Returning migrants boost Mexico’s middle class

[alp227]

William Booth and Nick Miroff, Washington Post, 7/24/12

SANTA MARIA DEL REFUGIO, Mexico — For a generation, the men of this town have headed north to the land of the mighty dollar, breaking U.S. immigration laws to dig swimming pools in Memphis and grind meat in Chicago.

In the United States, they were illegal aliens. Back home, they are new entrepreneurs using the billions of dollars earned “on the other side” to create a Mexican middle class.

The migrants “did something bad to do something good,” said Mexican economist Luis de la Calle.

Where remittances from El Norte were once mostly used to help hungry families back home simply survive, surveys now reveal that the longer a migrant stays up north, the more likely the cash transfers will be used to start new businesses or to pay for homes, farm equipment and school tuitions.

From Santa Maria del Refugio, a once rural, now almost suburban, community of 2,500 in central Mexico’s Guanajuato state, young men have gone to the United States seeking the social mobility they could not find at home.

Their money, and many of the workers themselves, have since returned, as the U.S. economy slowed in the global recession. For the first time in 40 years, net migration is effectively zero. About the same number of Mexicans left the United States last year as arrived. Migration experts expect the northward flow to pick up again as the U.S. economy improves. It is also possible that as Mexico provides more opportunity for upward mobility, some potential migrants will stay home.

full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mexican-middle-class-booms-with-work-in-us/2012/07/23/gJQATo5R5W_singlePage.html

[malthaussen]

1. I remember a few years ago, Carlos Mencia made a joke

that said, essentially, you Gringos shouldn't worry about the Mexicans wanting to come here. You should start worrying when they stop wanting to come here.

-- Mal

[Igel]

2. Good thing.

Of course, one side effect will be what's happened in other "training programs."

We bring students over to train them to be engineers, scientists, managers. They stay, we complain about them foreigners stealing our jobs when we have unemployed.

The students go home and they work as engineers, scientists, managers. They set up plants, they head research, they buld companies. We complain about competition on the world markets, that the US is losting its edge in research, we complain about imports that hurt jobs here.

In this case lots of immigrants came and worked for small businesses. They build cash reserves. Their families or, if they go home, they themselves, start small businesses.

If they build the economy in their homelands enough, all those still here illegally might find it worthwhile to go home. Then they'll have to decide whether to take their US families with them back or do what many did when they immigrated and abandon some family members.

This has already had political effects in Mexico and in the US. Can you imagine what would happen if 2 million Mexican and Central American immigrants returned home? If 5 million did? The wailing and gnashing of teeth would be great, and not just from US businesses losing cheap, nearly captive labor.