Immigration Slows, Lowers Proportion of Latin Americans in US

Fox News Latino, 9/21/12

Immigration to the United States last year had its smallest increase in a  decade, and the proportion of Latin Americans among immigrants fell, according  to calculations published Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The calculations show that last year in the United States the number of  foreign-born residents totaled 40.4 million, equivalent to 13 percent of the  total population.

But the increase of 400,000 immigrants was the smallest number in a decade  and the proportion of Latin Americans within that group fell from 54 percent of  immigrants in 2010 to 52.6 percent last year, at the same time that the  proportion of immigrants from Asia and Africa rose.

A recent study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that the largest immigration  flow in history from a single country – Mexico – to the United States has ended  and the flow of Mexicans may well have reversed.

Read more…

In second Mexico vote, this time of migrants, Vazquez Mota wins

The Los Angeles Times, 07/02/2012

Josefina Vázquez Mota

The tiny but closely watched migrant segment of the Mexican electorate voted firmly for Josefina Vazquez Mota of the governing National Action Party (PAN), an opposite result to her third-place showing in the national race.

The results announced Monday by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) also showed a 23% increase in voter-abroad participation over the 2006 election, the first time Mexicans living abroad had the right to vote.

Read more…

 

Immigrants express shock at return of Mexico’s PRI

The Associated Press, 07/03/2012

Mexico’s new president may dissuade some immigrants from returning home, despite promising economic opportunities there and a faltering U.S. job market.

The vast majority of the 40,000 Mexican expatriates who voted in Sunday’s election cast ballots against President-elect Enrique Pena Nieto. Many immigrants said Monday that they were shocked his Institutional Revolutionary Party — which largely convinced them to leave their homeland — has returned to power.

Read more…

A right, little by little. The extraterritorial vote and its Kafkian amendments. [in Spanish]

Xóchitl Bada op-ed

In this op-ed Dr. Bada discusses voting as a Mexican living abroad, and how it is limited by Mexican electoral laws.  The first is the need for a voters card, which can only be obtained in Mexico, and the second is lack of information in the United States.  Bada says that, for example, many Mexicans abroad did not know that they could use their cards from 2003 or 2009, and that there are other obstacles to obtaining a card once they are actually in Mexico.  Once people actually get a card, Bada says, they then encounter continued problems with actually sending in their vote.  She says that over the next six years civil society groups in the U.S. should work together to petition the Mexican government for change in the laws.

Read more…

Op-ed: Immigration and the New Old Me

New America Foundation, 5/16/12

Los Angeles

Despite my family’s rootedness in Southern California, migration has had an inordinate effect on my life. Now that it has come to a virtual halt, how do I see myself? Angeleno, as always.

The news that Mexican immigration to the United States has come to a virtual halt has me thinking about all the ways that will change things. It will affect politics, culture, labor and the nation’s racial climate. And it will also change how we see each other and ourselves as Americans and as Californians, me included.

I’m one of those mythical native Californians you might have read about. I was born near the corner of Sunset and Vermont in Hollywood. My father was born in L.A. and baptized, as was I, at La Placita Church downtown. My mom was born in northern San Diego County and baptized at the San Antonio de Pala mission there. My paternal great-grandfather arrived in the U.S. — Arizona — from Mexico in 1893. My family has been American so long that sometimes I think I should wear one of those buckled Pilgrim hats.

Read more…

Op-Ed: Demonization, Mexicans and hate crimes

San Francisco Chronicle, Edward Schumacher-Matos, 5/11/2009

Demonization of Mexican and other Latino immigrants is fueling hate crimes and violence against them, and it’s time for America’s leaders and media to put a stop to it all.

The swine-flu scapegoating of Mexicans over the past two weeks by some radio and television talk show hosts reflects the abandon with which many local officials, anti-immigrant groups and even an unthinking mainstream media create popular resentments, dehumanize immigrants and provide justification for the extremists among us to act violently.

Read more…

Mexico’s Banorte offers insurance for immigrants in U.S.

Reuters, 4/21/2009

Banorte, one of Mexico’s leading banks, has begun to offer life insurance to immigrants working in the United States to protect their families back home.

The insurance, being rolled out first in the state of Zacatecas, covers the death of immigrants working abroad and will pay their families up to 50,000 pesos ($3,758) as well as costs and arrangements for repatriation to Mexico and a funeral.

Around 12 million illegal immigrants are thought to be in the United States, most of them working in low-paying jobs in agriculture, the service industry and construction.

Read more…