Newsweek: Don't Fence Them In
The Arizona of the future won’t suffer from too many immigrants—but from too few.
… Yet all this angst may be an over-reaction. A little-known, but enormously significant, demographic development has been unfolding south of our border. The fertility rate in Mexico—whose emigrants account for a majority of the United States’ undocumented population—has undergone one of the steepest declines in history, from about 6.7 children per woman in 1970 to about 2.1 today, according to World Bank figures. That makes it roughly equal to the U.S. rate and puts it at what demographers call “replacement level,” the point at which women are having just enough babies to sustain the current population. In coming years it’s expected to dip even further. Other countries in Latin America have experienced a similar drop, though not as sharp. All of which means that the ranks of those “invading” hordes are thinning—rapidly.
The flow of undocumented immigrants began to taper in the middle of the past decade. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the influx averaged 800,000 per year from 2000 to 2004, then dropped to about 500,000 per year from 2005 to 2008. It has almost certainly decreased even more since then, as the Great Recession has wiped out demand for foreign labor. People think of the torrent of illegal immigration in the recent past, and “it scares the pants off them,” says Dowell Myers, a professor in the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California. But “the [demographic] trends that were driving changes in the last decade won’t be there in the next decade.”
Mexico’s fertility rate has plummeted for a variety of reasons. Starting in the 1970s, its government undertook one of the most aggressive contraception campaigns in Latin America and set up family-planning clinics across the country. Women also received better schooling, and as Mexico continued to urbanize and industrialize they entered the workforce in much higher numbers. The result was more economic opportunity, greater control over their lives—and fewer babies.
When women start having fewer kids, that means fewer individuals will be entering the labor force two decades later. It has taken longer for that effect to appear in Mexico, however, because even though the fertility rate began falling in the late 1970s, the number of women of childbearing age kept growing. As a result, the pool of newly minted Mexican workers has continued to swell through today. But that’s about to change. As soon as next year, demographers say, the number of new entrants into the Mexican labor force is expected to start decreasing. This year that figure is about 750,000, says Félix Vélez, secretary-general of Mexico’s National Population Council. By 2020 it’s expected to drop to 600,000, and by 2030 to 300,000. …
In short, Mexico, like many other emerging nations, Mexico is heading down the home stretch of the Demographic Transition. But completing that transition is probably still a decade or more away. Ease on the pressure of people to leave Mexico still doesn't resolve the illegal immigration problem. Illegal immigration, not Mexico, is the problem, and we still need comprehensive reform.
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