Mexican Immigration to the United States: the Right Trend for the Wrong Reasons?

The New York Times published on July 6, 2011, an article titled “Better Lives for Mexicans Cut Allure of Going Wrong.” The main argument is that illegal immigration to the United States is going down in the last couple of years in comparison to a growing trend registered in 2000-2005. The reporter states that expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families are important explanatory factors. These factors are as important as “economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the United States.”

The author quotes Professor D. Massey (Princeton University) saying that “for the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.” The reporter uses the example of the Orozco family in Arandas, Jalisco, to make his point, and quotes researchers from the University of California San Diego to show the wage and quality of life progress for the Jalisco worker in Mexico.

On July 12 in Zacatecas, the Mexican President, Felipe Calderón, pointed out to this article, along with a similar one in The Economist, as an attestation that this diminishing trend of Mexican emigration towards the United States was led by the uprising generation of job opportunities in Mexico and its economic growth, among other factors.

I certainly agree with the reasons of this diminishing emigration trend, although I would not give the same weight to all the different variables that the reporter mentions in the article. And certainly, I would not base my conclusions in the study of only one Jalisco family in Mexico. That makes no sense at all.

I would say that the main factor that is upholding the diminishing emigration trend is the U.S. economy downturn and the increasing anti immigrant laws in U.S. states. Since 2007 the U.S. is not doing OK in job creation numbers, and that is currently affecting job opportunities for illegal and legal immigrants. Focusing on two thirds of immigrant jobs, the illegal ones for the Mexican case, whenever there is a lack of job opportunities, immigrants try to find jobs in the same city or region, then they move from the original place to another city or region looking for a job, then they consider going back to their places of origin. This centrifugal emigration caused by a weak U.S. economy is generally financed by the savings of the immigrant, the Mexican family´s little capital that could be send to the immigrant, and little temporary jobs as emigration takes place, or a combination of all of the above.

In the meantime, (during the last four years, this is) as difficulties arise trying to find jobs in the U.S., immigrants send back home a clear message: “Stop coming, it is difficult to find jobs here, stay back home for the moment.” This process takes time and the results are clearly lagged, that is why we see a diminishing trend of Mexican emigrants toward the U.S. until 2010-2011. Indeed, this trend is bad news for the recovery of the U.S. economy.

The hallucinating statement that Mexicans are staying home because things are getting better from a microeconomic standpoint is just crazy stuff. Although from a macroeconomic perspective Mexico is a good place to invest, from a microeconomic standpoint the case of the Orozco family is just a nice, interesting, and even cute case study, non representative of the Mexican reality. If the reporter goes to other selected locations in Mexico, he would find other happy stories; but in doing serious research he would realize that Mexicans stay home because they have little or no choice.

Some days ago, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography released data that confirm that between 2006 and 2010 the average family income in Mexico has gone down in 13.7%. This means that the poorer becomes the poorest, the former poorest go starving, and that an important share of rich guys in this country is taking their money abroad. The justice system is a total mess, corruption is rampant all over the place, democracy is in great danger, and more than 40,000 death have become the historical legacy of El Presidente Calderón.

All this also means that as soon as the economic downturn in the U.S. is reversed, chances are very high that Mexican immigration towards the U.S. will go back to their 2000-2005 levels, although it is important to pay attention to the relationship between capital and labor in marginal terms. In certain Mexican regions, mostly because of former high levels of emigration and because of war dynamics, the shortage of labor points out to higher levels of income to fulfill the demand for labor, although the narco-lords are indeed offering competitive wages in these regions for relatively non skilled jobs. In any instance, the New York Times should be more careful in disseminating this type of poorly-backed information.

New Book: Mexicanos en el Exterior

The new book “Mexicanos en el Exterior: Trayectoria y perspectivas (1990-2010)” is a magnificient contribution to the analysis of the transnational relations between the Mexican government and the organized Mexican diaspora. It is published by the Instituto Matías Romero, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, Mexico.

The contents of the book, which is written in Spanish, is divided in four sections. The first section is written by former directors of the Program of Mexican Communities Abroad (PCME): Roger Dáz de Cossío, Leonardo Ffrench Iduarte, Rodulfo Figueroa Aramoni, Teodoro Maus, and Melba Pría; and the former director of the Institute of Mexicans Abroad (IME): Carlos González Gutiérrez. In this section, we find a rich set of considerations about the most important aspects of the Mexican government’s institutional efforts to contact and organize Mexicans abroad: How everything began, the transition from PCME to IME, the networking efforts, the pending stuff, and the future.

The second section is a collection of essays from Mexican and American scholars about the IME: The importance of the actions of the Advisory Council of the IME, the IME as a tool of Mexican Foreign Policy, the role of the United States in the process, and thoughts about the migrant him/herself, mostly as a social subject of study.

The third section was written by representatives of the civic society who have witnessed the process from different perspectives: organizations of civil society abroad, the cultural factors of the process, and historical essays on the matter. Last, but not least, the fourth section deals with the topic from the perspective of the members of the Advisory Council of the IME: Leni González, Laura González Martínez, Gloria Inzunza-Franco, Orlando Iturbe, María de los Ángeles López-Gallo, Eliseo Medina, Enrique Morones Careaga, Juan de Dios Pineda, and Mario César Ramírez.

I think that this book is a strong, updated reference for scholars in Mexican migration issues, institutional transnationalism, and historical studies of Mexican foreign affairs. To get the book, go directly to the website of the Instituto Matías Romero.

Greetings from Mars: Mexican Immigrants and Major Works on Latino Politics

I would like to comment on the reference guide titled “Latino Politics: A Growing and Evolving Political Community” (2009). This magnificent work, published by The University of Arizona Libraries and authored by John Garcia (University of Arizona), Gabriel R. Sanchez (University of New Mexico) and J. Salvador Peralta (University of West Georgia), is a first-rate bibliography on practically every relevant aspect of Latino Politics: History, demographics, mass media, Latino identity, ethnic studies, political behavior, elites, inter-group relations, public policy issues, and methodology and measurement issues (this last, my favorite section). It covers works published mainly during the 1990s and 2000s.

I also enjoyed very much the ‘Retrospective Essay’ of their work: “Latino Politics: Both a Growing and Evolving Political Community,” in which the authors address implicitly and in a very straight forward manner the research and teaching agenda of those who address the Latino community from a scholar, political standpoint: The pan-ethnic perspective, group identity issues, assimilation and acculturation, opinion and policies, organization and mobilization, the foreign-born, and how the context does matter. It is highly recommended for those who are preparing a syllabus on Latino Politics, or for those who wish to update their current syllabus, to take a careful look to the whole compilation of references. The work is also an essential starting point for those students or scholars who are currently looking for new veins of research on Latino political issues.

Now, let’s take a look to a very specific aspect of this major reference work. As a scholar on Latino immigration in the United States, with specialization on Mexican immigrants, I looked immediately for the section on Mexican immigrants and... I guess there is something that I do not understand very well here. In Chapter Five, “Books Focused on Ethnic Studies,” the authors present a section on Central American studies, Cuban studies, Dominican American studies, Mexican American studies, Chican@ studies and Puerto Rican studies… but no Mexicans in the U.S., a category that covers those Mexicans who were born in Mexico, who work and live in the U.S. and who are not American citizens. In Chapter Nine, “Public Policy Issues,” I found a section on “Immigration and Naturalization,” in which there are several references to Mexican immigrants.

If an inhabitant from Mars would arrive today to our planet and would take the reference guide to see what is the state of the affair with Mexican immigrants in the United States, it would take some time for the Martian to realize that Mexican immigrants are important within the analytical framework of Latino Politics, although the Martians would have to look out specifically hard for the topic. At a first glance, Mexican immigrants appear nowhere in this work.

Good news is that research on Mexican immigrants appears and appears in good, healthy numbers. I counted the references that included only Mexican immigrants as a main target of research in the sections of National Origin Based Identity, Political Attitudes, Political Participation, and Immigration and Naturalization and found 43 references. This is, a higher number of references than the total combined references that appear under the categories of Central Americans, Cuban Americans, Dominican Americans, Mexican Americans and Chican@s presented in the Ethnic Studies section of the bibliography.

I think it is time to point out the elephant in the room. Researchers cannot skip anymore the importance that embodies Mexican immigrants for Latino Politics, and certainly for American Politics as a whole. Good that this work makes a distinction between Mexican Americans and Chican@ studies from a political perspective, but it is not enough. Mexican immigrants are now about 30% of the foreign-born population of the most powerful country on this planet, and issues like immigration reform are a big deal in Washington D.C. right now. The study of Mexican immigrants goes well beyond the study of “Immigration and Naturalization.”

Mexican immigrants deserve a category of their own in this type of macro research. Indeed, the current classification of research on Mexican Immigration in this work gives the impression that the topic is only a subject of incorporation/integration… which is not the case. I also think that changing the scope of this classification by creating a category for Mexican immigrants would contribute in leading researchers to deal in a simultaneous way with issues of assimilation, acculturation and transnationalism, for example.

Finally, I have reorganized the section of Papers, Reports and Field Research in my website. Now the information (on immigration-related research) that is offered in this section has been classified in the following categories: Alphabetical Order; American Cities and States of the Union; Economy; Education and Health; Immigration Reform; (The) Mexican Perspective; Mobilization and Participation; Political Integration/Incorporation; Population; Public Policy; Studies and Field Research; and Undocumented-Unauthorized Immigrants / Illegal Immigration. Enjoy.