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For most of the twentieth century, the major linkage between the two most populous countries in North America has been the migration of people from Mexico to the United States. "Go north for opportunity," is an idea deeply embedded in Mexican youth, especially in the rural areas of west central Mexico.

Many factors cause and sustain this movement of Mexicans across the border to work temporarily or to settle in the United States (Massey et al. 1993). We group the factors that sustain Mexico-United States migration into three broad categories: (1) demand-pull factors in the United States; (2) supply-push factors in Mexico; and (3) the networks of human contacts that bridge the border.

Our analysis leads to a simple conclusion: the migration of persons from Mexico to the United States is a dynamic process. What began largely as the U.S.-approved or U.S.-tolerated recruitment of Mexican workers for seasonal U.S. farm jobs has become a far more complex migration flow that is sustained by supply and network factors. Our key findings are that:

· The catalyst for much of today's unauthorized Mexican migration for United States employment lies in the United States, but over time new factors have created a larger and more complex set of reasons that sustain the flow;

· The same tendencies that currently seem to be increasing and diversifying Mexico-United States migration flows may be dampened or reversed starting in the next fifteen years. These demographic and economic trends, if sustained, could reduce pressure for Mexico-United States

migration.

Mexico-to-United States migration is primarily economically motivated and the initial motivations for the migrant flow lie largely inside the United StatesMexican workers were recruited by U.S. farmers earlier in the twentieth century, creating linkages between jobs in U.S. agriculture and workers in particular Mexican communities. We find that there is still a demand-pull for Mexican workers in the low-unemployment U.S. labor market in the sense that most recently-arrived legal and unauthorized Mexican migrants can find jobs in high turnover farm, manufacturing, and service jobs. Low-skill Mexican workers are employed both in areas where Mexican-born workers traditionally have played important roles, as in southwestern agriculture, and now in industries in the Midwest, the southeast, and east coast, including construction, meatpacking, and

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services. In some cases, including poultry and meat packing, private labor brokers and recruiters continue to play an active role in moving Mexican workers to jobs in the Midwest and southeast.

However, the factors that initiated Mexico-United States migration are not necessarily the only ones that sustain the flow. Today cross-border networks of relatives, friends, and labor brokers and recruiters link an expanding list of U.S. industries, occupations, and areas to a lengthening list of Mexican communities that send migrants to the U.S. In Mexico, residents of some communities have better information about the availability of certain types of U.S. jobs than do nearby U.S. residents.

Supply-push factors in Mexico play as fundamental a role as the availability of U.S. jobs in sustaining Mexico-United States migration. Supply-push factors seem to have become more important since the mid-1980s as a result of rapid population growth in the 1970s, recurring Mexican economic crises, peso devaluations, and Mexican policies aimed at economic modernization, such as the privatization of government-owned industries that resulted in layoffs and the restructuring of rural Mexico that made small-scale farming less profitable

(Roberts & Escobar Latapí 1997).

This means that Mexicans migrate to the U.S. (1) within well-established

networks, as well as (2) through new networks that are developing to move migrants to the U.S. from regions without a tradition of Mexico-United States migration, such as Mexico's urban areas and the southern states identified in Chapter III. Friends and relatives established in the U.S. often provide financing, advice, shelter, and jobs to newly-arrived unauthorized migrants. Settled family members in the U.S. use family unification policies to have spouses and children join them and eventually to secure legal migrant status.

In some areas of west central Mexico, the data suggest that migration to the U.S. has become a way of life. Based on migration histories collected in thirty-nine communities that have long histories of sending migrants to the U.S., we estimate that by the time they are 40, most of the men in some of these communities have made at least one trip to the U.S. Based on a statistical model that predicts migration to the U.S. on the basis of age and community characteristics, it

appears that in some communities the probability that a young man will make a first trip to the U.S. increased after 1992.

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The United States labor markets where Mexican migrants work are changing and may change even more as a result of technological advances, trade trends, and labor force and legislative changes. On the demand side of U.S. labor markets, employers are adjusting to higher minimum wages and more global competition. On the supply side, the U.S. retains a sizable low-skilled labor force. Recent welfare reforms may add to the supply of low-skilled U.S. workers seeking employment, most notably in sectors where Mexican-born workers are concentrated (nine of ten Mexican-born workers in the U.S. hold nonfarm jobs, often in low-skill industries). High immigration since the 1980s, legalization in 1987-1988, and changing hiring practices have made Mexican-born workers significant components of the U.S. food processing, construction, service, and manufacturing labor forces.

Employment Trends. It is not clear whether the U.S. labor market will continue to evolve in ways that absorb large numbers of Mexican migrant workers. On the one hand, the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to its lowest levels in twenty-five years in 1997, and there are reports of labor shortages, especially in low-wage labor markets in areas with unemployment rates of less than

2 percent, such as the Midwest. Job growth has been very rapid: between January 1994 and June 1997, the U.S. economy added about 8 million jobs. With Mexican-born workers spreading throughout the U.S. in a period of rapid job growth and low unemployment, networks that bridge the border may be strengthened, increasing the demand for migrant workers and making Mexican migrant workers a permanent feature of more U.S. industries and areas.

On the other hand, the U.S. is committed to implementing more border and interior controls, to moving 2 to 3 million adult welfare recipients into jobs, and to creating jobs for the rapidly growing domestic labor force. The U.S. labor force, which usually expands by about 1 percent per year, has been expanding about twice as fast due to international migration, welfare recipients moving off the rolls, more older men working, and an increase in the percentage of working-age women seeking jobs. In January 1997, a record 67.2 percent of the U.S. population 16 and older was in the labor force, employed, or looking for work, for a total of 136 million persons.

It is hard to project the evolution of labor markets that migrants traditionally enter. In many areas of the U.S., migrant workers, a fear of labor shortages, and

Evolving

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Markets &

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high welfare caseloads go together. For example, in the San Joaquin Valley of California, about 85 percent of the 400,000 individuals who work as farm workers sometime during a typical year are foreign-born, including 100,000 or more unauthorized migrants. Farmers fearful of labor shortages are calling for modifications of the H-2A program that would make it easier to obtain temporary foreign farm workers (reducing wage and housing protections for both the H-2A and other workers). At the same time, local conditions suggest that workers are available: 25 percent of the 761,000 residents of Fresno county are receiving some form of welfare assistance, and many may soon be seeking employment in a competitive labor market with an unemployment rate of over 14 percent as of April 1997.

Border Enforcement Strategies. The United States border enforcement strategies begun in 1994 are affecting migration patterns, but not preventing unauthorized entry. The major programs begun since 1994, 1995, and 1996 are "Hold-the-Line" in El Paso, "Gatekeeper" in San Diego, and "Safeguard" in Arizona, respectively. Our research along the border found that

migrant smuggling has achieved enough regularity and volume to become an established business with three segments: local agents; local and border smugglers; and border-only smuggling businesseseach with a menu of prices and services. As border control operations were stepped up in 1994, more migrants turned to smugglers or "coyotes," whose services became increasingly diversified. Thus, unauthorized migrants have several available packages of services and several options to pay for the cost of illegally entering the U.S., including working in a coyote-provided or coyote-arranged job in the U.S.

Our survey in Jalisco in January 1996 found that most Mexicans attempting unauthorized entry into the U.S. hire smugglers to help them cross the border. Migrants with the fewest network links to bridge the border are most likely to rely on the smugglers who operate as border-only businesses; one-half of the migrants who have no networks in the U.S. turn to these border-only coyotes. The increased use of coyotes generally, and particularly at the border, helps to explain why most migrants attempting unauthorized entry succeed despite significantly more U.S. Border Patrol agents and technology on the border. It remains to be seen whether or not triple fences, augmented border strategies, and more effective internal employer sanctions enforcement will have deterrent

effects over the long run.

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Outlook. These trends suggest several scenarios. One is that migrant labor markets will segment with different employers /industries pursuing different strategies. Some U.S. employers, reacting to low unemployment and welfare reforms that limit assistance for migrants, may offer English and other services to help their migrant employees become naturalized U.S. citizens. Other U.S. employers, such as farm labor contractors, may go further into the underground economy to avoid labor law and immigration enforcement, hiring recently arrived migrants despite high unemployment rates that prevail in their regions. Further segmentation of migrant labor markets could mean that networks may become more important, with the ability to get into the upper segment of the unskilled migrant labor market being the key to economic mobility in the U.S.

We find that there is reason to believe that currently high levels of Mexico- United States migration may represent a "hump" or peak in the volume of Mexico- United States migration. Within the next fifteen years, we think that demographic and economic factors within Mexico are likely to reduce emigration pressures.

Structural Changes and People Seeking Work. A major long-term supply-push factor explaining the mid-1990s migration hump and the eventual decline in emigration pressure is demographythe number of new job seekers entering the labor force in Mexico has been very high, but will decline. Between 1993 and 1997, Mexican National Employment Surveys indicate that employment increased from 32.4 million to 36.7 million, by about 3 percent per year, adding about 1.1 million paid and unpaid jobs per year.¹

A declining birthrate since 1970, when Mexican women averaged nearly seven children each reduces the need to create additional jobs,but Mexican women today average less than three children each, a downward trend that appears to be continuing. The number of new labor force entrants ages 15 to 44 is projected to drop to 500,000 to 550,000 per year by 2010.

Our longer-term perspective emphasizes that these demographic trends, in combination with other patterns in Mexico and the United States, may reudce Mexico-to-United States migration.² Within Mexico, the effect of demographic factors on reducing emigration pressure could be magnified if, for example, more young persons follow the trend of staying longer in Mexican schools. Migration networks are most established in rural areas with long traditions of sending young

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men to the U.S., including the areas of Mexico currently undergoing structural change. But Mexico's rural restructuring can displace workers from agriculture only once. After the Mexican farm labor force has been reduced from 25 percent of all workers in the mid-1990s to 12 to 15 percent by 2015, supply-push

emigration pressures from the areas that have some of the best network connections to the U.S. should diminish.

As the number of persons employed in Mexican agriculture shrinks, and some ex-farmers are absorbed into Mexico's service economy, there should be fewer Mexicans with strong network connections ready to migrate to the US. The destabilizing impacts of Mexican institutional and market reforms should run their course. If current and projected moderate economic growth is sustainedboth in the rural sector and in the new export-oriented activities in Mexican urban areasthen jobs and upward pressure on wages should encourage many potential migrants to remain in Mexico.

Projections of Job Growth. Mexico adopted an ambitious

restructuring and privatization program in the 1990s that promises to increase economic efficiency and job growth in the medium- to long-term (although it will displace workers in the short-term). If Mexico maintains market-driven

economic policies, the International Monetary Fund projects 5 percent annual economic growth and 2.5 percent employment growth for 1997 and thereaftergiven this two to one ratio between real GDP growth and employment growth, there would be 750,000 new jobs created each year, based on 30 million employers, self-employed workers, and wage and salary employees. Even if economic growth is less than the IMF forecast, the Mexican economy may be able to generate enough jobs for the smaller entry labor force cohorts projected for the years after 2000.³ If Mexico is able to generate this additional employment, emigration pressures should diminish. Substantially lower growth rates, however, would slow down this process.

Another promising sign is the recent growth of jobs in the formal economy. The number of permanent workers enrolled in the Mexican Institute for Social Security [IMSS] rose by a record 661,024 in 1996 to 9,163,459, an expansion characterized by the OECD as "strong job creation in the 'formal' economy"

(OECD 1997:98). However, interest rates remain high, and the recovery is unequal, accentuating inequality (Escobar Latapí 1996).⁴ Mexicans linked to the world economy via exports of manufactured goods are doing much better than those operating only in the domestic economy, such as personal services, tradi

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tional manufacturing, construction, and small-scale agriculture. The latter still represents the largest sector for employment.

Differences in the speed of recovery among economic sectors is accompanied by differences among Mexican regions. For supply-side pressures to lessen, economic and employment growth should reach those sectors and regions with strong migration networks.

These medium- to long-term economic and demographic considerations suggest that supply-push emigration pressure should decline from current levels. We emphasize this point because it is easy to focus on recent events that point to increases in emigration pressure, including the peso devaluation and economic crisis of 1995, and the uneven recovery from recession. And, of course, economic factors are less certain: Mexico has experienced uneven economic growth over the past several decades and could experience recessions and crises again.

Sustained economic growth and the current growth-jobs ratio, plus a projected decline in the number of new job seekers, means that early in the twenty-first century Mexico could be creating enough net new jobs to absorb new labor force entrants. Mexico could then begin to catch up on job creation for currently unemployed and underemployed workers, those displaced from agriculture and other industries, and nonworking women who rejoin the labor force.

We find it useful to think of migration processes between Mexico and the U.S. as being analogous to a river that creates a delta on its way to the ocean. When the Bracero program was in operation, the flow of Mexicans north was largely confined to the channel created by legal recruitment. Blocking that channel by abolishing the Bracero program in 1964 enabled the U.S. to stop the migration flow temporarily. The migration soon resumed, however, with a myriad of small streams becoming the channel for Mexicans migrating north. Visualizing Mexico- United States migration as having evolved from a narrow channel to rivulets meandering through a delta provides insights into a complex and dynamic migration process.

Both the U.S. and Mexico took steps over the past decade that reinforced the network and supply-push factors that encourage Mexicans to go north for opportunity. As we saw in Chapter II, the U.S. legalized more than 2 million Mexicans in 1987-1988, including almost 1 million farm workers. The long-term (pre-1982

Thinking

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arrival) legalized population is poised to sponsor a large number of legal admissions. The legalized agricultural SAW workers were the equivalent of one-sixth of the adult men with paid jobs in rural Mexico; they also gained the right to settle in the U.S. and petition to bring their families to the U.S. legally. Ironically, one U.S. government commission concluded that the SAW farm worker legalization program promoted unauthorized Mexico-United States migration by giving the impression that doing unauthorized farm work in the U.S. was a way to become a legal immigrant (Commission on Agricultural Workers 1992).

In the early 1990s, Mexico undertook measures that may compress into a decade or less what would otherwise have been a slower shrinking of employment in agriculture. Mexico eliminated most input subsidies and price guarantees in agriculture, switched to direct payments to farmers, and eased trade restrictions, signaling the eventual shrinking of the production of many commodities, notably corn, that today absorb a great deal of labor, but in which Mexico does not have a comparative advantage.

Extensive networks of family, community, and private agents have developed to assist Mexicans wishing to migrate legally and illegally to the U.S., including a variety of advisors, smugglers, and transportation agents. The migration infrastructure has become very sophisticated. Migrants have choices in deciding who will help them to cross the border, in choosing how to finance the trip, and in finding U.S. employment.

If the underlying demand-pull, supply-push, and network factors change in strength and relative importance, policies designed to deal with just one factor at one level of migration may lose their effectiveness over time. For example, U.S. policies that were based on the assumption that the major factor sustaining Mexico- United States migration was legally-authorized demand-pull U.S. employer recruitment became less effective in the 1970s and 1980s as the key factors sustaining migration shifted to informal U.S. employer recruitment and supply-push and network forces. In such circumstances, simply stopping legally-authorized foreign worker recruitment did not stop migration. There is a need for policymaking that avoids the "law of unintended consequences," that uses a combination of approaches, is effectively implemented, and to the extent possible has the support of both governments.

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¹ The 37 million persons currently in the labor force include about 4 million unpaid family workers and 2 million unemployed workers (those classified as employers or wage and salary workers totaled about 30 million in 1997).

² The U.S. labor market is expected to absorb a large number of unskilled workers over the next few years, as the normal complement of new job seekers are joined by persons removed from welfare rolls. This increased supply of U.S. workers, as well as even more border and interior enforcement, may reduce the availability of jobs for newly-arrived Mexican workers.

³ Mexico's total labor force may grow, as persons not in the labor force seek work if jobs are available. A "tight" labor market will not ensue immediately because there is a reserve of inactive, unemployed, and underemployed persons that these shifts in supply and demand should gradually accommodate.

⁴ Inequality has increased. According to the 1997 UNDP Human Development Report, the richest Mexican person has assets equivalent to the combined incomes of the poorest 17 million Mexicans.

Endnotes

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