Mexican Economic Migration Mexican Economic Migration
Land concentration by the rural
elite and land degradation resulting from overuse by landless people
on the
most fragile land often forces people to abandon their rural communities
and farms. Millions
of people have become eco-migrants, searching for better land and lives
elsewhere.
Mexico loses approximately 2,250 square kilometers of farmland to degradation
each year, and about 900,000 people leave Mexico's arid and semi-arid lands
annually in part because of land degradation. Land degradation is an example
of the "push forces" that drive Mexicans from their country. The many
factors that create low incomes and low standards of living
are captured in this map of relative deprivation. Where are the highest
rates of deprivation (poorest conditions) and
the lowest rates of deprivation (best living conditions)?
Click on the map to see where Mexicans in the United States send their hard earned dollars In Mexico. Read an article on this topic.
In addition, migrants know about jobs in the United States from friends and neighbors. The promise of a good job is an example of the "pull forces" that draw people to the United States. Examine a map of per capita incomes on both sides of the border.
Consequently, millions of Mexicans illegally cross the U.S. border for economic reasons. About 3 million Mexicans work illegally in the United States, though some say the number may be as high as 10 million. Legal and illegal immigrants together send some $6 billion a year back to Mexico. Source: "Living off illegals," The Economist, 19 April 1997, p. 46.
Health conditions are also affected in this border region.
Take an optional quiz on immigration to the USA. In 1994, the Clinton administration, shocked by videos of hordes of Mexicans strolling with impunity along the freeway to San Diego, set up “Operation Gatekeeper” along the Californian border (a similar project, “Operation Hold the Line”, had started a year earlier in Texas's El Paso sector). What this meant in California was two high fences running parallel to each other, helicopter surveillance by day and night, night-vision cameras and hidden electronic sensors. Add the Border Patrol agents and the result was that the pre-1994 flood of illegal immigrants across the 66 miles (106km) of California's border dwindled to a trickle. [In New Mexico, motion sensors are buried in the ground and high-resolution infrared cameras are mounted on poles from which people can be spotted five miles away. Agents estimate that for every immigrant they catch, at least one or two more make it. Source: Washington Post National Weekly Edition, pp. 9-10., 14-20 March 2005] But to what overall effect? The flood has been diverted to the path of least resistance: the desert wilderness of Arizona, where sometimes the border is just a marker post or a single strand of rusting wire. Last year the Arizona Border Patrol made 580,000 arrests, half the national total, as opposed to just 9% before California's Operation Gatekeeper. The switch comes at a cost, the worst of which is the loss of life as migrants, attempting to walk for five days in Arizona's baking temperatures, succumb to thirst. As Border Patrol agents point out, it is physically impossible to carry enough water, and the coyotes who guide the groups are all too willing to leave the weak to die. According to the Rev Robin Hoover, whose Humane Borders organization attempts to stop such deaths by placing water tanks in the desert, at least 221 border-crossers died last year in Arizona. Read more of this article. | ||||||||
| The U.S. government forcibly and illegally expelled an estimated 415,000 Mexicans between 1929-1935, with another 85,000 leaving "voluntarily." Source: Joseph Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper. London: Routledge, 2002, p.33. |
California at nightfall.