By Edward
The permeability of the US's southern border seems to be a bit of a buzz issue at present. The origins of the current bout of navel-gazing about immigration seem to lie in a Public Agenda survey carried out on behalf of Foreign Affairs magazine.
As The Economist points out, for Joe Sixpack:
..two of the top foreign-policy issues are protecting American jobs and fighting illegal immigration, something he takes far more seriously than the elites that claim to represent him". Immigration is a difficult topic, and may be a good example of what we need and what we want our radically out of sync. The US political elite is probably complacent about illegal migration because on the one hand the economy needs a steady flow of low price workers and there is a significant 'laxist' lobby based on that reality whilst others may hope to benefit from the way these migrants and their descendents may vote later.
Edward Alden had a timely piece yesterday in the FT which draws attention to how even the US Republican Party is split on the issue (sorry, subscription only):
Manuel Chidez held the record at Dean Flake’s ranch in Snowflake, Arizona. At its height in the 1970s, when Mr Flake and his brothers ran nearly 1,000 cattle over 200,000 acres of high desert, Mr Chidez was one of dozens of illegal Mexican labourers who would arrive each spring to grow corn and alfalfa to feed cattle in winter. Nineteen times, the US border patrol raided the Flake ranch, hauled Manuel away and dumped him across the border in Mexico. Each time he returned, sometimes in as little as a day.
But we are now a far cry from the tender years of the 1970s, and the world of Snowflake Arizona. The Economist mentions a Pew Hispanic Centre survey which offers some startling statistics. For one, the fact that 46% of the Mexicans interviewed said they would prefer to move to the US if they had the opportunity.
Now if we open the recent Population Reference Bureau 2005 report in our browsers and scroll down to Central America we will see that fertility in Mexico is now at 2.6 (it has been dropping steadily) and it is not unreasonable to draw the conclusion that sometime in the next decade Mexico will fall below the 2.1 population replacement rate. Thus, if migration were to continue at the present rates, there would be the danger of Mexico itself 'hollowing out'.
This is the most important of the issues that I think should concern us.
Understanding the underlying factors which drive economic migration is not easy. Jeffrey Williamson at Harvard, in the company of Timothy Hatton and Ximena Clark, has done some sterling work ( here, here, and here); and these IMHO should certainly serve as the starting point for future research into the economics of migration, but there are still lots of puzzles and anomalies. In broad strokes Williamson et al link outward migration to the process known as the demographic transition.
The poorest poor countries do not, on this view, fuel economic migratory movements. A minimum level of income per capita and, following Williamson's own age structure savings investment argument, a minimum median age are required. There is thus a 'perfect match' between economic take-off at home, and increasing emmigration as the proportion of the population in the 15-29 age group rises. In Bo Malmberg's terms this is to do with the transition from a child dominated to a young adult society and it is the critical break-point in economic development. The key argument from Williamson is:
In any case, this result implies that an increase in the proportion of the population aged 15-29 from, say, 25 to 30 percent would increase the typical Latin American country’s US immigration rate by 20 percent.
Availability of employment, and the presence of immigrants from same culture (increasing-returns type chain-effects) are then the main drivers, with wage differential playing a secondary, less sensitive, role.
There is also the proximity element. And this brings us back to Mexico. The very geographical nearness of Mexico, and the fact that with so many Mexican migrants in some parts of the US the cultural difference is now very, very low, means that the migratory process out of Mexico may continue a good deal longer than it otherwise would, in a way which structurally unhinges an ageing Mexican society. This, and not the presence of illegal migrants per se, is in my opinion the real policy issue facing US-Mexican relations.
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