Mexico: A Crucial Crossroads
By Francisco Alba
El Colegio de México
July 2002
Updated March 2004
Expectations were high during most of 2001 that a long-term mutually agreed approach could finally be found to manage the flows of Mexican migrants to the United States. This approach included recognizing the labor market forces and major economic interests in operation on both sides of the border, as well as a realistic appraisal of the strong migratory pressures that will prevail for some time to come. In such an environment, the United States was, to some extent, willing to accommodate Mexican flows. All this changed and collapsed with the attacks on September 11 on United States soil.

Afterwards, the bilateral attempts to tackle the migration issue vanished into oblivion, but the structural forces-economic, demographic, and social-at work remained fundamentally untouched, and the flows continued unabated. The United States economy could not afford to lose the services the migrants provide. Political and security concerns did not discourage poor, desperate, or ambitious Mexicans from crossing into the US, whether legally and openly, or surreptitiously and undocumented.
Besides several initiatives submitted to the US Congress in 2003 and pending congressional action, US President George W. Bush's proposal in January 2004 was a major breakthrough in what was becoming a scenario of tense immobility in the migration relationship. President Bush's proposal was candidly and pragmatically welcomed by the Mexican government. This move was interpreted as a continuation of the previous political moves that acknowledged the US economic demand for migrants and their contributions. The recognition that the US migration system had to be fixed was also favorably interpreted as opening room for more flexible positions.
However, the move was unilateral, and the opportunities offered by the proposed massive temporary worker program did not contemplate any major avenues for some sort of earned residence in the United States. Critics call the proposal a "dead-end" temporary worker program. Moreover, the frame of reference of the proposal evaded any link to a special relationship with Mexico, or to any wide-ranging project of North American and hemispheric integration. The apparent reason for the proposal was to help secure and control US borders while helping to track those faceless people, without documents, already within those borders.
Changes and Continuities
While discussions of Mexican migration frequently evoke images of heavily guarded US borders, migrant deaths, and unauthorized immigration, Mexico is a country that embodies several dimensions of the migration phenomenon: emigration primarily to the United States, transit mainly by Central Americans seeking to reach the US, and a not insignificant increase in immigration from these same and other countries. Yet, despite these other facets, Mexico is first and foremost a country of "indocumentados" -- Mexicans who, lacking authorization or documentation, risk their lives crossing the border into the United States, as well as of authorized emigrants.
A discussion of Mexican migration necessarily leads with the long-standing migration relationship between Mexico and the United States. Current Mexican migration to the US dates back to World War II (1942) when Mexico was asked and agreed to contribute to the US war effort by providing temporary agricultural labor. The "Bracero program," as it was called, which continued until 1964, provided the United States with short-term temporary migration to offset labor shortages faced during the war and its aftermath. Mexico supplied an estimated 4.5 million workers to the United States during this period, and at its height in the late 1950s, more than 500,000 workers migrated each year.
Like many temporary worker programs, the Bracero system left a permanent legacy in the form of continuing and intensifying emigration since the program's end. During the 1980s, the intentions of many migrants shifted from a sojourner mentality to that of settlers. Although the shift in behavior began to occur gradually, by the 1990s, the phenomenon became one of permanent moves rather than reiterative and temporary ones.
The end of the Bracero program had other consequences. After its termination in 1964, the number of apprehensions of Mexicans along the US-Mexico border began to increase, peaking at 1.7 million per year in the mid-1980s. After a relative lull, associated with the US legalization programs of the late 1980s, the apprehensions figure grew again and ranged between about 1 and 1.7 million through the year 2000. (Apprehension figures may count the same individual several times. It is nonetheless a widely used proxy for the volume of migration.) The number of Mexicans who moved their residence from Mexico to the United States -- with or without US authorization -- has also increased steadily since the 1960s, most dramatically during the last two decades when it grew from roughly 200,000 per year in the 1980s to 300,000 in the 1990s.
Drivers of the Mexico-US Migration System
Migration from Mexico to the United States is primarily economically motivated. Nominal wage differentials have been hovering for years at about a 10 to 1 ratio, in favor of the US, for manual and semi-skilled jobs. Moreover, the long and sustained US economic growth has led to a strong demand for Mexican workers, who are found primarily in the low ends of the labor market -- seasonal agriculture, high-turnover manufacturing, and service industries.
Traditionally, Mexican migrants originated from the rural areas of central Mexico and were mostly confined to the agricultural sector. Accordingly, most migrants went to the agricultural areas in the Southwest. Currently, however, US-bound migration originates in nearly every corner of the country and has spread throughout the United States. States from the south and other non-traditional emigrant regions of Mexico -- like Morelos, Hidalgo, Guerrero, and Oaxaca -- are rapidly becoming "high emigration states." Furthermore, migrants now originate from small, medium, and large cities, not only from rural areas, and are finding employment in the mid-western, the southeastern, and the eastern parts of the United States in construction, food processing, sundry services, and agriculture, which remains a mainstay employment niche. Supply-push factors in Mexico are thus matched by demand-pull factors on the US side.
In the last several decades, neither Mexican job creation nor labor demand in the United States have been able to absorb the large and growing cohorts of Mexican workers. The working age cohorts -- a product of demographic growth rates that stood above two percent well into the 1990s -- will continue to expand rapidly, although at diminishing rates, into the 2010s. Mexico's massive economic restructuring during the last two decades has cost many workers their jobs. Even the growth of the maquiladora (export-oriented factory) sector along the border, which accounted for a record 1.3 million jobs in 2001, has not been able to provide enough job opportunities to Mexico's growing labor force.
While estimates vary, employment in Mexico's informal sector almost doubled between 1980 and 2000, from 17 to 33 percent of the total urban employed population. Real average manufacturing wages in 2000 were roughly 20 percent below 1980 levels, and minimum wages experienced an even more severe decline. Poverty, an eloquent indicator of Mexico's economic distress, grew significantly over the period. Estimates of poverty levels through the 1990s range from a quarter to a third of the population and sometimes higher, i.e., from 25 to 40 million Mexicans.
Modes of the US-Mexico Migration System
The modes of migration from Mexico to the United States have been guided by strong family, community, and socioeconomic networks that now span both sides of the border. As the Binational Study on Migration Between Mexico and the United States (1997) puts it:
"...[f]riends and relatives established in the U.S. often provide financing, advice, shelter, and jobs to newly-arrived [authorized and] unauthorized migrants. Settled family members in the U.S. use family unification policies to have spouses and children join them and eventually to secure legal migrant status."
Based on migrants' histories collected by the Mexican Migration Project of the University of Pennsylvania, it is estimated that, by age 40, most men in some of the communities surveyed have made at least one trip to the United States. "Go north for opportunity" is thus an idea deeply embedded in the Mexican population. Furthermore, the ability to send remittances from the US to families and communities back home -- for family subsistence, home improvements, small-scale farming, or business investments -- is quite often the first step of a long journey that frequently ends with permanent settlement in the United States.
The recruitment of Mexican workers by US employers continues, if with new agents and intermediaries. What began in the 1940s as a formal, employer-sponsored system has now given way to more localized recruitment. Migration networks themselves now are the most effective means of recruitment for many US-based employers.
Types and Characteristics of Mexican Migrants to the United States
In addition to the growing regional diversity of Mexican migration, Mexican migration flows are changing in other ways. Some indicators suggest that the characteristics of migrants are becoming as diverse, in terms of migrants' origin, educational and occupational levels, as the characteristics of the Mexican population at large. This development is in line with the recent trend of migration becoming a nation-wide phenomenon. However, Mexican migrants still tend to be mainly selected from middle-to-lower segments of Mexico's socioeconomic structure. Most Mexican migration thus still fits into the "manual labor migration" type.
The Binational Study on Migration classified Mexican migrants into three types:

  • Sojourner or circular migrants: authorized and unauthorized migrants whose residence is in Mexico;
  • Settled or permanent migrants: authorized and unauthorized migrants whose residence is in the US; and
  • Naturalized US citizens born in Mexico: a subgroup of settled or permanent migrants.

In the middle of the 1990s, circular migrants were rather young, roughly 30 years old, with males accounting for 73 to 94 percent of the total. Their average schooling was six years, and more than one-half found employment in agriculture. Their primarily short-term employment was associated with very low earnings. Specifically, in the early 1990s, circular migrants earned between US$185 and US$240 per week.
By contrast, permanent migrants were more equally gender balanced (only 55 percent male), and had a higher schooling level (eight years) than circular migrants. They had also moved from agricultural jobs (only 13 percent worked in this sector) to the service industry (51 percent) and construction and manufacturing (37 percent). Their income levels were accordingly much higher than those living in Mexico.
Many permanent migrants began their journey to the US as circular migrants, often in unauthorized circumstances. Others entered legally. Those Mexican-born migrants who became naturalized US citizens were better schooled and had slightly smaller proportions employed in agriculture (10 percent) than non-naturalized Mexican lawful permanent US residents, and slightly greater proportions employed in services (54 percent). Of those Mexican-born migrants 25 years and older who became naturalized US citizens, 33 percent were high school graduates.
Finally, although it has received little attention, greater numbers of professionals and skilled experts are also beginning to be found among the migrants. It is estimated that a quarter of a million Mexicans with US residence permits possess the equivalent of a BA or higher degree.
Most Numbers Rise, Others Drop
Given the sizable number of undocumented immigrants to the United States, estimates of migration flows and stocks vary, at times significantly. The net loss of Mexican population during the 1990s is estimated at an annual average of a little above 300,000. Mexican border surveys reveal that about 500,000 workers with residence in Mexico were leaving each year for much of the 1990s, but the numbers seem to be decreasing. Estimates of both flows include authorized and unauthorized migrants.
More than 1.6 million people were apprehended on the US-Mexico border in 2000. The number dropped to 1.2 million in 2001, and according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, looks set to fall below one million in fiscal year 2002. About 526,000 people were picked up between Oct. 1, 2001, and April 30, 2002 -- about half of the number of those apprehended during that period two years previously.
Migration from Mexico has generated a sizeable Mexican-born population in the United States. Mexican estimates compute this population in the range of 8 to 8.5 million, of which the non-authorized component is estimated between 3 and 3.5 million. The US Census Bureau estimates that there are more than nine million Mexican immigrants living in the United States. Of these, approximately 4.7 million, or over half, are undocumented. However, about 1.6 million, or one in five Mexicans, are naturalized US citizens.
Immigration, Transit, and Asylum
Immigration into Mexico is comparatively meager. The foreign-born population increased between 1990 and 2000 by slightly more than 150,000, amounting in the year 2000 to around half a million persons. This represents half a percentage point of Mexico's total population. Among those aged five and older, the US born were the dominant group with 63 percent of the total ? up from 57 percent in 1990. Those from Central America accounted for 11.2 percent; from South America 7.3 percent; from the Caribbean 2.4 percent; and from Europe 11.9 percent. The remaining four percent came from the rest of the world.
In contrast, the number of "aseguramientos" (potentially deportable foreigners) increased significantly from 1999, when it amounted to 131,500 "events" -- not necessarily different persons -- to 2000, when it reached 168,800; but in 2001, it declined to 151,400. On average, around 90 percent of these events ended up in actual deportations.
These apprehensions provide an indirect indication of the nationalities that use Mexico as a land of transit. In 2001, of a total of 151,400 apprehensions, 44.9 percent were from Guatemala, 26.6 per cent from Honduras, and 23.2 per cent from El Salvador. The tiny remainder was divided among countries like the US, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.
At very specific historical junctures, Mexico had very generous responses to refugees and asylum seekers, most notably in the 1930s for exiles during the Spain Civil War, and in the 1980s and 1990s for people fleeing oppressive political systems in several South and Central American countries. In 2000, Mexico ratified the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. Two years later, in March 2002, the Mexican government began adjudicating asylum claims on its own, thus replacing the eligibility determinations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in place since 1982. The majority of refugees use Mexico as a route to reach other countries, especially the US and Canada.
In 2001, Mexico received about 500 asylum applications and granted refugee status to roughly a third of the applicants. Approximately half of these refugees came from Latin American countries (Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Cuba, Honduras); the other half came from all over the world. Around two-thirds of all applications are filed from detention centers within Mexico.
From the "Policy of No Policy" to the End of It
In February 2001, presidents Fox of Mexico and Bush of the US formally engaged in serious negotiations to find a mutually acceptable response to a lingering migration issue that often placed the two countries at odds. Negotiations centered on regularizing Mexicans already residing in the United States, a guest worker program, border enforcement conditions, and an increase in the number of US visas available for Mexicans. Expectations of arriving at a far-reaching agreement were high until the September 11, 2001 attacks struck the United States. Since then, negotiations have stalled, risking a return to the largely ineffectual Mexican and US policies of the past.
After the termination of the Bracero program in 1964, Mexico tried, in the 1960s and early 1970s, to negotiate a new temporary worker program with the United States. In view of the US unwillingness to engage the issue and of the realization that Mexican migrants continued to cross the border and to find work in the United States, the Mexican government retrenched into "a policy of no policy;" i.e., it let migration flows run loose and unmanaged.
At the same time, Washington also recognized that the termination of the Bracero program did not end Mexican migration to the US; instead, it simply continued in unauthorized forms. The US Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 was the first serious attempt to curtail the migration of "indocumentados." One of the most important long-term unintended consequences of IRCA's generous regularization component was its contribution to the transformation of Mexican migration from a predominantly circular flow into a more permanent move.
The US enactment and pursuit of increasingly robust immigration control policies since 1993-1994 has prompted the Mexican government to shift its position from one of deliberate non-engagement to a stance of increasing dialogue with Washington. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provided a more mature framework for the bilateral immigration dialogue and understandings. Although the dialogue did much to enhance exchanges of information, institutionalize and increase the effectiveness of consular protection, and expand certain forms of cooperation at the border, it did not prevent the aggressive deployment of Border Patrol operations or the enactment of the restrictive Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) in 1996. This legislation, together with the strong message sent in 1994 by Proposition 187 in California, convinced many Mexican US residents to seek US naturalization as a way to protect themselves from curtailments of many of their social rights. Also as a reaction to that restrictive climate, IIRIRA had one other important effect. It motivated Mexico to allow its nationals to retain double, or multiple, nationalities, and probably strengthened its determination to protect its nationals abroad in a more systematic way.