Mexican Migrants Confront Difficult Conditions on Both Sides of the Border

Migrant at the border fence between Tijuana and San Diego
Photo: Eduardo Miranda

Proceso: Mathieu Tourliere

Translated by Noah Burton

Strict immigration laws and the tight labor market in the United States particularly affect the Mexican-born population in that country, so much so that many have to return to Mexico and remain there permanently.

However, once south of the border, they confront many problems in “going forward,” Mexican and U.S. specialists declared today in the report, Binational Dialogue on Mexican Migrants in the United States and Mexico.

According to the report, some 980,000 Mexicans reported having lived in the United States in the 2010 Census. Five years earlier, only 230,000 reported having lived in the U.S.

Mexican emigrants in the United States saw their employment and living conditions improve between 2000 and 2007. The group had the lowest rate of unemployment in the country through 2007, the report highlighted. But they were also the group most debilitated by the financial crisis: since 2008, they’ve had higher rates of unemployment and steeper reductions in pay than those of other population groups.

The population of people born in the United States who immigrated to Mexico was 739,000 in 2010, 77% of whom were minors.

“Mexico has never received such a large immigrant population,” Lindsay B. Lowell, Director of Policy Studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University in the United States, said during the presentation of the report.

The report points out that the flow of Mexican nationals returning to the United States has not increased between 2005 and 2010, and that many who leave the U.S. to return to Mexico don’t plan on crossing the border again.

Despite a drop in fertility rates in Mexico that has seen the number of births per woman of childbearing age drop to 2.2 in 2012, the population continues growing.

According to the report, the labor market in Mexico cannot provide jobs for all of the young people in need of work, despite a 10% growth in agricultural employment between 2010 and 2012.

Job prospects are weak in the United States as well, with only a modest increase in jobs in recent years, the same jobs “that Mexicans have held.”

The flow of emigrants from Mexico to the United States has fallen to “the lowest level in the past 30-35 years.” In 2005, 680,000 Mexican nationals left for the United States; in 2010 that number was just 106,000.

The violence that has rocked Mexico in recent years has also put the brakes on the flow of emigrants, except in border states, in which the numbers have remained high due to proximity to the U.S. The report points out that there is also a small group of emigrants from the north who tend to be more highly educated and have more resources, and who have continued to cross the border in search of employment.

“It’s likely that a high level of insecurity on the trip north through Mexico, and the necessity for families to stay together to confront threats to their property and their personal safety, could explain why high murder rates (in towns around the country) seem tied to lower levels of emigration,” concludes the report.

If current rates of emigration continue, between 2010 and 2020 1.8 million workers who, before the economic crisis, would have emigrated to the U.S., will remain in the Mexican labor market.

According to the researchers, when they first leave Mexico, emigrants are healthier than their counterparts in the United States. However, once arrived in the U.S., their mental and physical health deteriorates over time, as much a result of bad habits – eating fewer fruits and vegetables and consuming more alcohol and tobacco – as of the arduous working conditions they encounter and the stress resulting from their undocumented status.

The mortality rate and the rate of physical disability of those who have returned from the United States is higher than it is for those who never emigrated.

In the United States

“Mexican immigrants have grown increasingly excluded from social services. In the 2009 laws reforming access to Social Security, undocumented immigrants wound up excluded,” explained Agustín Escobar Latapí, a researcher at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS).

“The emigrants who usually return to Mexico generally are in worse health than those who don’t return, and than the communities to which they return,” point out the authors. 

This highlights the two different groups of returning emigrants. There are those who have built up savings and improved themselves and returned under their own volition in a “position of strength.” Then there are those who were deported, who need “a good dose of assistance to reintegrate themselves” in Mexico.

Authorities in the U.S. return undocumented immigrants to the border, where they

“end up in extremely dangerous situations, given the levels of criminality in the border cities of Mexico,” according to the report.

Once back in Mexico, the investigators observed a lack of effective programs of reintegration. Obtaining the documents necessary for access to health services, education, and social programs is difficult.

“Local authorities use their own discretion and sometimes impede access to documents such as birth certificates when they think that the returning emigrants or their children, especially those born outside of the country, shouldn’t have access to benefits like enrollment in school,” they explain.

Children born in the United States to Mexican parents often face obstacles to integration in the Mexican education system, one obstacle being obtaining the proper documents. The researchers call on the Mexican government to facilitate this process.

According to the report, those returning from the United States do not return to their communities of origin, instead remaining in the north and in urban centers, where there are more job opportunities. The researchers also observe that financial remittances don’t benefit the communities that receive them, but that they do improve the education and wellbeing of family members.

According to the investigators, children who returned to Mexico – those who attended schools in the United States – had higher educational aspirations than their peers who had not lived outside of Mexico.

In the United States, the reduced flow of immigrants and the granting of a stable number of visas raised the proportion of Mexicans in the country legally from 56% in 2000 to 70% in 2010.

In the same vein, more Mexicans emigrated to the United States on temporary work programs than in the past: 762,770 in 2011, up from 575,564 in 2006.

Despite these improvements in the legal status of emigrants to the U.S., abuses by employers on the other side of the border continue. “We need to strengthen penalties against employers who violate the labor rights of their Mexican workers,” emphasized Susan Martin, director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown.

“The immigration reform that is being debated in the United States would be positive for immigrants to the U.S. but it is not sufficient: it does not guarantee the social integration of Mexican immigrants and it creates a long and difficult path to legalization,” said Escobar Latapí.

He went on to say that if there is no reform of labor laws in the United States, the large numbers of undocumented workers will continue to exist. However, he added, the flow of emigration cannot continue at the levels it sustained over the decade before the financial crisis.

“Mexico needs to change the attitude that the departure of hundreds of thousands of workers every year is normal and innocuous. Mexico’s development needs to include this population,” warns the report.

In the face of the situation, the 28 Mexican and U.S. researchers – 14 from each country – called for the establishment of a mechanism of cooperation between Mexico and the United States on the topic of migration.

Spanish original