Mexican Migration May Be Over

At least for the moment, it is. Last May, the Pew Hispanic Center, in a study based on U.S. and Mexican statistics, reported that net migration from Mexico to this country had fallen to zero from 2005 to 2010.

Pew said 20,000 more people moved to Mexico from the United States than from there to here in those years. That's a vivid contrast with the years 1995 to 2000, when net inflow from Mexico was 2.2 million people.

Because there was net Mexican immigration until 2007, when the housing market collapsed and the Great Recession began, it seems clear that there was net outmigration from 2007 to 2010, and that likely has continued in 2011 and 2012.

There's a widespread assumption that Mexican migration will resume when the U.S. economy starts growing robustly again. But I think there's reason to doubt that will be the case.

Over the past few years, I have been working on a book, scheduled for publication next fall, on American migrations, internal and immigrant. What I've found is that over the years this country has been peopled in large part by surges of migration that have typically lasted just one or two generations.

Almost no one predicted that these surges of migration would occur, and almost no one predicted when they would end.

For example, when our immigration system was opened up in 1965, experts testified that we would not get many immigrants from Latin America or Asia. They assumed that immigrants would come mainly from Europe, as they had in the past.

Experts have also tended to assume that immigrants are motivated primarily by economic factors. And in the years starting in the 1980s, many people in Latin America and Asia, especially in Mexico, which has produced more than 60 percent of Latin American immigrants, saw opportunities to make a better living in this country.

But masses of people do not uproot themselves from familiar territory just to make marginal economic gains. They migrate to pursue dreams or escape nightmares.

Life in Mexico is not a nightmare for many these days. Beneath the headlines about killings in the drug wars, Mexico has become a predominantly middle-class country, as Jorge Castaneda notes in his recent book, "Manana Forever?" Its economy is growing faster than ours.

You can see that if you look at the statistics on mortgage foreclosures, starting with the housing bust in 2007. More than half were in the four "sand states" -- California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida -- and within them, as the Pew Hispanic Center noted in a 2009 report, in areas with large numbers of Latino immigrants.

These were places where subprime mortgages were granted, with encouragement from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to many Latinos unqualified by traditional credit standards.

These new homeowners, many of them construction workers, dreamed of gaining hundreds of thousands of dollars as housing prices inevitably rose. Instead, they collapsed. My estimate is that one-third of those foreclosed on in these years were Latinos. Their dreams turned into nightmares.

We can see further evidence in last month's Pew Research report on the recent decline in U.S. birthrates. The biggest drop was among Mexican-born women, from 455,000 births in 2007 to 346,000 in 2010.

That's a 24 percent decline, compared with only a 6 percent decline among U.S.-born women. It's comparable to the sharp decline in U.S. birthrates in the Depression years from 1929 to 1933.

Beneath the cold statistics on foreclosures and births is a human story, a story of people whose personal lives have been deeply affected by economic developments over which they had no control and of which they had no warning.

Those events have prompted many to resort to, in Mitt Romney's chilly words, "self-deportation." And their experiences are likely to have reverberations for many others who have learned of their plight.

Surges of migration that have shaped the country sometimes end abruptly. The surge of Southern blacks to Northern cities lasted from 1940 to 1965 -- one generation. The surge of Mexicans into the U.S. lasted from 1982 to 2007 -- one generation.

The northward surge of American blacks has never resumed. I don't think the northward surge of Mexicans will, either.

BTW, lead counsel in two of the "mtge standard lawsuits"----none other than Barack HObama representing the arch criminal organization, ACORN.

HERE'S HOW THE SAP-HAPPY CRIMINAL LIBERAL MIND WORKS HObama sued lenders to force them to give out toxic loans, and now, as President, he is suing them for complying, and actually lending the money.

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FYI---under the new HObam'ed "non-existent mtge standards," lenders could no longer turn down a loan from someone who received welfare, unemployment compensation, child support as their "primary income." One couple receiving only SSI---applied for a mtge w/ a fraudulent app prepared by a greedy latino realty agent.

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REFERENCE Clinton appointee Andrew Cuomo's Social Engineering as HUD Chief Contributed to Subprime Crisis / originally published on Examiner.com

New Yorkers voted Andrew Cuomo as governor---but Cuomo's gargantuan political ambitions know no bounds.

As Americans continue to struggle with the loss of their homes, savings and retirement resources, thieving/opportunistic politicans that were complicit in deregulating govt sponsored enterprises (GSEs) in the secondary market----namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac---that caused the subprime loan bomb to detonate---are still jockeying for power.

BACKSTORY In 1993 President Bill Clinton appointed Andrew Cuomo to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as Assistant Secretary.In 1997 Cuomo took over as HUD chief replacing Clinton appointee Henry Cisneros. Latino Cisneros tenure championed Clinton's goal of social engineering via the housing market forcing lenders to issue loans to those that would not financially qualify for standard-laden lending.

Cisneros left office in a scandal involving lying to the FBI over payouts to a mistress, Cisneros subsequently pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and though never sent to prison received a pardon from Bill Clinton in 2001.

Andrew Cuomo took the HUD reins and not only furthered Cisneros and Clinton's policies but greatly expanded them.

Henry Cisneros moved the GSEs toward a requirement that 42 percent of their mortgages serve low and moderate income families. Andrew Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages for the "very- low-income."

These bad loans were purchased and sold throughout the secondary market and the pyramid grew and the bottom collapsed resulting in the subprime crisis we are still reeling from today.c

In 2008, the Village Voice published a compelling report detailing Andrew Cuomo's policy decisions "that gave birth to the country's current crisis."

The report touched on how Cuomo's 187-page rules "opened the door to abuse." The rules explicitly rejected the idea of imposing any new reporting requirements on the GSEs. In other words, HUD wanted Fannie and Freddie to buy risky loans, but the department didn't want to hear just how risky they were.

Many New York voters are failing to see the actual harm to the minority community directly caused by Cuomo's policies...matter.

Cuomo's top HUD aide said, "We believe that there are a lot of loans to black Americans that could be safely purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if these companies were more flexible."

Andrew Cuomo doubled down and had this to say about his HUD standards, "GSE presence in the subprime market could be of significant benefit to lower-income families, minorities, and families living in underserved areas."

How's that working out for the minority community, where foreclosures and unemployment rates have hit the hardest as a result of such failed policies and blatant social engineering? ///2012 Obama talks a lot about the economy, but says only things that make him look good. The whoppers keep on coming-—now seeking reelection he says taxpayers got back every dime used for TARP to rescue the financial system, and also passed a “historic law” to end taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts for good.He keeps forgetting to say US taxpayers are still owed big bucks for the billion dollar bailout of the financial industry. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together owe taxpayers over $140 billion.

Things not said:

1) Mexico has reached the economic-demographic plateau, and its birthrate has plummeted to about 2.3 to 2.5. Thus, in short order, there will not be enough “excess population” to sustain mass emigration, outside of a major war or natural disaster.

2) Much of the huge migration wave was caused by Mexican President Vincente Fox, who persuaded the government to implement the “Plan Puebla Panama”, turning southern Mexico into a gigantic sea/rail/air transportation hub. W. Bush was a big supporter of this as well.

This first part of the PPP was to *depopulate* much of southern Mexico, sending the people who live there North, hopefully to the US. But having accomplished that goal, there are no more teeming masses to send North in a batch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Puebla_Panama

3) Mexicans tend to believe what they are told about coming North. If they are told crossing is easy, and jobs are available, they will come. But if they are told times are hard, the border is fierce, the drug war is violent, etc., most will take a pass and not try.

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