A Mexican restaurant in North Carolina. (Photo: newyorktomexico.com)

Fewer and fewer Mexican migrants have left their country in the last couple of years to move to the United States, with the total numbers declining “substantially,” says a recent report.

The 142,000 Mexicans who migrated abroad in the third quarter of 2009 were 8 percent fewer than in the same period in 2008, 39 percent fewer than in 2007 and 47 percent fewer than in 2006, according to the report from the Migration Policy Institute. The data come from a monthly household survey the Mexican government conducts nationally.

The study also notes that while “the number of migrants departing from Mexico has historically peaked in the summer months… this trend disappeared in 2009.”

The trend was “particularly pronounced” in Mexican towns with no more than 2,500 residents. The rate, which in 2006 used to be of 25.4 emigrants for each 1,000 residents, sank last year to 8.8.

“(R)ecent evidence suggests that immigration from Mexico has slowed in the context of the deep recession that officially began in December 2007 but started earlier in some regions of the country and sectors of the economy that are particularly important for immigrants,” the study’s author Aaron Terrazas wrote.

In any case, Mexicans continue to be the biggest foreign-born community in the U.S., with a total of 11.4 million that surpasses the populations of many countries, including Greece, Portugal, Belgium and Sweden, Terrazas noted.

With Mexico’s own population at 105.9 million in 2008, this means that about one of every 10 Mexicans resides in the U.S.

Mexicans are 30.1 percent of all immigrants in the U.S. and “over half of all Mexican immigrants reside in the (country) illegally,” the study says.

Terrazas pointed that “(t)he origins of Mexican immigrants have also changed over the past decade with more Mexicans coming from Mexico’s less prosperous south and southeast compared to the traditional sending zones in Mexico’s center-west region.”

The Laredo-Nuevo Laredo border crossing. (File photo: Diego Graglia/newyorktomexico.com)

MEXICO CITY — After a tough economic year, many Mexican immigrants who usually return home from the U.S. for Christmas and New Year are more likely to stay home.

A survey this week of local newspapers in the Northern Mexican states turned up several reports of smaller numbers of paisanos (compatriots) returning home for the holidays than last year. Between 10 and 20 percent fewer migrants have crossed the border so far, the newspapers said.

“The struggling economy in both the U.S. and Mexico and drug-related violence south of the border are expected to keep away many of the 1 million or so expatriates who normally return annually for the holidays,” reported the Dallas Morning News’ Mexico correspondent Alfredo Corchado.

About 17 percent fewer migrants entered the northwestern border city of Nogales, south of Tucson, over the weekend, reported El Imparcial newspaper. The statistic is based on the number of temporary permits for American cars granted at the border post — which can only be awarded to legal U.S. residents.

At Reynosa, in the Mexican Northeast, the number of entries was down 20 percent from last year, said the En Línea Directa news website. Jorge Boy Espinoza, local customs official, said the economic crisis was probably behind the drop.

Also in Tijuana, one of the busiest border crossings, the flow was smaller, according to Mexico City’s El Universal:

“Barely ten people were in line to process the temporary importation of their cars into Mexican territory (on Sunday,) unlike at the same date last year, when some 400 clients were counted.”

Some of those who did return “couldn’t help being afraid on the face of the wave of kidnapping and extortion to which dozens of them have been victims when arriving in the country,” reported Northern daily El Siglo de Torreón.

Migrant Lucio Tecalco told El Siglo crossing a big chunk of the Mexican map to reach his home state of Veracruz was a challenge after four years of not coming home:

“Everything has changed, you hear a lot of things about Mexico, that they are kidnapping us Mexicans who come from the U.S.

“It’s not the same as when we left.”

Obama and Calderón had a bilateral meeting on Sunday in Guadalajara. (Photo: Alfredo Guerrero/Mexican Presidency - Click to visit Flickr page)

The summit of the “Three Amigos” (the presidents of the U.S., Mexico and Canada) in Guadalajara brought no good news for Mexicans on the immigration front. The headline in Monday’s Mexico City newspaper El Universal summed it up: “Neither immigration reform nor does Canada eliminate visas.” At a press conference at the summit President Obama said that Congressional action on immigration reform will have to wait until next year.

With a raging drug war south of the border, trade controversies and the U.S. Congress occupied with other matters, Mexican President Felipe Calderón apparently did not even intend to push the issue of immigration with his American counterpart, Barack Obama, in their private meeting on Sunday.

Also at the summit, Canada, which recently started requiring all Mexican visitors to obtain a visa, said it has no intention of going back on that decision, which has incensed Mexicans, already sensitive on the issue.

According to El Universal, Obama told Calderón that the White House has a full plate right now, which makes it impossible to deal with an immigration reform bill.

The Mexican ambassador to the U.S., Arturo Sarukhán, narrated the encounter, saying Obama told Calderón that “if the rest of the legislative agenda in the U.S., in Congress, moves in the right direction, space could open up between November and March. But evidently, right now, the immigration reform bill is not ready at this time to be introduced in Congress.”According to Sarukhán, Obama explained his priority is health care reform, followed by energy reform. That leaves immigration in third place on his list of major bills to be passed by Congress.

While the presidents met one-on-one on Sunday, the actual summit took place on Monday.

“Immigration reform, it is expected, will be one of the topics absent from the Summit of North American Leaders,” said Guadalajara newspaper El Informador.

Left-leaning La Jornada lamented in an editorial that “the Obama administration has not made significant progress (on immigration reform) this year, and it is not likely that it will, unless it is done through renewed political and social pressure from the migrants themselves, in the U.S., and a firmer stance from the Mexican authorities.”

In light of the lack of progress on immigration, the Mexican Catholic church criticized the national government for not defending the rights of paisanos who live in the U.S.

Saying that Calderón should have pushed harder for reform in his meeting with Obama, the Archdiocese of Mexico regreted that the government does not carry out “strong actions” for the wellbeing of Mexicans in the U.S. The Mexican administration showed a “lax stance,” it added.

Children who are U.S. citizens but now live in Mexico because of their parents’ deportations were there. After President Obama said at his speech in the Democratic National Convention last year that no one “benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child,” activists had hoped he would stop deportations that break up families with an executive order. That has not happened.

The Pew Hispanic Center said this week that 73% of the children of undocumented immigrants were born in the U.S. and are U.S. citizens.

One of the protesters present was Elvira Arellano, who became known nationwide when she fought a deportation order in 2006 by seeking sanctuary inside a Chicago church. Arellano was finally deported in 2007 and now runs a shelter for deported women and children in Tijuana while continuing to work for immigration reform from the other side of the border. She came to the embassy with her 10-year-old son, Saúl, a U.S. citizen.

You can watch a slideshow on the Arellanos below or, for higher quality, go to our YouTube channel.

MEXICO CITY — Even before he landed in Mexico City today to begin a two day visit, President Obama had already sent a strong message to Mexicans via one of the capital city’s most influential newspapers.

“Years of Progress, At Risk: Obama”  That was the headline this morning on the cover of El Universal, announcing an op-ed article penned by Obama, which ran simultaneously in several countries in newspapers belonging to the Grupo de Diarios de América consortium.

In the piece, the president acknowledges that the U.S., distracted “by other priorities,” has on many occasions “neither sought nor maintained relationships with its neighbors.”

…our progress is directly linked to progress in the whole American continent. My government has committed to the promise of a new day. We will renew and sustain more extensive relationships between the United States and the hemisphere.

In advance of the Summit of the Americas he will attend later this week in Trinidad and Tobago, Obama reminds Latin American readers that this week he softened the American approach to Cuba –reducing travel and remittance restrictions– and he asks that the continental debate leave behind its 20th century frame of mind.

To face our economic crisis, it is not necessary to debate whether it is better to have a rigid, government-managed economy or an unfettered capitalism with no regulations; it is necessary to take pragmatic and responsible measures that promote our common prosperity.

Still, in an American diplomatic tradition dating to the 1960s, he also uses the letter to renew the calls to Latin American countries to “join us in supporting liberty, equality and human rights for all Cubans.” (See below for a contrarian view from two of the most important Latin American leaders.)

Obama also proposes creating a Society of the Americas to address energy and climate issues, as one of the ways to deal with the global economic crisis. He also reaffirms his commitment to working with Mexico in the war against drug cartels, “starting from home.”

Other Mexican newspapers also led today with the historic visit.

“Everyone Wants To Be… Obama”

Center-right daily Reforma used a picture of a latex mask factory in Puebla which received an order for 5,000 Obama replicas. “He is already an icon of world pop culture. His visit to Mexico is like when the Pope came,” the factory’s owner said.

On a more serious note, Reforma also carried the news that the Drug Enforcement Agency does not approve of the initiative being discussed in Mexico these days of legalizing marijuana to cut off one of the cartels’ main sources of cash.

“For The U.S., Mexico Is More Of An Internal Policy Issue”

Leftist La Jornada reflected the extreme security measures that surround Obama’s visit (as well as the security challenge the Mexican drug war has become for the administration.)

Sections of the city –including the upscale neighborhood of Polanco, where Obama will sleep tonight– have seen heavy police and military presence since Wednesday. More than 3,500 officers are to take part in the security operation. Traffic, always chaotic, will be considerably worse today close to the areas where the American president is scheduled to be.

“Against the Narcos, The U.S. Only Gave Me Pats In The Back: Fox”

Milenio led with a complaint from the previous Mexican president, Vicente Fox, who told CNN he obtained no real cooperation from the United States when he tried to fight the drug cartels.

“A good relationship and friendship are not enough, neither are nice words like those Secretary Hillary Clinton said … What we need is commitments,” Fox said.

As evidence that U.S. intentions are frequently misaligned with Latin American objectives, Milenio also reported that the presidents of Brazil, Lula Da Silva, and Colombia, Álvaro Úribe –seen, respectively, as the leaders of the progressive and conservative camps in the region– will propose that Cuba be accepted to the Summit of the Americas and to the Organization of American States. The Communist Caribbean nation has historically been isolated from these hemispheric fora due to U.S. pressure.

MEXICO CITY — As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton departed Monterrey, Mexico for Dallas Thursday the consensus among Mexican officials seemed to be that finally the United States has decided to acknowledge its share of blame in the growth of the drug cartels –and the violence they cause.

Thursday's El Universal cover

Mexican politicians greeted with approval and even delight Clinton’s statement that Americans’ “insatiable demand” for narcotics fuels the drug trade from south of the border. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians,” she had said Wednesday. (Of course the reaction in the U.S. was quite different.)

“A self-critical discourse which has never before been heard from a high-level American official,” said an editorial in El Universal, perhaps Mexico’s most influential newspaper, which ran Clinton’s quotation across its cover yesterday, above the headline:

“Hillary: Unfair To Blame Mexico for Narco“

But Mexicans’ elation was not complete, as two other newspapers highlighted on their covers: while Clinton made the statements Felipe Calderón’s government wanted to hear, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano continued a recent trend of statements about the Mexican situation that are offensive to Mexican ears.

During a Senate hearing Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) asked Napolitano: “Are you generally in agreement with my comment that the struggle that Calderón and the Mexican government is engaged in with the drug cartels is an existential threat to the very fabric of the government of Mexico? Do you agree with that statement?”

Napolitano thought it over for a few seconds and, nodding as if to show her conviction, answered, “Yes.” [You can watch the hearing here; McCain's question begins at 54:24.]

The statement made the covers of both the business-friendly Reforma (“FCH’s government at risk”) and leftist La Jornada (“U.S.: Narco puts Calderón’s government at risk“.) And, of course, it did not please pundits.

La Jornada columnist Julio Hernández López wrote:

But, oh, the Anglophone gods of ambivalence! While in the Mexican capital everything was delight and satisfaction, in the American capital Secretary Janet Napolitano played the role she gets to play in the good cop, bad cop strategy.

Here, Hillary pleased underdeveloped ears, while the gringa Homeland Security secretary mouthed an unequivocal “yes” to Sen. John McCain’s question.

Napolitano’s (and McCain’s) statement is bound to rile Mexicans. While the government is indeed fighting a bloody war against the drug cartels, an “existential threat” seems far from a fair description of the situation. Added to a recent description of Mexico as a “failed stated,” and comparisons to the situation in Pakistan, these statements seem to detract from the goodwill the Obama Administration appears intent on showing Mexico.

Yet another piece of news coming from Washington D.C. was a cause for concern in the Mexican political world.

News leaked yesterday that the U.S. may name Cuban-American career diplomat Carlos Pascual as its next ambassador to Mexico.

What would be the problem with that?

Pascual –who was ambassador to Ukraine– “has written extensively about ‘failed states’”, The New York Times reported. In 2005, he co-authored an article entitled “Addressing State Failure” for Foreign Affairs magazine.

As columnist Enrique Galván Ochoa wondered in La Jornada, “Is the messenger the message?”

One day after the U.S. announced it will beef up security along its southern border, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Mexico today to discuss drug-related violence and economic issues. Clinton’s counterpart, Patricia Espinoza Castellano, said at a Mexico City press conference yesterday that the American measures are “coherent with the fight against organized crime.”

Mexico's Foreign Minister Patricia Espinoza. (Photo: AP)

Clinton’s visit comes in advance of a trip by President Barack Obama himself, who will travel south in April to meet Mexico’s head of state, President Felipe Calderón. In response to news of growing drug cartel-related violence in Mexico –and recently in some American cities close to the border– the Obama Administration seems determined to engage and cooperate much more closely with Mexico than the Bush Administration did.

The security measures announced yesterday include sending more immigrations, customs, anti-drug and gun law enforcement officers to the border. In response Espinoza, the Mexican foreign minister, expressed hope for a renewed, closer relationship with Mexico’s northern neighbor.

Espinoza added that the security issue will feature prominently during Clinton’s visit, which she called the start of “a new age of cooperation between both governments.”

She also stated that her government will talk to Clinton about U.S. immigration policies. “We have insisted on an end to raids and to the separation of families (through deportations),” she said.

Arturo Sarukhán, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., also emphasized the “new era” theme. He noted that Clinton’s visit will be followed by others including Attorney General Eric Holder, Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano, and members of Congress. Sarukhán said this marks a change in bilateral relations “for the next months and years,” according to the Notimex news service.

The ambassador added he was “extremely impressed” by the Obama administration’s will to help the Mexican government fight organized crime “on both sides of the border.”

George W. Bush had started his presidency in a similar fashion, meeting then-Mexican President Vicente Fox soon after taking office, and vowing to collaborate with Mexico in addressing immigration. But after 9/11 the Bush administration shifted its focus, and never followed up on that promising start.

President Obama referred to the new border measures during last night’s prime time press conference. “It is very significant,” he said. “We’re sending millions of dollars in additional equipment to provide more effective surveillance. We are providing hundreds of additional personnel that can help control the border, deal with customs issues.”

The goal, he added, was to “assure the border communities in the United States are protected and you’re not seeing a spillover of violence.” He emphacized the need to control the southward flow of guns and cash, which is “what makes (the Mexican cartels) so dangerous.”

Obama again, as he has in the past, praised President Calderón “who has taken on an extremely difficult task” in fighting the cartels, in what in some regions of Mexico has come to look like all-out war.

“We’re helping the Mexican government deal with the situation,” he said.

In case the new security measures prove insufficient, he added, “then we’ll do more.”

Meanwhile, Clinton refuted the characterization of Mexico as a near-failed state that was contained in a Pentagon report published last November, and has offended many politicians and pundits in Mexico City.

“I do not agree with that,” Clinton said, according to Reforma newspaper. “That is not the position of President Obama’s Administration.”

Turns out that, if anything, the U.S economic crisis has motivated many Mexican migrants to remain in the U.S., rather than make the expensive trip back home to try to weather the economic storm in an economy that is less well-prepared to deal with it.

In late November, Diego Muciño, secretary for migrants in the small city of Zitácuaro in Michoacán state, was bracing for the arrival of more than 4,000 townspeople who now live in the U.S., local newspaper Cambio de Michoacán reported. Migrants usually return to Mexico for the holidays starting on the Thanksgiving weekend and Muciño said the city expected as much as 27 percent of its 16,000 migrants to come back.

However, in a phone conversation with this reporter just two weeks later, Muciño said his expectations had not been met. He reported that the number of migrants returning was smaller than the typical influx of people who visit for the holidays every year and then return to work in the U.S. around February.

“They prefer to stay there to see what happens,” Muciño said. “They expect it’s going to get better with the new president.”

The news — or rather, the absence of it — was confirmed by a Michoacán state official, who said the trend so far was that fewer seasonal visitors were coming back than in recent years. (Michoacán is the No. 1 Mexican state providing migrants to the U.S.) The official, who was interviewed on background, said the November media stories about a massive wave of returning migrants were probably just “a scare,” a reaction to worrisome economic news coming from the North.

The same change in tone can be seen now in Mexican newspapers.

Mexico City’s Reforma reported returning home “is not an option” for Mexicans who can’t find a job in the U.S.

The paper quoted Manuel Rodríguez, the Mexican consul in Chicago, as saying,

There is not a noticeable increase in the amount of returns of compatriots to Mexico. We don’t see a massive return of workers affected by the crisis or afraid in the face of the uncertainty generated by the economic situation. It’s important to prevent confusion and disquiet from sprouting in Mexico or within our community in the U.S.

Chicano anthropologist Renato Rosaldo, a professor at New York University, offered a similar perspective when interviewed by the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. “If the recession is global, I don’t think that many people will return, because they will look for a way to survive in the United States,” Rosaldo said. “Looking for work is fundamental for migrants.”

Another scholar, José de Jesús Meza Tapia of the University of Guadalajara, rejected the notion of a massive return to the state of Jalisco. The state’s economy, he said, “doesn’t allow for them to survive and have a good quality of life, since they can’t fulfill their work expectations and the job market doesn’t give them everything that they need.”

In the northwestern coastal state of Sinaloa, Noroeste news website reported that southbound traffic from the U.S. was much less than in previous years. In the border city of Ciudad Juárez, returning migrants interviewed by El Diario said they didn’t intend to stay in Mexico, “they just come to visit their relatives back home with fewer gifts or with none at all.”

Conclusive evidence is hard to find on something as elusive as the movement of undocumented migrants. So far, however, it seems that officials’ dramatic predictions of a couple of months ago have not been fulfilled.

[Please read an update on this story here.]

Mexico is bracing for the consequences of the U.S. economic crisis. Among these is an increase in Mexican immigrants going back to their home country — chased away by the lack of jobs north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the general economic downturn, as well as tougher enforcement of immigration laws.

Antonio García Conejo, an official from the Mexican state of Michoacán, is one of those pointing to a dramatic increase in Mexicans leaving the U.S. and returning home.

The return of Mexicans has already started, but many more arrivals are expected at the end of the year and in 2009.

Conejo was quoted by the Mexican newspaper El Universal. His state has been a major beneficiary of remittances, money sent home by expatriates living and working in the United States. The level of remittances to Mexico has been falling since last year, initially due to the slowing U.S. housing market.

In another story published Wednesday, El Universal said that 1,400 Mexicans are crossing the border back into Tamaulipas state from Texas every week — double the normal amount, according to a state legislator. The border city of Nuevo Laredo has decided to charter buses to help those people reach their home communities in states to the south to prevent an increase in local unemployment and vagrancy, the official said.

The wave of immigrants returning to an already struggling Mexican economy could be massive. A Milenio newspaper columnist citing an official report from the Puebla state government says about two million Mexicans are expected to go back next year. Deborah Bonello, a reporter blogging for the Los Angeles Times from Mexico City, reports a much lower estimate by Cruz Lopez, head of Mexico’s National Confederation of Farm Workers:

Mexico should prepare itself for both the forced and voluntary return of more than 350,000 of its people currently living in the United States due to the financial crisis north of the border…

In any case, states like Guanajuato and Puebla and municipalities like the border city of Reynosa have announced contingency plans to deal with the influx of returning migrants.

The trend is being noticed on both sides of the border. New York Daily News columnist Albor Ruiz learned the news from Mexican activists in Manhattan. He reported a remark by Joel Magallán, executive director of New York community organization Asociación Tepeyac: “Due to the state of the economy in the U.S., thousands of Mexican immigrants are going home,” Magallán said.

Ruiz wrote:

Remember Operation Scheduled Departure, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s self-deportation program put in place two months ago that was scrapped for lack of takers?

Well, where the feds failed, the economic crisis is succeeding: Self-deportation is becoming a reality.

Michael O’boyle, a Reuters reporter in Mexico, found a family in Acatzingo, southwest of Mexico City, who returned home from Delaware when the economic slowdown and the toughening of immigration enforcement made their situation untenable. One of the family members told O’boyle, “It’s better to be poor back in Mexico than to be a hamster in its cage up there.”

A massive return of Mexicans not only means that more people in Mexico will be looking for jobs: it’s also expected to contribute to the decline in the amount of money being pumped into the Mexican economy through remittances. After oil exports, remittances have, in recent years, been the second-largest source of foreign exchange for the country. (They are even more important for some of the smaller Central American countries.)

El Universal reported last week that, according to Banco de México, August was the slowest month this year for remittances entering the country: Mexicans sent their families $268 million less than in August 2007, a 12 percent year-to-year loss.

Through the first seven months of this year, the loss has amounted to $526 million, the bank said.

Inter Press Service’s Diego Cevallos adds that Mexico and the U.S. have an average daily trade volume of $1-billion, which shows the heavy dependence of the southern neighbor on the American economy’s well-being.

A mass exodus could also have social and psychological effects. Jeremy Schwarts, of the Cox News Service, reported that those who are likely to suffer most are kids who grew up in the U.S., but who move to a country they don’t know.

Although this situation may seem unprecedented, Dianne Solís of The Dallas Morning News notes that this already happened, back in 1930 when “the stock market tanked, unemployment rose and cries grew forceful against Mexican immigrants … In the decade that followed, an estimated one million people went to Mexico in a wave of deportations and voluntary repatriations.“

Solís adds that already in the last three years “more than 500,000 Mexicans have been repatriated from the U.S. If their U.S.-citizen children joined them, that total is much higher.”

If the American economy continues to falter, the scope of this 21st century exodus could reach historic proportions.