Mexican Immigration to US Up Last Year, Mexico Says

[High Plains]

Mods: This is the text of an email sent out by Frontera Norte/Sur News Service, so I don't think the copyright issue applies.

September 22, 2008

Immigration News

Mexico's Diaspora Grows


New data reported by the Mexican media suggest that emigration to the
United States rose sharply in 2007, the first full year of the
administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Based on United
States Census Bureau numbers, Mexico's National Population Council
(Conapo) estimated that 679,611 Mexicans made the move to El Norte last
year. According to Conapo, the number of Mexican nationals relocating to
the US was up 5.9 percent from 2006. It was the highest jump in Mexican
emigration registered since 2002. The total number of Mexican-born
residents living in the US now stands at 11,800,000 persons, or just over
10 percent of Mexico's population, Conapo estimated.

In 2007 Mexicans confronted stagnating or declining wages, increased
joblessness, steep price hikes for tortillas and other basic commodities,
and rising public insecurity.

Conapo's new data provides an important glimpse of contemporary Mexican
immigrants in the US. While still a minority, women are fast catching up
with men, and now account for 44 percent of all Mexican migrants in this
country. Although Mexican immigrants are now found in the remotest
stretches of the US, even in the frigid reaches of the North Pole,
slightly more than 70 percent reside in four states that have long been
immigration magnets-California, Texas, Illinois and Arizona.

Re-confirming another trend, Conapo reported that only a tiny minority of
Mexican immigrants, or four percent, work in agriculture. Fifty percent of
employed migrants toil in the service sector and another forty percent
work in manufacturing, according to Conapo. Overwhelmingly, the typical
Mexican immigrant is of prime working age, with 68.6 percent ranging from
15 to 44 years of age. People aged 45 to 64, meanwhile, account for 20.8
percent of the migrant population. Fifty percent of Mexican migrants in
the US have less than a high school education, Conapo found, while only
5.9 percent have professional or post-graduate studies.

Poverty continues to pull down the fortunes of today's migrants. Conapo
calculated that employed Mexican migrants earn an average $24,270 per
year, though more than a third, or 34.4 percent, make between
$10,000-20,000 annually. An estimated 18.9 percent of Mexican-born men and
26.3 percent of Mexican-born women fall below the poverty threshold,
according to the demographic research agency. Almost six out of ten
migrants lack health insurance.

Various media reports have suggested that fewer Mexicans are making the
trek to the United States in 2008. A combination of economic downturn,
stricter border controls and anti-immigrant hostility has been cited as
the reason for the change. Until now, however, there is little evidence of
a large-scale, voluntary return of Mexicans to their country of origin.

Indeed, the same trends that pushed people out in 2007 have deepened in
2008. In the northern state of Chihuahua, for instance, 26,000 people have
lost their jobs in the export manufacturing sector hit by the economic
crisis in the United States. At the same time, greater numbers of people
are reportedly fleeing the country because of kidnappings and narco-linked
murders which have left more than 1,000 dead in Chihuahua alone since the
beginning of the year.


Sources: El Manana(Matamoros)/Agencia Reforma, September 21, 2008.
Univision, September 21, 2008. La Jornada, September 14 and 21, 2008.
Articles by Ruben Villalpando and the Reuters news agency. Norte,
September 14, 2008. Article by Antonio Rebolledo.


Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

[High Plains]

1. Mexico's response to globalization n/t