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 Editorials | June 2006 
Even in Good Times, Mexicans Enter U.S.
 Laurence Iliff - Dallas Morning News
| | Mexican children defy the migra and illegally enter the United States from Tijuana. (Todd Bigelow) |
Studies support the suggestion that many Mexican immigrants in the United States were motivated to leave their country by a desire not just for employment, but for better jobs and mobility.
Like the weather in this booming resort, Mexico's economy is hot. The government is awash in oil profits. Exports are at record levels. The stock market index has almost doubled in the last two years. Unemployment is at 3.3%.
So why do thousands of Mexicans, such as beachwear vendor Cristina Vargas, risk their lives crossing into the United States? And why is the practice expected to continue despite rising prosperity at home and tough border legislation in the U.S. Congress?
"The money is just better over there," said Vargas, who swam across the Rio Grande in 1999, worked various jobs in the United States and returned to Acapulco last year. The 40-year-old single mother said she did not leave Mexico out of economic desperation. She left to improve her family's future.
More and more Mexicans who immigrate to the United States are employed urban dwellers with high school diplomas and even some college experience who are looking for better prospects, studies in both countries show. Many crossed the border legally and overstayed a visa, according to a study released last month.
That bucks the conventional wisdom that immigrants are mostly poor people looking for any kind of job and who would stay home if the economy grew. And some analysts say emigration will not stop until Mexico runs out of young people entering the workforce and until it begins to offer something akin to the economic opportunities in the United States - which is not likely to happen for 10 to 15 years.
About half of the up to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are from Mexico, studies show.
"There's a huge wage differential, sometimes 10 to 1," said Andres Rozental, a business consultant who served as Mexican ambassador to various countries.
Studies support the suggestion that many Mexican immigrants in the United States were motivated to leave their country by a desire not just for employment, but for better jobs and mobility.
Only 5% of Mexican workers who had been in the United States for two years or less were unemployed before they left Mexico, according to a 2005 survey by the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center.
The newest Mexican immigrants, those with six months' tenure or less, had relatively high levels of education, with 38% having completed high school, the same survey found.
The survey was done outside Mexican consulates, and some critics have said it is not representative of all immigrants.
Interviews done along the Mexican border found that two out of three people preparing to cross had come from relatively prosperous urban settings, said Rodolfo Tuiran Gutierrez, a university professor. He cited a study by Mexico's border institution, El Colegio de La Frontera Norte. |
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