There’s a widespread assumption that Mexican migration will resume when the U.S. economy starts growing robustly again. But I think there’s reason to doubt that will be the case.
What I’ve found is that over the years this country has been peopled in large part by surges of migration that have typically lasted just one or two generations.
Experts have also tended to assume that immigrants are motivated primarily by economic factors. And in the years starting in the 1980s, many people in Latin America and Asia — especially in Mexico, which has produced more than 60 percent of Latin American immigrants — saw opportunities to make a better living in this country.
But masses of people do not uproot themselves from familiar territory just to make marginal economic gains. They migrate to pursue dreams or escape nightmares.
Life in Mexico is not a nightmare for many these days. Beneath the headlines about killings in the drug wars, Mexico has become a predominantly middle-class country, as Jorge Castañeda notes in his recent book, Mañana Forever? Its economy is growing faster than ours.
Those events have prompted many to resort to...“self-deportation.” And their experiences are likely to have reverberations for many others who have learned of their plight.
Barone makes the comparison between the southern black surge into northern cities (1940 to 1965) and the surge of Mexicans into the U.S, lasting from 1982 to 2007...both have been comprised of only one generation. Could he be on to something? If so, I think that says more about the collapse of America's economy, and thus our nonworking society, than it does about solving any immigration issue.
