The Immigration Policy Institute released a summary of new data new data on Mexican migration to and from the United States. New reports from the Pew Hispanic Center and the RAND Corporation provide useful information about the state of immigration today. Unauthorized immigration has clearly paused, and three-fifths of unauthorized immigrants have been in the United States for more than a decade. Immigrants are becoming more integrated into U.S. communities.
More than half (55 percent) of Mexican immigrants in the United States are unauthorized, and roughly three-fifths (59 percent) of all unauthorized immigrants are from Mexico.
The reports find that fewer Mexican immigrants are arriving in the United States due to the poor condition of the U.S. economy, greater economic opportunities in Mexico, and increased challenges and risks when crossing the border. The reports also reveal that, despite years of increased spending on immigration enforcement, and despite the impact of a recession and persistently stagnant labor market in the United States, fewer Mexican immigrants are leaving the country now than in years past. Moreover, the Mexican American population continues to increase, and Mexican immigrants in the United States have become the parents of a new generation of Mexican Americans. In other words, Mexican immigrants are staying and they are becoming more and more integrated into U.S. society.
The studies found that despite improved economic conditions in Mexico and worsened conditions in the United States, fewer Mexican immigrants returned to Mexico in 2008 and 2009 than in the two years before the recession. Declines were found in return migration among “male migrants and all 18- to 40-year-old migrants with less than a college education,” as well as a decline in total return migration. The studies suggests that the drop in returns may be due to the fact that many immigrants do not return home until they have accumulated some predetermined level of savings—even in the midst of an economic downturn.
According to estimates by the Department of Homeland Security, three-fifths of unauthorized immigrants have been in the United States for more than a decade. Roughly 42 percent of unauthorized immigrants in the country as of 2010 had arrived during the 1990s, and another 19 percent during the 1980s.
Mexican immigrants are the parents of the next generation of Mexican Americans.
The Pew report finds that there has been a “surge in births among Mexican Americans” over the past decade, and that this surge “is largely attributable to the immigration wave that has brought more than 10 million immigrants to the United States from Mexico since 1970.”
Immigrants are more likely to be of child-bearing age, and tend to have more children, than native-born Americans. As a result, between 2006 and 2010, more than half (53 percent) of Mexican American births were to parents who had migrated from Mexico.
Due to the increase in births and decline in new immigration, “births have surpassed immigration as the main driver” of population growth among Mexican Americans.
Source: Immigration Policy Center, Mexican Migration patterns Signal a New Immigration Reality, August 1, 2011.