Tougher border enforcement also played a role along with the lack of jobs, Cornelius said. Many of the people Cornelius interviewed had worked in construction in California, Arizona and elsewhere but returned to Mexico and chose to stay there after the Great Recession began.
His research in communities that send a lot of Mexicans to the United States found a steady decline in migration rates to the U.S. work becomes plentiful again, the northbound flow will rebound, although probably not to the levels seen in the pre-recession period.” “Based on past experience, the safest bet is that once U.S. “The durability of this interactive effect will be tested once there is a sustained, robust economic recovery in the U.S.,” Cornelius said. Increasingly, they also are voicing agreement that other elements - including the changes in Mexico - could combine to make a substantial impact even after the U.S. In recent years, social scientists who study Mexican migration patterns have talked about the significance of a slow American economy. “If more Mexicans get better educated and are able to find jobs in Mexico, then they don’t have the impetus to come to the U.S.” “Over the long run, the factors in Mexico are going to play a role” in the rate of illegal immigration, Passel said.
Passel credits three main drivers of change:
Demographers said outbound migration to Mexico has remained stable at about 150,000 annually. The annual inbound migration from Mexico is about one-fifth or one-sixth of what it was about a decade ago, when it was about 500,000 each year, said Jeff Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew center. Mexicans accounted for 58 percent of that group, or about 6.5 million from a high of 7 million in 2007. The overall undocumented population in this country last year was 11.2 million, down from its peak of about 12 million in 2007, the Hispanic Pew Center said. Sources: Pew Hispanic Center Mexican census U.S.