More Mexicans Leave the USA than Arrive, Say Its Not Better

From 2009 to 2014, more than one million Mexicans and their families left the United States for Mexico, while more than 865,000 entered the United States, Pew said.

 The study used both Mexican and United States government census data to calculate the migration flow between their borders. In a Mexican government survey, 6% of returning migrants said they came back to find work or because they got a job in Mexico. U.S. Census data showed the number of Mexican national coming into the United States at 870,000. According to a previous Pew report, border apprehensions in 2014 fell to a 1971 level, indicating that relatively few Mexicans were even trying to cross.

Lee said Mexican visitors to the U.S pay sales taxes-an economic subsidy to Southern Arizona.

“We haven’t seen that since the 1930s”, Gonzalez-Barrera told the Los Angeles Times.

Mexican nationals still represent the largest number of immigrants into the United States. Earlier this year, it was reported that the United States was welcoming more immigrants from China and India than from Mexico, not withstanding the vast differences in distance and means of arrival between the three nations.

The net out-migration of Mexicans back to Mexico has made it more hard for USA agricultural growers who depend on the annual influx of Mexican workers to harvest their crops, but it may help reduce the cost of US border enforcement.

Although the Pew study indicates there has been a net loss in migrants between the United States and Mexico, with more Mexicans leaving than coming in recent years, the numbers involved are still very large.

When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump launched his campaign this summer, he did so with a call to stem immigration from Mexico, which he said had exploded. [Photo by John Moore / Getty Images]The Pew study comes at a time when the subject of Mexican immigration has become one of the hot button issues this election cycle.

Angeline Echeverria, executive director of the advocacy group El Pueblo, said the law is sending a chill through the immigrant community and feeding broader discrimination. The ENADID survey identified that the importance of family is the primary reason for migrating back to Mexico.

Another 14 percent said they had been deported. However, a growing number (33 percent in 2014) believe that life is no better in the US than in Mexico; the number who believed that in 2007 was only 23 percent.

Most of the departed left of their own accord and were not deported, Pew says.