It's been going on for years. But many Americans still think the problem is immigration from Mexico. What a shock! Americans are migrating to Mexico. Well, to be honest, we always have but the numbers are hard to estimate. Somewhere approaching 1.5 million is the latest guess, but the Mexican government doesn't include ethnicity questions in their census. For Americans moving south, danger from drug cartels in parts of Mexico appear to be less frightening than the decade-long anger and divisiveness within the US.
Still, Mexicans who live(d) and work(ed) in the US make up the largest group moving south across the border.
The reversal appears to be a result of tightened border controls, a weak U.S. job and housing construction market, a rise in deportations and a decline in Mexican birthrates, said the study, which used U.S. and Mexican census figures and Mexican government surveys. Arrests of illegal immigrants trying to enter the United States have also dropped precipitously in recent years.
Whether the reversal is temporary or permanent, it could have significant implications for the United States. Many Mexican immigrants work in agriculture and construction. ...WaPo
That change could complicate the lives of builders, ranchers, and farmers in the US, particularly in the south and southwest, as they try to recover from the recession. Already the tourism industry in Texas and other states has been found it increasingly difficult to find seasonal workers as easily as in the past.
The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—more than half of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped—and may have reversed, according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of multiple government data sets from both countries.
One aspect of this that rarely gets mentioned on this side of the border when we talk about migration: living in Mexico is very pleasant and increasingly convenient for Americans. For Mexicans returning to their country and perhaps to unemployment, it also means at the very least -- as the WaPo reports -- a return to the support of family and community.
For both groups -- Americans moving to Mexico and Mexican immigrants returning -- escaping from an America is a definite plus, thanks to the increase is our culture of violence, our racialism, and political uncertainty. Perhaps equating American political radicalism with threats from the Mexican drug cartel seems outrageous. But cross the border, get away from America for a while, look back at what we have become.
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One fairly recent "migrant" to Mexico -- WalMart -- is in trouble.
Wal-Mart’s stock fell almost 5 percent on Monday, accounting for about one-fifth of the losses in the Dow Jones industrial average, as investors reacted to a bribery scandal at the retailer’s Mexican subsidiary and a report that an internal investigation was quashed at corporate headquarters in Arkansas. ...NYT
This may become a major problem for WalMart. A breach of the corrupt practices laws is extremely serious and, evidently, WalMart executives have known about this for quite some time.
The fallout for Wal-Mart could be significant. A settlement of any sort would very likely include large fines by both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, said Matthew J. Feeley, who works on cases involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act at the law firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney. Any executive found guilty of a crime, moreover, could face jail time, Mr. Feeley said.
Several former and current Wal-Mart executives in Mexico and in the United States were implicated in the bribery accusations or were involved in the subsequent decision not to alert law enforcement authorities.
“I think there’s going to be a lot of pressure to come down hard on them as a company, not entirely because of the actual violations but because of the failure to do anything internally when those violations came to light,” Mr. Feeley said. ...NYT
