Immigration from Mexico to the United States declines to lowest level in a decade

AFP

The number of Mexican immigrants who came to the United States has fallen sharply, hitting a 10-year low in the 12 months ending in March, a Pew Hispanic Center report showed Wednesday.

Between March 2008 to March 2009, the "estimated annual inflow of immigrants from Mexico was lower than at any point during the decade," bottoming out at about 175,000 immigrants, the report said, citing data from the US Census Bureau's Current Population Survey.

In the previous two years, the number of immigrants crossing from Mexico to the United States was around twice that figure, the report said.

The report notes that statistics from Mexico's National Survey of Employment and Occupation (ENOE) showed that the immigrant flow from Mexico to the United States has fallen by around 20 percent a year since 2006, from more than a million people in the 12 months starting February 2006 to 814,000 for the same period in 2007-2008 and to 636,000 in 2008-2009.

The Mexican figures were markedly higher than the US census figures because the Mexican data covers a broad spread of migrants while the US figures track only people whose principal residence is in the United States.

A third of all foreign-born US residents and two-thirds of Hispanic immigrants to the United States come from Mexico, the report said.

Nearly everyone who leaves Mexico heads for the United States, which is currently home to one in 10 people who were born in Mexico.

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