 2005 to 286,000 in 2011. In 2010, nearly 400,000 unauthorised immigrants - 73% of them Mexicans - were deported by US authorities, according to the study. However, another report, which coincides with the publication of Pew’s, argues along with the Pew Center that the US security buildup is just one factor in the fall. This report, by the US-based think tank Washington Office on Latin America (Wola) and Mexico’s College of the Northern Border (Colef), entitled ‘Beyond the Border Buildup: Security and Migrants along the US-Mexico Border’, cites other causes for the drop: “The US security buildup is a factor, but the US economic crisis is at least, if not more important,” it argued.