9 ms·

More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S

43 points by thehoff 11y ago

kelukelugames 11y ago
What is the trend for all Hispanics?
- adventured 11y ago
  More people are immigrating to the US from Latin America, than are leaving back to Latin America. Mexico specifically appears to have finally hit an economic level of opportunity where people wanting to leave to the US has slowed down significantly. However, the rest of Latin America isn't doing nearly as well as Mexico. Mexico's GDP per capita is now above Russia, Brazil, Turkey; and their unemployment rate is at 3.8% (4.4% urban). China's manufacturing labor costs are now above Mexico's; that will continue to increase US manufacturing shifting some things away from China and to Mexico, bolstering their economic performance.
  - ausjke 11y ago
    When their drug-voilence gets under control fully, it might be the best place(economically) for start-ups too, why outsource anywhere else when Mexico is so close and _safe_
    - adventured 11y ago
      I think Mexico will probably do very well over the next 20 some years. I expect we'll see most of the war on drugs come to an end, with Canada / US / Mexico all legalizing pot and decriminalizing some of the other drugs that drive a lot of the drug violence. Their GDP per capita will probably double in just the next 10-12 years, essentially catching up to mid-development European countries like Portugal, Slovenia and Czech.
      - ausjke 11y ago
        Mexico plans to legalized all drugs in 10 years, that definitely will put the drug war to an end.
    - WildUtah 11y ago
      Mexico City is already safe. Mérida, a big city in the Yucatan, is extremely safe -- Japan level safe. Immigration is easy for educated professionals and teams. Urban living is cheap and has amenities comparable to SF or NY. Language is a barrier, though. PR is a barrier. The business culture is more Wall Street or Bourbon Street than Sand Hill Road. Still, it's a great place to come to.
  - WildUtah 11y ago
    "China's manufacturing labor costs are now above Mexico's" China's wages and taxes are both still lower, but Mexico is enormously less corrupt and your trade secrets won't get stolen. It's a whole lot easier and cheaper to start a business as an outsider and dispute resolution isn't quite so insanely biased.
- drpgq 11y ago
  Even just Central America.
- thehoff 11y ago
  I haven't read this one yet but it looks like it may be declining across the board, at least the flow to the US. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/the-impact-of-slowing-immigration-foreign-born-share-falls-among-14-largest-us-hispanic-origin-groups/ http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/the-impact-of-slowing-...
x5n1 11y ago
Since US stole 1/2 of Mexico from the Mexicans. 1847... Wonder how many Mexicans were in what is now America at that time. What's with the downvotes, not as if it's not true.
- msoad 11y ago
  This is not relevant
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Because history isn't relevant to the discussion.
- alanpost 11y ago
  Article V of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which defined the Mexico--United States border, was agreed to by both parties.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    At gun point. And no Mexico did not start the war, America stole a bunch of their territory, Texas, by annexing it. Texas, the Lone Star Republic which essentially wanted to be its own country. That usually leads to war.
    - adventured 11y ago
      That's correct. Mexico lost the war they started, and as the weaker nation in the conflict they had little other rational choice than to agree to the peace treaty terms in question. Mexico has no greater claim over that land, than did Spain before it. You might as well say Mexico stole nearly all of their current land from native tribes that existed there thousands of years ago.
      - afarrell 11y ago
        > war they started To paraphrase Lincoln: "can you inform us of the actual spot on our soil where US blood was spilled?" https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutions/images/resolution-page-1.gif https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutio...
jedberg 11y ago
This is not entirely surprising given how hostile the US has been to Mexicans recently. The fact that one of the top contenders for President is so anti-Mexican pretty much tells you everything you need to know.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  It's not like our economy is exactly friendly to hispanics either. There was a recent NPR/PRI piece discussing how the only reason the dairy industry in Wisconsin is still afloat is due to immigrant labor being paid below legal wage limits. Its not what I'd call "quality of life" for these folks, and when you're badly hurt in a farming accident (did you know that farming is one of the most dangerous professions in the US? neither did I), you've got to take care of it yourself. Undocumented immigration is an easy problem to solve. If you're a company employing non-citizens without legal approval, the penalties start at $1 million/employee. That's not going to happen though, because consumers want services and products at extremely low prices (which would be pushed up by more expensive labor) and businesses want to stay in business (who probably couldn't if they had to pay wages dictated by law). http://wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/a-delicate-existence-undocumented-and-living-on-a-wisconsin-dairy-farm/ http://wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/a-delicate-existence-undoc... http://wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/immigrants-now-40-of-states-dairy-workforce/ http://wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/immigrants-now-40-of-state... http://www.npr.org/2011/08/31/140086117/e-verify-rattles-nerves-in-americas-dairyland http://www.npr.org/2011/08/31/140086117/e-verify-rattles-ner...
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    It might make sense to scale the penalty to 1 year of minimum wage. Obviously $15,000-$20,000 is less fun to say with your pinky in the corner of your mouth, but it might be easier to get support for a fine that won't immediately bankrupt the businesses in question (while presumably still being high enough to capture any benefit they gained from employing someone below that wage).
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tosseraccount 11y ago
"Measuring migration flows between Mexico and the U.S. is challenging because there are no official counts". I suspect many are avoiding official counts.
badloginagain 11y ago
I wonder if this is actually bad for the US. I don't know enough about US demographics, but it seems that it has long run on an assumption of near-constant immigration or desire to immigrate. If that dynamic changes, or starts to change, I wonder what the effect on US demographics/culture/etc. will be.
- WildUtah 11y ago
  The Mexicans that have stopped coming and started returning are more than replaced by Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans that have started arriving in much greater numbers. Mexico's fertility rate is down to replacement level and the country won't be sending more. Guatemala is packing 16MM people into a place the size of Maine, half of it malarial jungle and half volcanic mountaintop. The fertility rate is 4.0, setting population to double every generation. Honduras and El Salvador aren't far behind. Those Central American countries are desperately poor with illiterate majorities, the world's highest murder rates, and low educational attainment. Nearly half of Guatemalans don't even speak fluent Spanish. Meanwhile Mexico is a well educated nation on the verge of first world incomes. So the quality of migrants is not looking up. But the quantity certainly is.
  - greggyb 11y ago
    Yes, the quality of those human beings is certainly lower. /sarcasm Ninja edit for sarcasm tag.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > The Mexicans that have stopped coming and started returning are more than replaced by Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans that have started arriving in much greater numbers. Citation needed on the "more than replaced" claim.
  - thehoff 11y ago
    It looks like the replacement you're talking about is actually not true. The numbers that are immigrating is declining across the board. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/the-impact-of-slowing-immigration-foreign-born-share-falls-among-14-largest-us-hispanic-origin-groups/ http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/the-impact-of-slowing-...
agumonkey 11y ago
Reminds me of refugees stuck in France saying they never wanted to stay there but go to Germany. Massive national pride drop.
jack-r-abbit 11y ago
> Measuring migration flows between Mexico and the U.S. is challenging because there are no official counts of how many Mexican immigrants enter and leave the U.S. each year. I think this is the biggest problem. I don't really care if people want to relocate from one country to another. I just care that they do it legally and the two countries know about it. If you are paying a coyote to sneak you across a lightly patrolled stretch of the border in the middle of the night... you should know you are doing it wrong. "Securing the border" does not have to mean "lock all those dirty Mexicans out." It can just mean "let's make sure we know who is coming and going." I do recognize that the process can be problematic and could use an overhaul... but anytime anyone even mentions any type of reform, they just get shouted down. Because... racist!
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >I don't really care if people want to relocate from one country to another. I just care that they do it legally and the two countries know about it. The problem is that requiring them to do it legally is requiring many to not do it at all because those who do care if you can do it have made the laws so burdensome. >If you are paying a coyote to sneak you across a lightly patrolled stretch of the border in the middle of the night... you should know you are doing it wrong. If you see people paying someone money to take them on a very dangerous journey instead of going through your legal process, you should know the legal process is broken.
  - jack-r-abbit 11y ago
    As I said in the last part of my statement.
  - dropit_sphere 11y ago
    I don't think this logic stands up. Does the presence of widespread illegal activity automatically imply that said illegal activity has the moral high ground? Is it impossible to acknowledge that sometimes, people will have conflicts, but that one has the right to decide how they'll be resolved, and the other doesn't?
DrScump 11y ago
The outbound number was inflated by counting U.S.-born children as "Mexicans", going "back" to Mexico.
- WildUtah 11y ago
  I was a US born baby once. Shouldn't they have counted me when I moved to Mexico? That's how you get a net migration rate. Or don't US Citizens count?
  - DrScump 11y ago
    "Shouldn't they have counted me when I moved to Mexico?" Counted, sure. Counted you as Mexican, no. Remember, this is "Mexican" as in Mexican national, not latino/Hispanic as in culture or demographics.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  U.S.-born children of Mexican citizens whose parents were born in Mexico are, in fact, Mexicans -- that is citizens of Mexico [0] -- as well as Americans -- citizens of the United States. (Tangentially, the same is also true of Mexican-born naturalized citizens of the United States, who remain Mexican nationals unconditionally, and remain Mexican citizens -- notwithstanding the US requirement to renounce foreign citizenship -- unless they take certain actions specified in Mexican law by which Mexican citizenship can be lost.) So counting them in the net migration of Mexicans into and out of the US is quite appropriate (as would counting them in the net migration of Americans into and out of the US, were that the subject under discussion.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_nationality_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_nationality_law ; though they may face significant bureaucratic obstacles in establishing this if care was not taken by their parents prior to their return [1] [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/18/us-born-children-migrants-lose-rights-in-mexico_n_1683704.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/18/us-born-children-mi...
jcslzr 11y ago
Illegal immigration ends when USA puts people in JAIL for hiring illegal immigrants. On the other hand, Canada a couple of years ago started requiring Mexicans a Visa but now they are backing up and not requiring a Visa anymore....so in other words: illegal immigration is not a problem its a solution, not for the average guy on the street but for the guys at the very, very top.

43 points by thehoff 11y ago

kelukelugames 11y ago

What is the trend for all Hispanics?

adventured 11y ago
More people are immigrating to the US from Latin America, than are leaving back to Latin America. Mexico specifically appears to have finally hit an economic level of opportunity where people wanting to leave to the US has slowed down significantly. However, the rest of Latin America isn't doing nearly as well as Mexico. Mexico's GDP per capita is now above Russia, Brazil, Turkey; and their unemployment rate is at 3.8% (4.4% urban). China's manufacturing labor costs are now above Mexico's; that will continue to increase US manufacturing shifting some things away from China and to Mexico, bolstering their economic performance.
- ausjke 11y ago
  When their drug-voilence gets under control fully, it might be the best place(economically) for start-ups too, why outsource anywhere else when Mexico is so close and _safe_
  - adventured 11y ago
    I think Mexico will probably do very well over the next 20 some years. I expect we'll see most of the war on drugs come to an end, with Canada / US / Mexico all legalizing pot and decriminalizing some of the other drugs that drive a lot of the drug violence. Their GDP per capita will probably double in just the next 10-12 years, essentially catching up to mid-development European countries like Portugal, Slovenia and Czech.
    - ausjke 11y ago
      Mexico plans to legalized all drugs in 10 years, that definitely will put the drug war to an end.
  - WildUtah 11y ago
    Mexico City is already safe. Mérida, a big city in the Yucatan, is extremely safe -- Japan level safe. Immigration is easy for educated professionals and teams. Urban living is cheap and has amenities comparable to SF or NY. Language is a barrier, though. PR is a barrier. The business culture is more Wall Street or Bourbon Street than Sand Hill Road. Still, it's a great place to come to.
- WildUtah 11y ago
  "China's manufacturing labor costs are now above Mexico's" China's wages and taxes are both still lower, but Mexico is enormously less corrupt and your trade secrets won't get stolen. It's a whole lot easier and cheaper to start a business as an outsider and dispute resolution isn't quite so insanely biased.
drpgq 11y ago
Even just Central America.
thehoff 11y ago
I haven't read this one yet but it looks like it may be declining across the board, at least the flow to the US. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/the-impact-of-slowing-immigration-foreign-born-share-falls-among-14-largest-us-hispanic-origin-groups/ http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/the-impact-of-slowing-...

x5n1 11y ago

Since US stole 1/2 of Mexico from the Mexicans. 1847... Wonder how many Mexicans were in what is now America at that time. What's with the downvotes, not as if it's not true.

msoad 11y ago
This is not relevant
toomuchtodo 11y ago
Because history isn't relevant to the discussion.
alanpost 11y ago
Article V of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which defined the Mexico--United States border, was agreed to by both parties.
- x5n1 11y ago
  At gun point. And no Mexico did not start the war, America stole a bunch of their territory, Texas, by annexing it. Texas, the Lone Star Republic which essentially wanted to be its own country. That usually leads to war.
  - adventured 11y ago
    That's correct. Mexico lost the war they started, and as the weaker nation in the conflict they had little other rational choice than to agree to the peace treaty terms in question. Mexico has no greater claim over that land, than did Spain before it. You might as well say Mexico stole nearly all of their current land from native tribes that existed there thousands of years ago.
    - afarrell 11y ago
      > war they started To paraphrase Lincoln: "can you inform us of the actual spot on our soil where US blood was spilled?" https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutions/images/resolution-page-1.gif https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutio...

jedberg 11y ago

This is not entirely surprising given how hostile the US has been to Mexicans recently. The fact that one of the top contenders for President is so anti-Mexican pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
It's not like our economy is exactly friendly to hispanics either. There was a recent NPR/PRI piece discussing how the only reason the dairy industry in Wisconsin is still afloat is due to immigrant labor being paid below legal wage limits. Its not what I'd call "quality of life" for these folks, and when you're badly hurt in a farming accident (did you know that farming is one of the most dangerous professions in the US? neither did I), you've got to take care of it yourself. Undocumented immigration is an easy problem to solve. If you're a company employing non-citizens without legal approval, the penalties start at $1 million/employee. That's not going to happen though, because consumers want services and products at extremely low prices (which would be pushed up by more expensive labor) and businesses want to stay in business (who probably couldn't if they had to pay wages dictated by law). http://wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/a-delicate-existence-undocumented-and-living-on-a-wisconsin-dairy-farm/ http://wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/a-delicate-existence-undoc... http://wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/immigrants-now-40-of-states-dairy-workforce/ http://wisconsinwatch.org/2009/11/immigrants-now-40-of-state... http://www.npr.org/2011/08/31/140086117/e-verify-rattles-nerves-in-americas-dairyland http://www.npr.org/2011/08/31/140086117/e-verify-rattles-ner...
- maxerickson 11y ago
  It might make sense to scale the penalty to 1 year of minimum wage. Obviously $15,000-$20,000 is less fun to say with your pinky in the corner of your mouth, but it might be easier to get support for a fine that won't immediately bankrupt the businesses in question (while presumably still being high enough to capture any benefit they gained from employing someone below that wage).
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tosseraccount 11y ago

"Measuring migration flows between Mexico and the U.S. is challenging because there are no official counts". I suspect many are avoiding official counts.

badloginagain 11y ago

I wonder if this is actually bad for the US. I don't know enough about US demographics, but it seems that it has long run on an assumption of near-constant immigration or desire to immigrate. If that dynamic changes, or starts to change, I wonder what the effect on US demographics/culture/etc. will be.

WildUtah 11y ago
The Mexicans that have stopped coming and started returning are more than replaced by Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans that have started arriving in much greater numbers. Mexico's fertility rate is down to replacement level and the country won't be sending more. Guatemala is packing 16MM people into a place the size of Maine, half of it malarial jungle and half volcanic mountaintop. The fertility rate is 4.0, setting population to double every generation. Honduras and El Salvador aren't far behind. Those Central American countries are desperately poor with illiterate majorities, the world's highest murder rates, and low educational attainment. Nearly half of Guatemalans don't even speak fluent Spanish. Meanwhile Mexico is a well educated nation on the verge of first world incomes. So the quality of migrants is not looking up. But the quantity certainly is.
- greggyb 11y ago
  Yes, the quality of those human beings is certainly lower. /sarcasm Ninja edit for sarcasm tag.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > The Mexicans that have stopped coming and started returning are more than replaced by Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans that have started arriving in much greater numbers. Citation needed on the "more than replaced" claim.
- thehoff 11y ago
  It looks like the replacement you're talking about is actually not true. The numbers that are immigrating is declining across the board. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/the-impact-of-slowing-immigration-foreign-born-share-falls-among-14-largest-us-hispanic-origin-groups/ http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/the-impact-of-slowing-...

agumonkey 11y ago

Reminds me of refugees stuck in France saying they never wanted to stay there but go to Germany. Massive national pride drop.

jack-r-abbit 11y ago

> Measuring migration flows between Mexico and the U.S. is challenging because there are no official counts of how many Mexican immigrants enter and leave the U.S. each year. I think this is the biggest problem. I don't really care if people want to relocate from one country to another. I just care that they do it legally and the two countries know about it. If you are paying a coyote to sneak you across a lightly patrolled stretch of the border in the middle of the night... you should know you are doing it wrong. "Securing the border" does not have to mean "lock all those dirty Mexicans out." It can just mean "let's make sure we know who is coming and going." I do recognize that the process can be problematic and could use an overhaul... but anytime anyone even mentions any type of reform, they just get shouted down. Because... racist!

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>I don't really care if people want to relocate from one country to another. I just care that they do it legally and the two countries know about it. The problem is that requiring them to do it legally is requiring many to not do it at all because those who do care if you can do it have made the laws so burdensome. >If you are paying a coyote to sneak you across a lightly patrolled stretch of the border in the middle of the night... you should know you are doing it wrong. If you see people paying someone money to take them on a very dangerous journey instead of going through your legal process, you should know the legal process is broken.
- jack-r-abbit 11y ago
  As I said in the last part of my statement.
- dropit_sphere 11y ago
  I don't think this logic stands up. Does the presence of widespread illegal activity automatically imply that said illegal activity has the moral high ground? Is it impossible to acknowledge that sometimes, people will have conflicts, but that one has the right to decide how they'll be resolved, and the other doesn't?

DrScump 11y ago

The outbound number was inflated by counting U.S.-born children as "Mexicans", going "back" to Mexico.

WildUtah 11y ago
I was a US born baby once. Shouldn't they have counted me when I moved to Mexico? That's how you get a net migration rate. Or don't US Citizens count?
- DrScump 11y ago
  "Shouldn't they have counted me when I moved to Mexico?" Counted, sure. Counted you as Mexican, no. Remember, this is "Mexican" as in Mexican national, not latino/Hispanic as in culture or demographics.
dragonwriter 11y ago
U.S.-born children of Mexican citizens whose parents were born in Mexico are, in fact, Mexicans -- that is citizens of Mexico [0] -- as well as Americans -- citizens of the United States. (Tangentially, the same is also true of Mexican-born naturalized citizens of the United States, who remain Mexican nationals unconditionally, and remain Mexican citizens -- notwithstanding the US requirement to renounce foreign citizenship -- unless they take certain actions specified in Mexican law by which Mexican citizenship can be lost.) So counting them in the net migration of Mexicans into and out of the US is quite appropriate (as would counting them in the net migration of Americans into and out of the US, were that the subject under discussion.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_nationality_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_nationality_law ; though they may face significant bureaucratic obstacles in establishing this if care was not taken by their parents prior to their return [1] [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/18/us-born-children-migrants-lose-rights-in-mexico_n_1683704.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/18/us-born-children-mi...

jcslzr 11y ago

Illegal immigration ends when USA puts people in JAIL for hiring illegal immigrants. On the other hand, Canada a couple of years ago started requiring Mexicans a Visa but now they are backing up and not requiring a Visa anymore....so in other words: illegal immigration is not a problem its a solution, not for the average guy on the street but for the guys at the very, very top.