Border wall? More Mexicans are leaving the United States than arriving

From 2009 to 2014, more Mexicans have left the United States than come into it, resulting in a net loss of 140,000 persons in the span of those five years, a report from Pew Research Center says. An increase in the number of new immigrant arrivals from China, India and Central America has been documented in recent years.

According to a Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics for 2014, there were 1 million Mexicans who chose to leave the us for Mexico from 2009 to 2014 with their families.

More Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico from the USA than have migrated there, a new study found on Thursday amidst increasing hostility towards Mexicans in the U.S.

Fear is just one of the reasons representatives at Raices here in San Antonio say many of their Mexican clients have expressed going back to Mexico. In other words, contrary to popular narrative, the U.S.-Mexico border is not wildly insecure or out of control, and building a wall there is unlikely to do anything productive (talking to you, Donald Trump!). Even so, most of the million Mexicans who crossed back over the border from the U.S. did so of their own volition, not because they were deported. Mexicans are still the largest immigrant group in the country. Highways and rail lines that connect to the world’s largest economy north of the border have attracted more investors.

But the administration also enacted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to shield from deportation some 700,000 young immigrants here illegally and has tried to shield millions more. In 1970, fewer than 1 million Mexican immigrants lived in the U.S. By 2000, that number had grown to 9.4 million, and by 2007 it reached a peak at 12.8 million. In fiscal 2014, the United States apprehended 227,000 Mexicans on its southern borders, the lowest level since 1970s.

The report also found that some of the characteristics of Mexican immigrants now living in the United States have changed.

The era of mass migration from Mexico is “at an end”, declared Mark Hugo Lopez, Pew’s director of Hispanic research.

The new migration pattern “stands in very stark contrast to the rhetoric we’re hearing in the presidential primaries”, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of political science at UC Riverside. The story included comments from Durham Police Chief Jose Lopez who said the law will cause many undocumented immigrants to flee from minor incidents from fear of being deported. Of those surveyed, 33 percent said life in the U.S.is neither better nor worse than life in the US – 10 percent higher than eight years ago.