Talk to any conservative these days about illegal immigration and they' ll tell you that our country is being overrun and our president is doing a terrible job of protecting our borders and stopping it.
As with many things they foam at the mouth about, this simply is not true.
Roughly 6.1 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants were living in the U.S. last year, down from a peak of nearly 7 million in 2007, according to the Pew Hispanic Center study released Monday. It was the biggest sustained drop in modern history, believed to be surpassed in scale only by losses in the Mexican-born U.S. population during the Great Depression.
About 1.4 million Mexicans left the U.S. between 2005 and 2010, double the number who did so a decade earlier. In the meantime, the number of Mexicans who entered the U.S. sharply fell to about 1.4 million, putting net migration from Mexico at a standstill. More recent data suggest that most of the movement is now heading back to Mexico, accounting for the drop in the illegal immigrant population.
Why is this happening?
Much of the drop in illegal immigrants is due to the persistently weak U.S. economy, which has shrunk construction and service-sector jobs attractive to Mexican workers following the housing bust. But increased deportations, heightened U.S. patrols and violence along the border also have played a role, as well as demographic changes, such as Mexico's declining birth rate.
So, the president deserves some of the credit as well.
The Christian Science Monitor has a great piece on why Mexicans are staying home and why its likely to continue. Here's a video to go along with it.
I think we are going to see more of these types of stories as prosperity continues to rise worldwide and as we shift into a multipoloar world.
1 comment:
I'm glad you're finally willing to give Obama some credit for the persistently weak economy and violence along the border, Mark.
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