4 ms·

Is this really true for Mexican immigration? The stereotype is that the US gets Mexican peasants and Indian doctors, at least. Everything you say is true for th

Is this really true for Mexican immigration? The stereotype is that the US gets Mexican peasants and Indian doctors, at least. Everything you say is true for the Indian doctor or Chinese software engineer. Thus their departure would raise incomes in Mexico while lowering it in the US. So your point is mostly right, at least as it relates to this story.

hkmurakami 10y ago
It's possibly the middle class Mexican citizens who have the resources to make the journey across the border in the first place.
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  Middle class Mexican citizens can live good lives in Mexico, so they don't need to risk dangerous border crossing to end up a poor illegal immigrant in the US.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    Happy and reassuring to have my conjecture rejected.
  - adventured 10y ago
    That's incorrect. As domestic wages rise in a poor nation, emigration rises because the burgeoning middle class is better able to leave. That's why the US saw such a dramatic increase in immigration from Latin America since 1980, as wages have soared (relatively) there. The US now sees more immigration from Latin America every ten years, than it did in a century from 1880-1980. The desperately poor aren't the primary source of emigration around the world, they're mostly unable to move from their location. It's overwhelmingly not the Chinese or Indian poor (a billion people earning sub $5 per day) that are emigrating to the US, it's their middle class and higher - the truly poor can't move from their spot. One of the most obvious examples of this - for generations, health care professionals in low-development nations have been emigrating, seeking higher incomes in the developed world. That's despite the fact that they're almost always middle class or higher in their own country. You could see this in action over the last 50 years across poor nations in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Currently the middle class is flooding out of various poor Eastern European nations, seeking a better life in eg Britain. There were about a dozen articles posted on HN about this concept when the Syrian refugee crisis was peaking.
    - johnloeber 10y ago
      Thanks for this perspective. I didn't know about this.
    - ptaipale 10y ago
      Right. When millions were starving in Ethiopia in mid-1980's there was no movement of migration towards Europe. People couldn't afford it, they didn't even know of the theoretical possibility. Increased wealth and better access to information and information technology in African and Asian countries is what's pushed the recent migration towards Europe (via Turkey, Libya or Morocco) on the move.
    - polskibus 10y ago
      I disagree with regard to Eastern European part. Most of the emigration was unskilled labor. They were not below poverty line, they could organize move to UK, but they were never middle class in Poland, etc, and they usually aren't middle class in the UK. The second batch of emigrants is graduates entering the job market sometimes with degrees irrelevant in current market. So they decide to start their career in another country, because they don't have much to lose. In another country they focus on climbing up, often in a career not related to their education or previous aspiration. The doctors, etc are a minority. A visible minority, because their move harms their country of origin more than a loss of a builder from a social perspective but still a minority.
      - frozenport 10y ago
        What you say is mostly true in the UK and what OP said is mostly true for the USA. The USA gets better immigrants.
xapata 10y ago
At least partly true, in that immigration is a net benefit to nearly everyone.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I agree with this and support more or less open borders due to comparative advantage (even below average people can provide benefits due to trade). I was simply questioning whether Mexico is really sending us people above their mean/median.
  - xapata 10y ago
    Very tough to measure, as the most poor would be the most averse to tracking.
  - Throwaway23412 10y ago
    Would they have to? The USA has a GDP (PPP) per capita around 3x that of Mexico. The sheer magnitude of the difference in purchasing power would make patio11's claim true, even if they were hypothetically, in our president's words, sending us drug dealers, criminals, and rapists.
    - pm90 10y ago
      I'm not sure exactly what you are arguing for here, so please correct me if I'm wrong. You seem to to saying that the middle class in Mexico are not the same as middle class in the US because their wealth + income would not be regarded as middle class by US standards. I don't think that is a good argument, since once they move to the US they would be making middle class wages in the US, since they have the relevant skills to be employed in middle class jobs.
Spooky23 10y ago
It's a complex issue. NAFTA fucked rural Mexico as a tidal wave of cheap corn flooded the economy and killed the smaller scale agriculture, just as it did in the US. You also have periods where economic crisis and monetary devaluation in Mexico wipes out a lot of middle class type people. A lot of laborers and construction guys came because of this. You also have an insurgency in many parts of Mexico where the cartels have taken over and often little functional government exists. People there bug out if they can. Many of the "peasant" immigrants are from Central America and pass through Mexico. As far as economic impact, it's a complicated issue there too. The big land interests in Western States generally control the senate delegations pretty tightly. A lot of people are making a lot of money off of illegals, so if there were some major change, you'd see some sort of guest worker visa or change to labor laws (especially minimum wage, workers compensation and overtime) to keep the farms picked and slaughterhouses running.

hkmurakami 10y ago

It's possibly the middle class Mexican citizens who have the resources to make the journey across the border in the first place.

WillPostForFood 10y ago
Middle class Mexican citizens can live good lives in Mexico, so they don't need to risk dangerous border crossing to end up a poor illegal immigrant in the US.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  Happy and reassuring to have my conjecture rejected.
- adventured 10y ago
  That's incorrect. As domestic wages rise in a poor nation, emigration rises because the burgeoning middle class is better able to leave. That's why the US saw such a dramatic increase in immigration from Latin America since 1980, as wages have soared (relatively) there. The US now sees more immigration from Latin America every ten years, than it did in a century from 1880-1980. The desperately poor aren't the primary source of emigration around the world, they're mostly unable to move from their location. It's overwhelmingly not the Chinese or Indian poor (a billion people earning sub $5 per day) that are emigrating to the US, it's their middle class and higher - the truly poor can't move from their spot. One of the most obvious examples of this - for generations, health care professionals in low-development nations have been emigrating, seeking higher incomes in the developed world. That's despite the fact that they're almost always middle class or higher in their own country. You could see this in action over the last 50 years across poor nations in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Currently the middle class is flooding out of various poor Eastern European nations, seeking a better life in eg Britain. There were about a dozen articles posted on HN about this concept when the Syrian refugee crisis was peaking.
  - johnloeber 10y ago
    Thanks for this perspective. I didn't know about this.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    Right. When millions were starving in Ethiopia in mid-1980's there was no movement of migration towards Europe. People couldn't afford it, they didn't even know of the theoretical possibility. Increased wealth and better access to information and information technology in African and Asian countries is what's pushed the recent migration towards Europe (via Turkey, Libya or Morocco) on the move.
  - polskibus 10y ago
    I disagree with regard to Eastern European part. Most of the emigration was unskilled labor. They were not below poverty line, they could organize move to UK, but they were never middle class in Poland, etc, and they usually aren't middle class in the UK. The second batch of emigrants is graduates entering the job market sometimes with degrees irrelevant in current market. So they decide to start their career in another country, because they don't have much to lose. In another country they focus on climbing up, often in a career not related to their education or previous aspiration. The doctors, etc are a minority. A visible minority, because their move harms their country of origin more than a loss of a builder from a social perspective but still a minority.
    - frozenport 10y ago
      What you say is mostly true in the UK and what OP said is mostly true for the USA. The USA gets better immigrants.

xapata 10y ago

At least partly true, in that immigration is a net benefit to nearly everyone.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I agree with this and support more or less open borders due to comparative advantage (even below average people can provide benefits due to trade). I was simply questioning whether Mexico is really sending us people above their mean/median.
- xapata 10y ago
  Very tough to measure, as the most poor would be the most averse to tracking.
- Throwaway23412 10y ago
  Would they have to? The USA has a GDP (PPP) per capita around 3x that of Mexico. The sheer magnitude of the difference in purchasing power would make patio11's claim true, even if they were hypothetically, in our president's words, sending us drug dealers, criminals, and rapists.
  - pm90 10y ago
    I'm not sure exactly what you are arguing for here, so please correct me if I'm wrong. You seem to to saying that the middle class in Mexico are not the same as middle class in the US because their wealth + income would not be regarded as middle class by US standards. I don't think that is a good argument, since once they move to the US they would be making middle class wages in the US, since they have the relevant skills to be employed in middle class jobs.

Spooky23 10y ago

It's a complex issue. NAFTA fucked rural Mexico as a tidal wave of cheap corn flooded the economy and killed the smaller scale agriculture, just as it did in the US. You also have periods where economic crisis and monetary devaluation in Mexico wipes out a lot of middle class type people. A lot of laborers and construction guys came because of this. You also have an insurgency in many parts of Mexico where the cartels have taken over and often little functional government exists. People there bug out if they can. Many of the "peasant" immigrants are from Central America and pass through Mexico. As far as economic impact, it's a complicated issue there too. The big land interests in Western States generally control the senate delegations pretty tightly. A lot of people are making a lot of money off of illegals, so if there were some major change, you'd see some sort of guest worker visa or change to labor laws (especially minimum wage, workers compensation and overtime) to keep the farms picked and slaughterhouses running.