Retiring Mexican immigrants raise questions

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Tuesday, September 6, 2005

Retiring Mexican immigrants raise questions

In the U.S., many would lack access to social services, and their homeland is not prepared to take them back.

By EDUARDO PORTER and ELISABETH MALKIN
The New York Times

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While much of the attention remains on the persistent inflow of illegal workers, a new question is beginning to worry some analysts and policy-makers on both sides of the border: What will happen when the 10 million Mexicans living in the United States become too old to work? Will they retire in the United States or will they return to Mexico? As they age, the choices these old-timers make could fray the social fabric on both sides of the border.

Mexico is not prepared to receive them back. With a rapidly aging population living in Mexico and virtually no public system of social security or health insurance, Mexico could hardly cope with millions of returning immigrants who spent their working lives in the United States.

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But the United States is also unprepared to deal with millions of poor, aging immigrants eking out a living without recourse to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or most other forms of federal assistance. In 2003, an estimated 710,000 Mexicans over 60 lived in the United States, 63 percent more than a decade earlier, the National Population Council of Mexico concluded, based on Census Bureau figures. About a quarter lived under the poverty line, a far greater share than the 10 percent of the overall elderly population who are poor.

Those numbers are expected to swell for the current generation of illegal immigrants. Unlike earlier migrants - many of them now legal residents in the United States - today's illegal immigrants are likely to see Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid as little more than mirages. While most have paid taxes over their working lives to these programs, under current law they are not entitled to any benefits.

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Immigration policy, however, might be unwittingly contributing to an increase in the number of older Mexicans staying in the United States, as increasingly tight border controls encourage illegal immigrants to settle here rather than risk keeping families in Mexico and shuttling back and forth across the border.

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http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/2005/09/06/sections/business/business_nation/article_663203.php