FYI: Mitt Romney's father was Mexican by Birth, Mitt is eligible to be have double citizenship also.

The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/for-first-time-since-depression-more-mexicans-leave-us-than-enter/2012/04/23/gIQApyiDdT_story.html
By Tara Bahrampour, Published: April 23


A four-decade tidal wave of Mexican immigration to the United States
has receded, causing a historic shift in migration patterns as more
Mexicans appear to be leaving the United States for Mexico than the
other way around, according to a report from the Pew Hispanic Center.
It looks to be the first reversal in the trend since the
Depression, and experts say that a declining Mexican birthrate and other
factors may make it permanent.

“I think the massive boom in Mexican immigration is over and I
don’t think it will ever return to the numbers we saw in the 1990s and
2000s,” said Douglas Massey, a professor of sociology and public affairs
at Princeton University and co-director of the Mexican Migration
Project, which has been gathering data on the subject for 30 years.Nearly
1.4 million Mexicans moved from the United States to Mexico between
2005 and 2010, double the number who did so a decade earlier. The number
of Mexicans who moved to the United States during that period fell to
less than half of the 3 million who came between 1995 and 2000.The
trend could have major political consequences, underscoring the
delicate dance by the Republican and Democratic parties as they struggle
with immigration policies and court the increasingly important Latino
vote.Illegal immigration has emerged as one of the most emotional
political issues in the country — one that dominated much of the
Republican presidential contest and has proven complicated for President
Obama.Mitt Romney has courted conservatives with aggressive
anti-illegal immigration rhetoric. But the GOP presidential hopeful has
said in recent days that he wants to build ties with Hispanics, many of
whom have chafed at his statements, and the new immigration trends could
offer him a chance to soften his stance.Obama has been
criticized by immigrant advocates for stepped-up deportation policies
that analysts have said were partly responsible for the decreasing flow
of Mexicans into the United States. The trend could offer the president a
political silver lining: the chance to take credit for a policy success
that, his aides have said in the past, should persuade Republicans to
embrace a broad immigration overhaul plan.According to the
report, the Mexican-born population, which had been increasing since
1970, peaked at 12.6 million in 2007 and has dropped to 12 million since
then.The reversal appears to be a result of tightened border
controls, a weak U.S. job and housing construction market, a rise in
deportations and a decline in Mexican birthrates, said the study, which
used U.S. and Mexican census figures and Mexican government surveys.
Arrests of illegal immigrants trying to enter the United States have
also dropped precipitously in recent years.Whether
the reversal is temporary or permanent, it could have significant
implications for the United States. Many Mexican immigrants work in
agriculture and construction.One in 10 people born in Mexico live
in the United States, and more than half entered illegally. Most live
in California and Texas; about 120,000 live in the Washington region.The report does not specify how many of those who moved to Mexico had
been in the United States illegally. But the statistics imply that many
of them had been: The number of undocumented Mexicans here dropped from
7 million in 2007 to 6.1 million in 2011, while the number of those
here legally increased slightly, from 5.6 million in 2007 to 5.8 million
in 2011.
“The diminished flow appears largely to be a drop in
unauthorized immigrants,” said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at
Pew and a co-author of the report. He said an estimated 5 to 35 percent
of the recent returnees to Mexico were deported.

Although most Mexican deportees say they will try to return,
their numbers are shrinking, too, the study said: According to a Mexican
government survey, 20 percent of deportees in 2010 said they would not
return to the United States, compared with 7 percent in 2005.Half
of those returning to Mexico took their entire families, including more
than 100,000 U.S.-born children of Mexican immigrants. Children born in
the United States to Mexican nationals are citizens of both countries.The
drop comes at a time when overall immigration to the United States
continues to grow, and reflects several factors specific to Mexico,
including a relatively strong economy and a sharply diminished
birthrate.In 1960, a typical Mexican woman was expected to have
more than seven children, but by 2009 that number had dropped to just
over two — a decline that presages a sharp reduction in the number of
young workers seeking to come to the United States.As immigration
reform continues to be a divisive political issue, experts on both
sides of the debate disagreed over the implications of the report.Those
advocating for a path to legalization for immigrants here illegally
said the plummeting of Mexican immigration should allow for thoughtful
reform to take place without the pressure of trying to stem the flow
across the border.“It gives us the space to figure out how do we
fix the legal immigration system so when the economy bounces back, how
do we respond?” said Clarissa Martinez, director of immigration and
civic engagement at the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy
organization.Others warned that the trend could reverse itself if
the U.S. economy improves or the Mexican economy falters. “The idea
that this respite means the problem is over is just jumping the gun,”
said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration
Studies, which advocates for stricter immigration controls. “It’s
wishful thinking by people who just want amnesty.”But the era of
entire villages moving from Mexico to the United States may be over,
said Randy Capps, a senior policy analyst and demographer at the
Migration Policy Institute.Instead, he said, the current reversal
may be similar to the reduced flow from Germany and Ireland a century
ago. He predicted a negative feedback loop as fewer potential immigrants
have connections to the United States.“If this goes on for much
longer, it’s going to take a lot to reverse it,” Capps said. “A lot of
migration is based on networks — people who know people who know about
the environment they’re going to be moving into. When the jobs disappear
and the people you know aren’t there anymore, this channel of
communication either dries up or it becomes so negative that it just
changes everybody’s mind.”Gustavo Velasquez, 38, who came from
Oaxaca, Mexico, 12 years ago and serves as the director of the D.C.
Office on Human Rights, said that the scarcity of U.S. jobs is causing
more Mexicans to think twice about moving.It is better to be
unemployed in Mexico than to be unemployed in the United States, he
said, because most migrant workers leave their families in Mexico. “They
miss the warmth of being in a welcoming community,” he said, adding
that with tougher border control and more deportations, Mexicans would
rather be in a “precarious situation than in a situation of fear.”




Staff writers Stefanie Dazio, Carol Morello and Peter Wallsten contributed to this report.