Q: Many economists argue that migration is good for sending countries because migrants send back resources (“remittances”) and may later return with new skills and knowledge, stimulating development. You claim such rosy predictions are exaggerated. Why?

A: The key consideration of whether migration leads to development and new productive activities is whether that migration is cyclical or not. When young adults travel abroad for temporary periods and return home after accumulating enough savings, direct and indirect positive effects have every chance to materialize. On the other hand, when entire families leave, the cumulative effect is more likely to be depopulation. That is what is happening in Mexico, with the emergence of ghost towns and “tinsel towns” adorned only for the return of migrants for the annual patronal festivities. Entire families seldom return and migrant workers have fewer incentives to send resources home when their spouses and children no longer live there. When remittances are sent, they lack any development potential when their hometowns become bereft of productive infrastructure and people.

Q: Why has permanent family migration from Mexico replaced the kind of cyclical labor migration that can have positive development effects?

A: There are two parallel and reinforcing factors. First, NAFTA hollowed out Mexican industry, while severely weakening peasant farming through cheap food imports and capital-intensive mechanized agriculture. The end of employment in a number of sectors of the Mexican economy and the severe reduction of opportunities for productive investment in the countryside reinforced the effects of the second factor: the militarization of the United States border. Such border enforcement, as Massey and his associates have shown, did not stop the Mexican labor flow but did stop its cyclical nature. Because it became too costly and dangerous to return, migrants have been encouraged to remain in the U.S. permanently and to bring their families with them.

Q: Can government intervention in sending countries mitigate the effects of migration?

A. Yes. Effective governmental programs in the form of public works, subsidies and support for productive activities and the direct launching of employment-creating enterprises can make a great deal of difference. By motivating productive-age adults to stay and work, they create the necessary socio-demographic infrastructure for migrant remittances and investments to be productively used. Even when some families choose to live off remittances, the demand for goods and services that they generate can be met by other working adults in the community— merchants, farmers, construction crews—thus generating the predicted spin-off effects.

Q. Is the migration of professionals—the so-called “brain drain”—just as damaging to the countries they leave?

A: In some cases, less developed nations do end up spending scarce resources to educate engineers and physicians who cannot find the equipment and conditions to put their skills to work in their own countries and therefore wind up leaving to work abroad. But the classical view of the “brain drain” as an unmitigated disaster for countries-- with scarce pools of professionals constantly siphoned off by the richer nations and painful efforts to create and expand cadres of domestic talent coming to naught—is not necessarily true. As the case of India exemplifies, the growth of a sizable population of professionals, engineers, and scientists abroad may actually energize development at home through a dense transnational traffic of personnel, resources, and ideas. Government creation of centers of higher learning, support for research projects, and financial incentives for the establishment of high-tech private industry can provide the necessary infrastructure to receive and absorb the contributions of professionals abroad.

Q: Could Mexico follow India’s example?

A: Mexico has a well-developed network of universities and scientific institutions and, therefore, the capacity to benefit from its own sizable population of professionals in the United States. However, the evisceration of domestic industry caused by NAFTA has reduced significantly the capacity for autonomous technological innovation and hence the attractiveness of the country to would-be professional returnees. Unlike India or China, Mexico succumbed to external pressures to unconditionally open its borders, thus placing the prospects of economic development in the hands of foreign investors and greatly reducing its capacity for high-tech innovation. In the process, it seriously weakened the institutional network upon which a transnational community of Mexican professionals and scientists could develop.

Q: In most discussions of immigration to the United States from Mexico, the focus is on what you call the “first-generation phenomenon”: how migrants overcome legal barriers and their impact on the U.S. labor market. What is being overlooked?

A: Forgotten is the reality that undocumented workers, like other migrants, can spawn a second generation that grows up under conditions of unique disadvantage. Poorly educated migrants who come to fill menial positions at the bottom of the labor market and who lack legal status have greater difficulty supporting their youths. Because of poverty, these migrants often move into central city areas where their children are served by poor schools and are daily exposed to gangs and deviant lifestyles. A number of children of immigrants trapped in this situation suffer from what is being called downward assimilation.

Q: What are the indicators of this downward assimilation?

A: The key indicators are high school drop-out rates, male rates of incarceration, and female rates of adolescent and early youth childbearing. Data from the 2000 U.S. Census show that close to one-fourth of U.S.-born Mexicans and Central Americans drop out of high school, double the corresponding proportion among native whites. Among second-generation Mexican-American female teenagers, the childbearing rate is 5 percent as compared with 0.4 percent for Chinese-Americans and just 0.2 percent for Korean Americans. And the rate of incarceration among males aged eighteen to thirty-nine is 5 percent among Mexicans, compared to less than 2 percent among native males. And, unfortunately, children of unauthorized immigrants are among the most likely to confront these challenges unaided and, hence, to see their fortunes decline.

Q: What are the long-term consequences of this downward assimilation, both for Mexicans in the United States and for Mexico and other Latin American sending nations?

A: The school abandonment, premature pregnancies, and deviant behavior consolidate the position of Mexicans at the bottom of American society and reinforce racial/ethnic stereotypes among the native white population. Such stereotypes increase hostility and opposition to subsequent waves of labor migrants and reduce their chances for successful adaptation. There are serious consequences for Mexico, as well. When young immigrants who have become socialized in deviant lifestyles return to Mexico or are deported there, they bring along these behaviors and often recruit local youngsters into similar activities. The maras or youthful gangs that have become a public security problem in Mexico and Central America were, in their origins, an import from Los Angeles, Houston, and other U.S. cities. Youth gangs are suddenly emerging where none existed before, compounding the public security problem of poor nations.

Q: What are the implications of this research for public policy?

A: The important point is that cyclical migrations work best for both sending and receiving societies. Returnees are much more likely to save and make productive investments at home; they leave families behind to which sizable remittances are sent. More importantly, temporary migrants do not compromise the future of the next generation by placing their children in danger of downward assimilation abroad. To the extent that sending country governments provide the necessary educational resources, these children can grow up healthy in their own countries, benefiting from the experiences and the investments of their parents.
The nightmare of young deportees carrying with them the crime culture learned abroad can thus be effectively avoided.