Improving Mexican Economy Leads to Fewer Undocumented Immigrants

Stephen Magagnini writes for the Sacramento Bee:

There are fewer undocumented immigrants in California – and the Sacramento region – because many are now finding the American dream south of the border.

“It’s now easier to buy homes on credit, find a job and access higher education in Mexico,” Sacramento’s Mexican consul general, Carlos González Gutiérrez, said Wednesday. “We have become a middle-class country.”

Mexico’s unemployment rate is now 4.9 percent, compared with 9.4 percent joblessness in the United States.

An estimated 300,000 undocumented immigrants have left California since 2008, though the remaining 2.6 million still make up 7 percent of the population and 9 percent of the labor force, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Read more…

For some time it’s been clear that if folks are really concerned about undocumented migration from Mexico, then we should be working on helping to improve Mexico’s economy. Click here and here.

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