Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Mexican Demographics and NAFTA

Today's Washington Post has a very interesting article about Mexico:

In Mexico, 'People Do Really Want to Stay'
Chicken Farmers Fear U.S. Exports Will Send More Workers North

Baby Boom Fuels Emigration


The demographic wave that has carried unprecedented numbers of Mexicans to the United States is the consequence of a baby boom that began in Mexico four decades ago, when improvements in rural health care allowed more infants to survive.

From 1993 to 2006, as those born during the boom reached adulthood, Mexicans of working age swelled from 34 million to 44 million, according to Agustin Escobar, a sociologist at the Center for Higher Research in Social Anthropology in Guadalajara. Over the same period, Mexico's businesses added only 8 million jobs that pay decent wages and benefits, exacerbating a backlog of about 15 million Mexicans needing work, Escobar said.

Population pressure, combined with the lifting of subsidies on the farm, sent rural Mexicans in search of higher wages. They moved within Mexico in vast numbers. Many crossed the border. By 2002, 14 percent of all people born in Mexican villages were living in the United States, according to J. Edward Taylor, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Davis. Mexicans in the United States sent home nearly $17 billion in 2004, according to the Bank of Mexico.

"If you want to buy a house, you have to go to the States," Escobar said. "People go to America to make their Mexican dream come true."

NAFTA, as the politicians sold it, was supposed to make Mexican dreams attainable at home.

Mexico's government promised that the pact would add 1 million jobs a year. But jobs have been created at roughly half that rate. Mexico's economy has grown less than 3 percent a year since NAFTA. Not even a sustained expansion of 5 percent a year would have been enough to stem the surge of immigrants headed north, given the numbers of Mexicans entering the workforce, declared the 1997 Mexico-U.S. Binational Migration Study.



From an Organization of American States 2003 Annual Report on Mexican Immigration.
157. According to the latest census done by the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2001 some 20.6 million persons of Mexican origin were living in United States (7.3% of the total U.S. population). Of these persons, 8 to 8.5 million were born in Mexican territory, and 3 to 3.5 million reside in the United States irregularly.[20] According to figures from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)[21] for the year 2000, 130,000 Mexican emigrate legally to the United States each year; another 3.4 million enter the United States with various non-immigrant visas, while each year there are 213,000 temporary crossings of the Mexico-U.S. border. The INS figures estimate that each year approximately 150,000 Mexicans cross the border irregularly.[22] In the last two years the number of irregular crossings has increased. Indeed, according to projections by the Latin American Center for Demographics (CELADE), in the 2000-2005 period, the rate of emigration of Mexicans to the United States is expected to reach 2.9 per 1,000, which would mean an annual exit of some 300,000 Mexicans to the United States.[23]

16 comments:

  1. While completely OT, a happy birthday to the greatest puglist ever to live. G-d never made a man who could stand in the ring with Muhammad Ali in 1964. He turned blood, sweat, and tears into ballet.

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  2. A massive transportation network called The Trans-Texas Corridor could allow immigrants, illegals and whatever else a speedy trip right through Texas. This is the beginning of the transportation network for the future country, North America.

    Not everyone is pleased. This massive superhighway-rail-utility project will eat over one-half million acres of Texas. Once taken, the property will be state owned and can be sold or leased. — Corridor Watch.

    This monster is lumbering along under the radar.

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  3. Yep, begun as a State of Texas project, while Mr Bush was Governor there, in Texas.

    Then, after becoming President, the Borders are opened to the exodus of the Mexican population.

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  4. Apropos this thread and the Bush legacy comes this truly heartbreaking outrage from “Moonbattery”. One is at a loss for words, but what goes around comes around.

    Heroic Border Guards Start Prison Terms

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  5. The press secretary for the California Republican Party is the son of illegal aliens who came the USA 35 years ago. In this article he chronicles how in recent years there has been a massive change in the number and kind of illegals coming north. Including a crimnal element that is causing a deterioration in the quality of life of Americans.

    Consider this article Illegal aliens murder
    12 Americans daily
    Death toll in 2006 far overshadows total
    U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, Afghanistan



    People have been referring to the Captains Quarters as a rebuke to the assertions of the article. The Captain's Quarters makes the assertion that -- for the numbers to be true -- it would have to be the case that a small number of people were committing a lot of crimes. That is to say far outside the statistical norm for the USA. The problem is that he didn't actually check the federal stats. As it happens it is the case that illegals tend to be very repeat offenders.

    Below are some government stats to back up the article's assertioms

    From the FBI crime statistics
    * An estimated 16,692 persons were murdered nationwide in 2005, an
    increase of 3.4 percent from the 2004 figure. * Murder comprised 1.2
    percent of the overall estimated number of violent crimes in 2005.
    (Based on Table 1.) * There were an estimated 5.6 murders per 100,000
    inhabitants.

    Illegal Alien Crime Wave

    On April 7, 2005, the US Justice Department issued a report on criminal aliens that were incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails.

    In the population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990.

    They were arrested for a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses, averaging about 13 offenses per illegal alien. One arrest incident may include multiple offenses, a fact that explains why there are nearly one and half times more offenses than arrests. Almost all of these illegal aliens were arrested for more than 1 offense. Slightly more than half of the 55,322 illegal aliens had between 2 and 10 offenses.

    CRIMINAL HISTORY

    More than two-thirds of the defendants charged with an immigration offense were identified as having been previously arrested. Thirty-six percent had been arrested on at least 5 prior occasions; 22%, 2 to 4 times; and 12%,1 time.

    Sixty-one percent of those defendants had been convicted at least once; 18%, 5 or more times; 26%, 2 to 4 times; and 17%, 1 time. Of those charged, 49% had previously been convicted of a felony: 20% of a drug offense; 18%, a violent offense; and 11%, other felony offenses. Twelve percent had previously been convicted of a misdemeanor.

    Defendants charged with unlawful reentry had the most extensive criminal histories. Nine in ten had been previously arrested. Of those with a prior arrest, half had been arrested on at least 5 prior occasions.

    Fifty-six percent of those charged with a reentry offense had previously been convicted of a violent or drug-related felony. By contrast, under half of those charged with alien smuggling, a third of those charged with unlawful entry, and just over a quarter those charged with misuse of visas and other charges had previously been arrested. The criminal histories of these defendants were generally less extensive: more than 70% had been previously arrested fewer than 5 times.

    Sources: US Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, National Security Institute, National Association of Chiefs of Police, US Department of Justice

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  6. INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants

    2006 (First Quarter) INS/FBI Statistical Report on Undocumented Immigrants

    CRIME STATISTICS
    95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

    83% of warrants for murder in Phoenix are for illegal aliens.

    86% of warrants for murder in Albuquerque are for illegal aliens.

    75% of those on the most wanted list in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Albuquerque are illegal aliens.

    24.9% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally

    40.1% of all inmates in Arizona detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally

    48.2% of all inmates in New Mexico detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally

    29% (630,000) convicted illegal alien felons fill our state and federal prisons at a cost of $1.6 billion annually

    53% plus of all investigated burglaries reported in
    California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Texas are perpetrated by
    illegal aliens.

    50% plus of all gang members in Los Angeles are illegal aliens from south of the border.

    Pictures of most wanted in Washington DC

    Pictures of top 10 most wanted in LA

    71% plus of all apprehended cars stolen in 2005 in
    Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California were stolen by
    Illegal aliens or _ transport coyotes".

    47% of cited/stopped drivers in California have no
    license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 47%,
    92% are illegal aliens.

    63% of cited/stopped drivers in Arizona have no
    license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 63%,
    97% are illegal aliens

    66% of cited/stopped drivers in New Mexico have no
    license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 66%
    98% are illegal aliens.

    BIRTH STATISTICS
    380,000 plus _ anchor babies _ were born in the U.S. in 2005 to illegal
    alien parents, making 380,000 babies automatically U.S.citizens.

    97.2% of all costs incurred from those births were paid by the American taxpayers.

    66% plus of all births in California are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers

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  7. Excerpted from
    January 15, 2007 Issue Copyright © 2007 The American Conservative
    Fragmented Future
    Multiculturalism doesn _ t make vibrant communities but defensive ones.
    In
    America, you don _ t need to belong to a family-based mafia for
    protection because the state will enforce your contracts with some
    degree of equality before the law. In Mexico, though, as former New York Times correspondent Alan Riding wrote in his 1984 bestseller Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans,

    _ Public life could be defined as the abuse of power to achieve wealth
    and the abuse of wealth to achieve power. _ Anyone outside the extended
    family is assumed to have predatory intentions, which explains the
    famous warmth and solidarity of Mexican families. _ Mexicans need few
    friends, _ Riding observed, _ because they have many relatives. _

    Mexico is a notoriously low-trust culture and a notoriously unequal
    one. The great traveler Alexander von Humboldt observed two centuries
    ago, in words that are arguably still true, _ Mexico is the country of
    inequality. Perhaps nowhere in the world is there a more horrendous
    distribution of wealth, civilization, cultivation of land, and
    population. _ Jorge G. Castaсeda, Vicente Fox _ s first foreign minister,
    noted the ethnic substratum of Mexico _ s disparities in 1995:

    The
    business or intellectual elites of the nation tend to be white (there
    are still exceptions, but they are becoming more scarce with the
    years). By the 1980s, Mexico was once again a country of three nations:
    the criollo minority of elites and the upper-middle class, living in
    style and affluence; the huge, poor, mestizo majority; and the utterly
    destitute minority of what in colonial times was called the Republic of
    Indians &

    Castaсeda
    pointed out, _ These divisions partly explain why Mexico is as violent
    and unruly, as surprising and unfathomable as it has always prided
    itself on being. The pervasiveness of the violence was obfuscated for
    years by the fact that much of it was generally directed by the state
    and the elites against society and the masses, not the other way
    around. The current rash of violence by society against the state and
    elites is simply a retargeting. _

    These deep-rooted Mexican attitudes largely account for why, in
    Putnam _ s _ Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, _ Los Angeles ended
    up looking a lot like it did in the Oscar-winning movie _ Crash. _ I once
    asked a Hollywood agent why there are so many brother acts among
    filmmakers these days, such as the Coens, Wachowskis, Farrellys, and
    Wayans. _ Who else can you trust? _ he shrugged.

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  8. Those stats from Charles are just astounding.

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  9. charles,

    re: Ed Morrissey a.k.a. "Captain"

    Don't put your confidence in Morrissey. He has his talking (and I do emphasize "talking") points and he is not about to allow facts to interfer. In short, Charles, he is a lightweight, who got in early.

    As to your stats, I have seen them reputably reported elsewhere. But, unfortunately, like Morrissey, the administration is not going to let facts interfer with its prejudices. For those government employees tempted to try the patience of the Federals, see
    Heroic Border Guards Start Prison Terms
    Prayers for these men and their families are in order.

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  10. Great Posts/Links, Charles.
    Bushworld pretends that reality does not exist.

    Very, compassionate,
    ...at least to Citizen Slaughtering Scumbags.

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  11. ... more and more people becoming aware!

    Super job, Whit!

    The EB crowd is on the job!

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  12. Welcome to Aztlan ladies and gentlemen.

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  13. President Bush will wait six months, then pardon those border guards. That will show that no one is above the law, and since they were convicted by a jury they get some punishment.

    But it will also show that the sentence was unfair, and the whole way they went after them extreme. Bush pardons less than 20 a year, so this will be a strong statement in support of the border guards and law & order.

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  14. There's a tradition in many Mexican towns that dates back generations of young men heading north to work. Many in the past would come home though.

    One thing this article on Mexico didn't really focus on is that NAFTA has had some advantages. Wal-Mart arrived on NAFTA's eve and put the boots to some lazy competitors that were gouching Mexican consumers. More and better goods and services are now available. Prices are lower and credit is more widely available.

    Mexico's economy has major structural problems. Abusive monopolies and duopolies are rife and unions are sill powerful - and corrupt. The solutions to Mexico's problems are here in Mexico. To say otherwise is dishonest.

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