The Immigration Non-Issue
Regardless of where you stand on immigration, demographic shifts in Mexico will render the issue meaningless in the coming 10 years. I was partaking in a New America luncheon on immigration and the speaker pointed out that the Mexican population is aging 5 times faster than the US population. By 2011, there should no longer be a new inflow of a large pool of unskilled labor every year in the Mexican population. As such within 10 years, it’s reasonable to expect no net inflows of Mexican labor to the US regardless of the immigration regime. Puerto Rico provides an interesting analogy. The US has a free flow of labor with Puerto Rico yet there is no net immigration to the US from Puerto Rico as a result of the changing demographics there.
It’s also interesting to note that the recent increase in border patrols has prevented large pools of migrant agricultural workers from returning to Mexico…
I have to agree with you, the whole illegal immigration is complicated by the contraversies surrounding it. If the border patrol was not increased people would have freely moved out of US when they wanted to. Now they have to transplant their entire families in an attempt to circumvent the border patrol issues. With only 0.99% rate of population growth, mexico may actually become attractive destination for many americans and mexicans to relocate in 2015. If the situation is properly handled those who enterned illegally may actually choose to go back and invest in their communities, instead of transplanting their families all together.
That’s a good point. In fact as baby boomers start retiring in the US and are looking for warm relatively inexpensive places to live, Mexico is a great destination. It’s partly this logic that has lead me to invest in real estate in Belize and Costa Rica.
Thank you for your interesting post!
I thought perhaps you may also find this related publication interesting to you:
Aging of Population
http://longevity-science.org/Population_Aging.htm