Illegal Mexican Immigration to the US



Illegal Mexican Immigration to the US

Introduction

America's immigration laws are colliding with reality, and reality is winning. Today, approximately 8,000,000 people live in the U.S. without legal documents, and each year the number grows by an estimated 250,000 as more enter illegally or overstay their visas. Over half of the illegal immigrants entering and already here come from Mexico. (Bean, 2003)

In February, 2001, Pres. George W. Bush and his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, agreed at a conference in Guanajuato, Mexico, to work together to fix the problem. Then, on Sept. 7, 2001, after meeting for three days in Washington, Bush and Fox "renewed their commitment to forging new and realistic approaches to migration to ensure it is safe, orderly, legal, and dignified." They endorsed an immigration policy that includes "matching willing workers with willing employers; serving the social and economic needs of both countries; respecting the human dignity of all migrants, regardless of their status; recognizing the contribution migrants make to enriching both societies; [and] shared responsibility for ensuring migration takes place through safe and legal channels." (Bean, 2003)However, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon four days later knocked those plans off the burner entirely. Now, more than a year after those events, the underlying reality of migration that brought the two presidents together remains fundamentally unchanged and must be addressed. (Jack, 2007)

Immigration is the most-conspicuous piece of unfinished business between the U.S. and Mexico. On almost every other front, U.S.-Mexican relations have made dramatic progress in recent years, but a glaring exception to the trend is immigration policy. While the U.S. government has encouraged closer trade, investment, and political ties with Mexico, it has labored in vain to keep a lid on the flow of labor across the border. Since the mid 1980s, in its effort to stop illegal immigration, Washington has imposed new and burdensome regulations on American employers and dramatically increased spending on border control. Despite those aggressive efforts, America's border policy has failed to achieve its principal objective--to stem the flow of undocumented workers into the U.S. labor market. (Bean, 2003)

Why Mexicans migrate north

To understand why U.S. border policy has failed, we must first understand why Mexican workers migrate despite the American government's expensive campaign to keep them out. Most Mexicans who migrate to the U.S. do not come intending to settle permanently. They come to solve temporary problems of family finance--by saving dollars and sending them back home in the form of remittances. Their goal is to rejoin their families and communities after a few months or years as sojourners in the American labor market. (Bean, 2003) From the end of the Bracero program in 1964 until the passage of the IRCA in 1986--a period during which Mexicans were practically, if not legally, free to cross the border and work--the flow of labor was largely circular.

During that period, Douglas Massey of the University of Pennsylvania estimates that 28,000,000 Mexicans entered the ...