Pew Hispanic Center: Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero—and Perhaps Less

A news story covering the release of this report by Pew Hispanic Center was featured on NPR. The story “Immigration from Mexico to the U.S. comes to a standstill” can be read here.

Pew Hispanic Center, 4/24/12

The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—more than half of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped—and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of multiple government data sets from both countries.

The standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and changing economic conditions in Mexico.

The report is based on the Center’s analysis of data from five different Mexican government sources and four U.S. government sources.

Immigration Remains A Dicey Issue For Romney, GOP

NPR, 4/23/12

At a Republican candidates’ forum in Wisconsin before the state’s primary earlier this month, a speaker who wasn’t on the ballot had strong words for the GOP regarding its low standing among Hispanic voters.

“The way the party … talks about immigration is going to impact the future course of this party and the future course of this nation,” said former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the first Hispanic to hold the nation’s highest law enforcement post. Gonzales didn’t mention any candidate by name, but during the Republican primaries, none staked out a tougher position on immigration than former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

“Of course we build a fence, and of course we do not give in-state tuition credits to people who come here illegally,” Romney said at a debate in Tampa last year. “That only attracts people to come here and take advantage of America’s great beneficence.”

Read more…

Op-ed: How Romney could win over Latinos

Los Angeles Times, Tamar Jacoby, 4/20/12

As a Republican who cares deeply about the future of the party and wants to see us win in November, I was thrilled this week when Mitt Romney told attendees at a closed-door fundraiser that he supports Florida Sen. Marco Rubio‘s Republican alternative to the Dream Act.

The next step: Romney should endorse the proposal publicly and challenge Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to bring it up for a vote in the Senate. This would be good for Romney, good for Republicans, good for many hopeful young immigrants and good for America.

Like the original, bipartisan Dream Act, Rubio’s alternative is designed to help young people who were brought to this country illegally as children and are now making lives here — this is the only “home” they know — but are unable, because of their immigration status, to attend college legally, serve in the military or work anywhere but in the underground economy.

Read more…

Home again in Mexico: Illegal immigration hits net zero

CSR Monitor, 4/8/12

At this time of year in this tiny rural outpost that sits on a mountainside in Guanajuato State, most able-bodied men are gone. They’re off plucking and cutting chicken in processing plants in Georgia or pruning the backyards of Seattle.

But this year, Pedro Laguna and his wife, Silvia Arellano, are clearing rocks from their yard to prepare a field for corn. They’ve returned home to Tamaula, Mexico, with their four young children, after 20 years in the United States working illegally. Pedro’s cousin Jorge Laguna and his brothers are planting garbanzo beans in the plot behind their father’s home. Their next-door neighbor Gregorio Zambrano is also home: One recent morning he badgered a visiting social worker for funds to start a honey-production enterprise.

Since the Monitor last visited here in 2007, a major demographic shift has transformed this dusty village of 230. Migrants have come home, and with them have come other important changes. In 2007, there was no running water, no high school, no paved roads.

Read more…

Book Launch: “Living Illegal, The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration”

Latin American Program & the Mexico Institute, 4/2/12

The Woodrow Wilson Center’s Latin American Program and Mexico Institute are pleased to invite you to the launch of “Living Illegal: The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration”, by Marie Friedman Marquardt, Timothy J. Steigenga, Philip Williams, and Manuel Vásquez.

The event will take place at the Woodrow Wilson Center on Friday, April 6th, 2012 from 9:00 am to 10:30 am. RSVP’s may be made directly on the Woodrow Wilson’s website which can be accessed here.

With Immigration Storylines, Lucha Libre Pits Mexican Wrestlers Against American ‘Bad Guys’

Fox News Latino, 3/30/12

U.S. sports promoters of Lucha Libre —a genre of professional wrestling popular in Mexico since the 1930s, are targeting a growing Mexican immigrant and Mexican-American markets with more overtly political storylines revolving around immigration.

It’s a move akin to what U.S. wrestling promoters did in the 1980s and 1990s, when they took on race and the Cold War, but with a twist — now, the American is the bad guy. Defiantly waving an Arizona state flag, the self-described American patriot leaps into an octagon-shaped ring amid blaring music and loud boos from an overwhelmingly Latino audience, who hold aloft signs in Spanish supporting his masked Mexican opponents.

“My name is RJ Brewer and I’m from Phoenix, Arizona,” the wrestler proclaims in a video of a recent match provided by the promoter. Taunts from inside the arena get louder.

Read more…

Vying for Campus President, Illegal Immigrant Gets a Gamut of Responses

The New York Times, 3/12/12

Jose Luis Zelaya stood with a crowd of other students waiting to hear the news. It was election day at Texas A&M University here, and he was running for student body president.

A victory for Mr. Zelaya, a 24-year-old graduate student from Honduras, would make history at Texas A&M: He would become its first Hispanic student body president — and the first illegal immigrant to hold the position. Mr. Zelaya came to the United States at age 14, fleeing an abusive father and gang violence and hoping to reunite with his mother and sister in Houston.

Last year, at a campus rally organized by supporters of the proposed Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who go to college, he spoke of being undocumented, and described his journey from cleaning windshields at stoplights and sleeping under a bridge in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula to attending the sixth-largest university in the United States.

Read more…

Immigration Decreases, but Tensions Remain High

The New York Times, 3/10/12

The impact of steep declines in the number of migrants illegally crossing the border with Mexico in recent years has rippled across Arizona and other border states, with federal and local law enforcement seeing big drops in crime related to illegal immigration.

In Arizona, federal agents have found far fewer drop houses, where smugglers stash border crossers. Police chiefs in Arizona cities say their crime rates are low and are falling, along with the numbers and costs of illegal immigrants coming through their jails.

Federal officials met with state and local police departments on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Border Security Expo in the convention hall in downtown Phoenix. They broadly agreed that the decrease in illegal crossers —down to about 340,000 migrants apprehended in 2011 from a peak of 1.1 million in 2005 — has lightened the workload for the police, but has also brought worrisome changes in the type of crimes they confront.

Read more…

Arizona governor blasts federal government over illegal immigration woes

The Washington Post, 3/6/12

Gov. Brewer

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer blasted the federal government for failing to secure the U.S.-Mexico border while invoking the names of a slain rancher and Border Patrol agent on Tuesday at a major border-security expo being held in downtown Phoenix.

Speaking to a room of law enforcement officers and those in the border technology industry, Brewer said the immigration issue isn’t about hate or skin color, as her critics say — it’s about securing the border and keeping Americans safe.

“Of course, there are those in Washington who will tell you — from 3,000 miles away, by the way — that our border is more secure than ever,” Brewer said. “No amount of distortion can hide the absolute truth. The federal government, Republicans and Democrats alike, have failed every single American, all of us.”

Read more…

Migrants are Victims of Discrimination in Mexico, Survey Shows

Fox News Latino, 2/29/12

Four out of every 10 Mexicans say migrants’ rights are not respected in Mexico, while five of every 10 say Central American migrants’ rights are only respected “a little or not much” and three out of 10 say that group’s rights “are not respected at all,” a survey found.

Some 38.9 percent of respondents said the main problem facing foreigners in Mexico was unemployment, with crime a close second, the 2010 National Survey on Discrimination in Mexico, or Enadis, found. The survey of 52,095 people in 13,751 households was conducted between October and November 2010 by the National Council to Prevent Discrimination, or Conapred, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM.

The survey’s results were released Tuesday at the Government Secretariat in Mexico City to provide insights into the situation of migrants.

Read more…