Pew Research Center released a report this week showing that in recent years, more Mexican immigrants have been leaving the United States than entering, citing family reunification and the slow recovery from the recession as top reasons for returning.
“From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families (including U.S.-born children) left the U.S. for Mexico, according to data from the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID),” the report states.
The Seattle Globalist focused on the decision that many Mexican immigrants are making to return to Mexico, in our series Back Across the Border, by writer Alysa Hullett:
Mexican immigrants, about half of whom are estimated to enter the country illegally, are returning to their home country at a staggering rate — and not just because they’re being deported.
Despite the stereotypical images the term “undocumented immigrant” might conjure up — of Mexican laborers sent back protesting, handcuffed — an estimated 90 percent of Mexican immigrants who return home do so on their own terms. Some find the U.S. job market to be less lucrative than they’d hoped. Others face crippling alienation, usually paired with a desperate longing for their own culture.
Read the series here:
Mexican immigration slows as ‘better life’ in US proves elusive
Rejecting the American Dream, Mexicans reintegrate back home
