More Mexicans leaving U.S. than arriving

A recent study done by the Pew Research Center on Hispanic Trends reveal that there are more Mexicans returning to their home country from the US than ever before. Between 2009 and 2014, a net total of 140,000 Mexicans have left the United States and returned to Mexico.

“This more firmly establishes that Mexican immigration has declined and a major reason is that the unauthorized population has fallen”, Randy Capps, Director of U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute, said.

According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, more Mexican citizens have left the US than entered it in the past six years.

During the same time frame, an estimated 870,000 Mexican immigrants left Mexico to come to the U.S.

Over 16 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States from 1965 to 2015, more than from any other country.

The number of Mexicans living in the USA has dropped by more than a million in less than a decade, marking a historic shift: more Mexican migrants now leave the States than enter.

Stricter enforcement of United States immigration laws, especially on the US-Mexico border, may also have contributed. “It would be much better to look at things based on real facts, and the real fact is that immigration from Mexico has not only stopped, now it is going the other way”, he said.

By comparison, 14 percent of Mexicos return migrants said the reason for their return was deportation from the US, and only a small share (6 percent) gave employment reasons.

The reversal of Mexican migration does not mean that fewer immigrants are being seen by the United States only that their countries of origin are transforming.

While a majority of Mexicans living in Mexico still believe that life is better north of the border, a growing proportion is less impressed with the American Dream.

The end of the influx has led to a decline in the numbers of Mexican immigrants in the United States, Pew reported, to 11.7 million in 2014, down from a peak of 12.8 million in 2007.

Trump, a real estate billionaire who has been among the leading candidates for the Republican nomination in the presidential 2016 election, also said he would get the Mexican government to pay for building a wall along the border. It now criminalizes people who cross the border a couple of times. The Pew report – which found Mexicans moving home even during 2014, when the American economy was booming – suggest that has ended. The Mexican undocumented immigrant population peaked in 2007, when 6.9 million were living in the U.S. Therefore, since 2007, more than one million Mexicans are no longer living in the U.S.