Reverse Migration Rocks Mexico

[babylonsister]

Reverse Migration Rocks Mexico
By Malcolm Beith

Page 1 of 1
Posted February 2009

With the U.S. economy contracting rapidly, Mexican migrants are heading back south. But they're finding the homecoming isn't quite what they imagined.


Every Saturday for nearly four years, Elena Trujillo has gone to the local department store in Morelia, Michoacán, to pick up money wired home by her 34-year-old son, Ángel. This 59-year-old mother of three is one of the between 16 and 35 million Mexicans who depend on remittances from relatives in the United States to boost their incomes. But in late September -- for Trujillo and for countless others -- the wire transfers stopped coming. Confused at first, Trujillo was reassured by Ángel on the phone: Everything is OK; I have a surprise for you. The next week, Trujillo received another transfer, this one much larger than normal. She was ecstatic. Ángel's construction work must finally be paying dividends, she thought. Then, just a few days later, Ángel came back to Michoacán. "I couldn't believe it. He had given up and come home," Trujillo said. "He had given up on the American Dream."

Ángel Trujillo is just one of as many as 3 million Mexicans who some experts and officials predict will return home from the United States in the coming months. The economic crisis in the United States is already hitting migrant workers, many of whom work in tanking industries such as construction and manufacturing. Unemployment among Mexican immigrants was 9.7 percent in January, up from 4.5 percent in March of last year, and higher than the 7.6 percent for the United States overall, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not surprisingly, remittances from the United States are also falling for the first time in the 13 years that officials have kept figures on record. In 2008, transfers dropped $1 billion compared with year before, and economists say that the effects of the recession are only beginning to be felt.

Mexico's central bank announced in late January that 20,000 of the migrants who returned for Christmas won't go back to the United States. Officials in Mexican states such as Michoacán, Puebla, and Zacatecas, which send some of the largest numbers of migrants north each year, are predicting a mass return as more migrants give up on the land of opportunity. Fewer migrants than ever are leaving Mexico, too, according to the Mexican government, with the emigration rate dropping 46 percent since 2006.

Local and federal governments have made it clear that returning migrants are more than welcome (officials even hand out information pamphlets entitled "Bienvenido, paisano" -- "Welcome, countryman" -- to help the returnees). But the realities of Mexico's economy will likely leave some doors shut.

more...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4731

[rockymountaindem]

1. Rock on, Lou Dobbs!

Bet you didn't think your dream of getting the Mexicans to go home would look so bad for the rest of us!

[CrispyQ]

2. I never thought it would happen, but,

I've come to dislike Dobbs even more than I dislike Blitzer! Blitzer babbles & half the time I'm not sure he even understands what he says. But Dobbs knows exactly what he says & he has no problem spewing falsehoods to push his 'independent' agenda. Independent, my ass. :puke:

[Thickasabrick]

3. No problemo, they can work at the new Hershey plants.

:sarcasm:

[Warpy]

4. I live in a border state (NM)

and I've been trying to tell the "they're FLOODING our city!" bigots, mostly on the west coast, that the flood is going the other way now.

Maybe now that it's in print, they'll wake up.

I mourn the loss of these people.