Demographics is destiny, and there's no turning around this trend:
Posted on 12/10/2012 7:37:11 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Is mass migration from Mexico to the United States a thing of the past?
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 Castañeda notes in his recent book, Mañana Forever? Its economy is growing faster than ours.
And the dreams that many Mexican immigrants pursued have been shattered.
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.
— Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner.
When is the treatment of American citizens in Mexico and their rights vs US treatment of Mexicans going to be an issue when we discuss amnesty ?
Ever hear of reciprocal aggrements ? These are arranged to protect the rights of American citizens working or living in other countries.
Why is it when it comes to citizens of other countries we are required to offer them the same privledges as we do to US citizens? But when it comes to US citizens who get in trouble or attempt to do business in other countries they do not get the same treatment their citizens get.
Americans can’t own coast land in Mexico. And get no title to it elsewhere. If they run out of cash they’ll get unceremoniously sent back or put in jail untill some relative comes up with the “fresh”. That’s just for starters as for granting them voting privledges yea let’s give Mexican citizens that right when American citizens vote in their elections .
Why the Immigration Issue May Just Fade Away: The Arizona of the future won’t suffer from too many immigrants—but from too fewExcerpt:
"...A little-known, but enormously significant, demographic development has been unfolding south of our border. The fertility rate in Mexico—whose emigrants account for a majority of the United States’ undocumented population—has undergone one of the steepest declines in history, from about 6.7 children per woman in 1970 to about 2.1 today, according to World Bank figures. That makes it roughly equal to the U.S. rate and puts it at what demographers call “replacement level,” the point at which women are having just enough babies to sustain the current population. In coming years it’s expected to dip even further. Other countries in Latin America have experienced a similar drop, though not as sharp. All of which means that the ranks of those “invading” hordes are thinning—rapidly.
...When women start having fewer kids, that means fewer individuals will be entering the labor force two decades later. It has taken longer for that effect to appear in Mexico, however, because even though the fertility rate began falling in the late 1970s, the number of women of childbearing age kept growing. As a result, the pool of newly minted Mexican workers has continued to swell through today. But that’s about to change. As soon as next year, demographers say, the number of new entrants into the Mexican labor force is expected to start decreasing. This year that figure is about 750,000, says Félix Vélez, secretary-general of Mexico’s National Population Council. By 2020 it’s expected to drop to 600,000, and by 2030 to 300,000."
Pew slants LEFT. They're covering for the left, and trying to get us to lower our guard. Although there might be some truth--perhaps immigration is slowing--it certainly hasn't stopped.
I've seen a number of Pew polls that paint overly rosy pictures of social problems. They're quite often wrong, but by then, they've got another statistical report out on another subject, and the public (and watchdog media--what a joke!) have already forgotten about it all.
“When a behavior is rewarded, you get more of it.” From your comment on the thread, `Why Work Anyway.’
Here’s a classic example of why this country is on the skids: It’s bad enough that we have to support a native class of deadbeats; now we’re saddled with Mexico’s cast-offs.
They are actually educated on how to be parasites in this country, by their government on how to get here, and stay here, and then by our government on how to apply for the numerous welfare programs available. Recently we have seen Mexicans so brazen in their contempt for our laws that they stand in public and say, “Arrest me!” and then they walk away.
And all the while our 5th column—the MSM—gives them cover by assuring Americans, gosh, they really aren’t a problem anymore: “Is mass migration from Mexico to the United States a thing of the past? At least for the moment, it is.” and this from National Review, purportedly a conservative magazine.
So it isn’t the Soviets, this time, selling us the rope by which we hang ourselves. It’s our own countrymen doing it. We continue the great experiment in whether or not men and women are capable of governing themselves by setting forth that we intend to reward failure and penalize success, like the failed Soviet Union.
Now that’s a recipe for the disaster that’s coming for us, that could have been addressed, but now it’s just a matter of time. Why should we work. Indeed. Why be a party to this ongoing travesty. Shackle some other sucker to your wagon, Nobama. I won’t help pay for your socialist paradise.
Nations fail from within, not from without. Edward Gibbon
At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, “Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p. 109.
Abraham Lincoln
Pew Hispanic Center, huh? Relying on them for these stats is pure folly. Let’s see how long it takes PHC to call for more open immigration from messyco or relaxing the rules.
Demographics is destiny, and there's no turning around this trend:
In the American immigration debate, the point is often made on talk radio that Mexicans stream into the United States because their birth rate is so high. Mainstream sources sometimes make the same argument. In June, 2010, Britain’s Prince Charles warnedabout the “cultural pressures that keep the global birth rate high,” arguing that the same is true in “Mumbai, Cairo or Mexico City; wherever you look, the world’s population is increasing fast.”The population of Mexico City is certainly increasing, but not because the country’s birth rate is elevated. Mexico’s total fertility rate (TFR), or the number of children born to an average woman, is actually very close to 2.1—essentially the same as that of the United States. If Mexico’s population continues to expand, it is because its fertility drop is so recent. At its current birth rate, the Mexican population will soon stabilize even without emigration to the United States. As a developing country, Mexico is hardly alone in this situation. Mauritius’s TFR is 1.9, Thailand’s is 1.8, and Trinidad and Tobago’s is 1.6, all well below replacement level.
Ay caramba, the party’s over...Vominos, muchachos!
Excuse me!
Then explain the very third sentence: "At least for the moment, it is. Last May, the Pew Hispanic Center..."
Not sure what your point is but it has not much to do with the article posted on the thread. The article is about migration not birth rates.
So now are we just suppose to accept amnesty for the ones who are here? Screw that!
On the contrary, it has everything to do with fertility rates. This article is not propaganda from Pew, its simply reporting what has been known and anticipated for a number of years. People who have been paying attention to demographics have been saying for years that the Mexican immigrant issue would cease to exist due to the precipitous collapse in Mexican fertility rates. See for instance this American Enterprise Institute article from 2007:
Mexican Immigration Will Solve Itself...As the debate over illegal immigration from Mexico rages in Washington and across the country, and as the administration’s reform bill hangs by a thread, few Americans are aware that this problem is on track to decline, and will eventually become a vague memory.
There has been a stunning decline in the fertility rate in Mexico, which means that, in a few years, there will not be nearly as many teenagers in Mexico looking for work in the United States or anywhere else. If this trend in the fertility rate continues, Mexico will resemble Japan and Italy—rapidly aging populations with too few young workers to support the economy.
According to the World Bank’s 2007 Annual Development Indicators, in 1990 Mexico had a total lifetime fertility rate of 3.3 children per female, but by 2005, that number had fallen by 36 percent to 2.1, which is the “break even” point for population stability in developed nations. The large number of women currently in their reproductive years means that there are still quite a few babies, but as this group ages, the number of infants will decline sharply. If this trend toward fewer children continues, there being no apparent reason for it to cease, the number of young people in the Mexican population will decline significantly just when the number of elderly is rising. As labor markets in Mexico tighten and wage rates rise, far fewer Mexican youngsters will be interested in coming to the United States. Since our baby boomers will be retiring at the same time, we could face a severe labor shortage.
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