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发帖数: 3 | 1 Even before Trump, more Mexicans were leaving the U.S. than arriving
By Max Bearak January 27, 2017 Email the author
People pass graffiti along the border structure in Tijuana, Mexico, on Jan.
25. (Julie Watson/AP)
President Trump is intent on completing a border wall with Mexico, even if
it means instigating a trade war with the U.S.'s second-biggest export
market. His spokesman said Wednesday that the U.S. might levy a blanket 20
percent tax on Mexican imports as one way of fulfilling Trump's campaign
promise that Mexico would pay for the wall.
Trump promotes the notion that migrants have been flooding across an
insecure border, and taking jobs that would otherwise go to Americans. To be
sure, there are indeed millions of unauthorized immigrants working in the U
.S., though economists are divided on whether the contributions to the
economy they make ultimately create more job opportunities for U.S. citizens
. The Pew Research Center estimates that “the U.S. civilian workforce
included 8 million unauthorized immigrants in 2014, accounting for 5% of
those who were working or were unemployed and looking for work.”
And the largest chunk of those unauthorized immigrants are indeed from
Mexico, which is the clear target of the wall, along with other Central
American countries.
But since a tipping point in 2012, the net flow of migration from Mexico,
both legal and not, has actually decreased. From 2009 to 2014, Pew estimates
that 1 million Mexicans and their families (including U.S.-born children)
left the U.S., while 870,000 Mexicans arrived.
The numbers are estimates, of course, because the flow of unauthorized
migration across the U.S.-Mexico border is, by its nature, surreptitious.
Pew uses a modeling tool that draws from various sources, including Mexico’
s national household survey, to make its best estimate.
Another measure of how many people are trying to cross the border illegally
is how many get caught every year. And that number is going down for
Mexicans, too, from more than 400,000 in fiscal 2010 to about 177,000 in the
current one to date. People fleeing gang-related violence spiraling out of
control in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have added significantly to
that number in the past year, but the overall trend remains one of net flow
southward.
[Why a wall won’t keep America’s newest immigrants out]
Mexico's own economy has improved, and growing opportunities there have have
caused many who once migrated to return home. Simultaneously, the American
economy now supports far fewer construction and manufacturing jobs than it
once did, and those were a mainstay of the Mexican migrant community. Under
President Barack Obama, the U.S. also began more strictly enforcing
immigration laws and greatly expanded its use of deportations. Some called
Obama the “deporter in chief.”
Meanwhile, migration from Asia to the United States has ramped up, and now
outpaces overall arrivals from Mexico. This would've been unthinkable a
decade ago, when more than 10 times as many people from Mexico came to the U
.S. as from China.
In 2014, roughly 136,000 people came to the U.S. from India, 128,000 from
China and 123,000 from Mexico, according to census data. Between 2009 and
2014, 45 percent of all immigrants to the U.S. were born in Asia.
Asian immigration is widespread geographically, too. A Wall Street Journal
analysis found that across much of the heartland and New England, they far
outpace arrivals from Mexico and Central America. Even California registered
more Chinese immigrants than Mexican immigrants in 2014, with India not far
behind. The study noted that “there were 31 states where more immigrants
arrived from China than from Mexico that year, up from seven states in 2005.
Newly arrived immigrants from India in 2014 outnumbered those from Mexico
in 25 states, up from four states in 2005.”
By and large, recent Asian immigrants are well educated and as such compete
with a different set of Americans for jobs, but also contribute to faster-
growing sectors of the American economy.
In The Post's Wonkblog, Ana Swanson cites the research of Jed Kolko, the
chief economist at Indeed, a job search engine, who found that “about half
of immigrants 25 and older in 2015 who arrived in the U.S. in the last five
years had a bachelor’s degree, up from roughly one-third of those who
arrived between 2006 and 2010 and 27 percent of those who arrived in 2005 or
earlier.”
For perspective, only 31 percent of American citizens 25 or older have a
bachelor’s degree. As China and India's economies (and populations) have
grown, they have also begun to send more of their students to U.S.
universities than ever before. |
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