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Mexican migrants changed the United States for the better

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Mexican migrants changed the United States for the better

17 maggio 2022 11:59

Pedro Morales, a 73-year-old retired farmer, sits in his sparse home in Santa Rosa and gazes at faded photos of José, one of his sons. In 1990 José, who was 19 at the time, left this small village two hours from Guadalajara in the Mexican state of Jalisco, where chickens still roam the streets. And he illegally crossed the border into the United States. He still lives there today, in Los Angeles.

Three thousand kilometers from Santa Rosa, José says he left in search of “a better life and to help my parents”. He worked hard, but ultimately achieved both goals. With the money he earned from doing a variety of construction jobs, he bought a house in California. He married Claudia, another Mexican who had emigrated irregularly. His daughter Evelyn, who is now 26, is a US citizen.

José is not the only one in his family to have left Mexico. Brother Roberto lived in the United States for nine years before being repatriated. One of Pedro Morales’ nephews, who goes by his name, worked legally for four years in the United States and returned to Mexico at the start of the pandemic. Juan Carlos, another nephew, went north in 2021 for six months on a farm worker visa.

Demographic transformation
One family, two countries, and in between a tangle of bureaucracy and experience: the life of the Morales illustrates the vast and varied landscape of emigration from Mexico to the United States, one of the largest movements of people from one country to another of the last. fifty years. Since 1965, more than 16 million people have left Mexico to cross the northern border.

Partly due to the fact that so many Mexicans (and Central Americans) have moved undocumented to the United States, immigration is an issue that affects all administrations in Washington. President Joe Biden, for example, is under pressure to extend Title 42, a provision introduced by Donald Trump that bans non-essential travel to limit contagion risks. This policy, theoretically adopted to respond to the pandemic, allows US officials to push back migrants at the border, including asylum seekers, and is expected to be suspended in May. But the discussion on Mexican migration leaves out many aspects, especially the fact that migrants change the reality of both countries. Almost always for the better.

Mexican migration is mainly fueled by the demand for manual labor in the United States

The border between the United States and Mexico has always been quite porous, even though the period of mass migration northward began in 1964 when the seasonal work program was closed. laborer in the United States it prompted many Mexicans to cross the border. The number of migrants increased in the 1980s and skyrocketed in the 1990s and early 2000s.

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Mexican migration is fueled above all by the demand for manual labor in the United States, explains Jorge Durand of the University of Guadalajara. According to one estimate, 68 percent of California’s agricultural workers are Mexican. “I knew there was work in the United States,” says José.
The first wave of migrants fit this pattern well. According to Filiz Garip of Princeton University, they were mostly single young men from rural areas who had no papers and worked in agriculture. Later, migrants from the cities, richer and more educated, joined. The women also began to leave. The migrants settled in California, Texas and Illinois and other areas of the country. The residence times were also lengthened.

The trends of Mexican emigration changed again when José began to settle in the United States. After a peak in 2007, the number of Mexicans who managed to cross the border has shrunk every year, partly as Washington’s various administrations have stepped up surveillance. In the 2000s the net emigration rate was negative several times due to the high number of repatriations and a crisis in the labor market caused by the recession. The second trend is that since about 2017 the number of regular migrants has exceeded that of irregular migrants.

Today, Mexican women in the United States have far fewer children than in the past

The general reduction in the number of migrants is also linked to the demographic change in Mexico. In 1970, an average Mexican woman gave birth to 6.6 children in life, but by 2020 the children had reduced to 2.1. In the same period the average age of the population went from 15 to 28 years. Meanwhile, Mexican migrants have changed the United States. About eleven million people born in Mexico live in the country, representing almost a quarter of the foreign population and are an increasingly sizeable political and economic force. Hispanic migrants are younger and until recently had more children. According to the Pew research center, 17 percent of women who gave birth in the United States in 2018 were of Hispanic descent, up from 10 percent in 2000. Today, Mexican women in the United States have far fewer children than ever before.

Positive effects
The newcomers also changed where they lived. Nearly half of Los Angeles’s population is Hispanic, with a large portion of Mexican descent. In the neighborhood where the Morales live there are laundries (laundries)shops (stores) and tacos resales (taquerias), like in Mexico. Claudia says that when Evelyn was little she worried that she wouldn’t be able to speak English if there was a medical emergency. Today, however, there is no shortage of doctors who speak Spanish. Mexican-Americans are also creating new traditions. “On the one hand I have the feeling that I have lost my identity, on the other we are creating a new culture,” says Evelyn.

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The presence of Mexicans willing to work for a lower salary than Americans can cause wages to drop. Research by economists such as Gordon Hanson, of Harvard University, and Giovanni Peri, of the University of California, suggest that this affects only a small portion of the US population. Mexican migrants strengthen the purchasing power of far more people by providing low-cost childcare and other similar activities. “Anyone who has bought a house or eats fruit and vegetables” has benefited, explains Hanson. However, according to other economists, such as George Borjas of Harvard University, the number of poorly paid Americans may be higher.

According to economists, remittances have helped keep the Mexican economy relatively stable

However, many economists agree that immigration is good for the economy of the receiving country in the long run. A model developed by Hanson and his colleagues suggests that halving immigration from Latin America would decrease average income. This reduction would be more consistent in centers where there are more Hispanic immigrants, such as in Los Angeles.

Traveling north improves the lives of immigrants. Hanson calculates that the income of those who move will increase between 2.5 and five times, even taking into account that in the United States the cost of living is higher. Pepe Zárate, a 41-year-old Mexican immigrant, could have earned a decent amount as a doctor in his country, but 20 years ago he decided to move to the United States, where he now earns around $ 4,000 a month as a construction worker. In Mexico he would find it difficult to reach the same amount even as a doctor.

Assessing the impact of emigration on Mexican society is more difficult. According to economists, remittances have helped keep the economy relatively stable. Money sent by emigrants increases spending and is an important source of foreign currency. Pedro Morales’ home in Santa Rosa is modest compared to his son’s in Los Angeles, but more luxurious than others in the area. With the money José sent, Morales built a toilet with a toilet. Remittances were particularly important during the pandemic. Between 2020 and 2021, they increased by 27 percent to a record $ 52 billion, the equivalent of 4 percent of Mexico’s GDP. Instead, the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador spent only 0.7 percent of GDP on direct aid.

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But Mexico has failed to maximize the influx of migrants, explains Tonatiuh Guillén, former head of the Mexican Institute for Migration. People who can speak fluent English could work in call centers, strengthening the nascent service industry. And emigrants could also be a source of investment. López Obrador ended a program in which city and state governments and the federal government could double the contributions of emigrants to the United States to finance roads and other works.

Family lunch
Recently, the number of Mexicans deciding to move north has increased. In 2021, border police officers intercepted 655,594 Mexicans trying to reach the United States. This year the figure has already increased by 44 percent. There are inevitably some counting errors, but it is clear that the number of people crossing the border is growing significantly.

The Mexican economy contracted 3.9 percent from 2019, and is not expected to hit previous levels before next year. In the past, the violence of criminal organizations has not favored immigration, but that too seems to have changed, as Stephanie Leutert of the University of Texas, Austin points out.

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The political repercussions of this trend will make life more difficult for Mexicans who have already settled in the United States. According to Doug Massey of Princeton University, most studies suggest that Mexican migrants are becoming more and more like Americans, economically and socially. But lacking the documents, they often lack access to services that could help them integrate. Many live in fear of being repatriated and few run the risk of leaving the country. US migration policy “never acknowledged the fact that Mexicans historically did not want to settle in the United States,” Massey explains. “In reality they just wanted to move and keep their home in Mexico.”

José, for example, has only visited his father once in the two decades since his departure. He and Claudia would return to Mexico permanently if they had the chance to re-enter the United States to see Evelyn. “This country has given us many opportunities,” she explains. “But I’d like to be able to hug my brother on his birthday and attend a family lunch.”

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)

This article appeared in the British weekly The Economist. Internazionale has a newsletter that tells what is happening in the United States and another about Latin America. Sign up here.

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