According to the New York Times, Mexican immigration to the United States has slowed to a stop. After almost forty years of constant arrival, the men and women from Central America are not coming in as fast as before. Historically, the Mexican immigration is the largest wave of migrants from a single country to ever enter America. . Over 12 million Hispanics have entered the country in forty years, and most of them have come in illegally. But the Pew Hispanic Center insinuates that the immigration rates are now on the reverse
Why have these men and women stopped rushing towards the US Border? PHC speculates that it may be the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets. Also, the U.S. has heightened border enforcement, which makes it tougher for these people to make it into the country without being spotted and punished. There has also been a rise in deportations, which causes Hispanics to fear the possibility of being sent back to their homeland. PHC also suggests that there has been a rise in the dangers of border crossing. With harsher punishments enforced, people are less willing to risk their safety to make it into the United States.
In addition to all the reasons above, PHC believes that a long-term decline in Mexico's birthrate and the changing economic conditions in Mexico may be keeping people in Central America. The Pew Research Center gained their data from five different Mexican government outlets, and four U.S. government sources. The Mexican Decennial Censuses, the Mexican Population Counts, the National Survey of Demographic Dynamics, the National Survey of Occupation and Employment, and the Survey on Migration at the Northern Border all contributed information to the project. Also helping was the 2010 US Census, the American Community Survey, the Current Population Survey, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
By splicing the data from the above surveys and statistics together, Pew discovered that in the five year period form 2005-2010, about 1.4 million Mexicans immigrated into the US. Ironically, about 1.4 million Mexican Immigrants and their children moved back to Mexico in the same amount of time. In 1995-2000, about 3 million Mexicans migrated to the United States and less than 700,000 moved back to Mexico. The downward trend in net migration has shown that there are less illegal immigrants in the USA today as there was five years ago. In 2007, there were 7 million Mexican citizens living in America. In 2011, it was documented that there were only 6.1 million.
Immigrants from Mexico comprise about 58 percent of all the illegal immigrants in the United States. That's because it is much easier to travel into the United States from Mexico by car then to try and enter illegally from a country where you would need to take a plane. Even though it is easier to sneak into America this way, PHC says that apprehensions of Mexicans trying to cross the border have plummeted by about 70 percent this year. While there were about one million illegal immigration attempts in 2005, there were only 286,000 in 2011. As the levels of illegal immigration have decreased, the spending in immigration apprehension and prevention is growning.
As mentioned before, one of the main factors contributing to the falling rates in Mexican immigration is the amount of deportations taking place. In 2010, about 400,000 unauthorized immigrants were deported, and 73 percent of them were Mexican. Many of these deported individuals are deciding to stay in Mexico, instead of attempting to reenter the country. All of these factors have led to a stagnant and possible declining, rate of immigrants in the United States.