More Immigrants Choose to Leave U.S., Go Home
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Albert Siegel, Miami Herald, June 1, 2008
{snip}
But the reasons he enumerates are echoed by increasing numbers of Latin American immigrants, both legal and not, who appear to be souring on their job prospects and going home:
It was the scant money he made at a menial restaurant job, Salinas said, just enough for food and rent, with barely anything left for his family in Mexico—the reason he came in the first place.
It was the constant fear of being detained by U.S. immigration, especially after the relative with whom he shared a home in West Kendall got stopped while driving without a license. After that, they sold the car and got around with great difficulty on a bicycle.
Finally it was the loneliness. He did not bring his wife and young children, whom he had not seen for 2 1⁄2 years, for fear of the risk of arrest and detention.
{snip}
No hard figures exist, but various surveys and anecdotes from immigrants, their advocates and consular officers in Miami suggest that more Latin Americans are voluntarily heading back home, the apparent result of the U.S. economic downturn and anxiety generated by a federal crackdown on illegal immigration.
The hardest hit appear to be those in agricultural, construction, food processing and service jobs in which many immigrants work.
In South Miami-Dade, even before the winter growing season came to an end, many farmworkers from Mexico and Central America were leaving for home.
{snip}
At the Nicaraguan consulate in West Miami-Dade, the number of Nicaraguan citizens applying for tax exemptions to move their household goods back has risen significantly, said Consul General Luis Martinez. Many are men who found construction work has dried up.
{snip}
A 2007 U.S. Department of Homeland Security report found that the number of permanent legal residents entering the country last year from South and Central America dropped by a quarter. That followed a big increase from 2005 to 2006.
A recent survey of Latin American immigrants by the Inter-American Development Bank highlights their malaise: 81 percent said it was more difficult now than a year ago to get a well-paying U.S. job. More than a quarter said they were considering going home in the next few years. And 68 percent said anti-immigration sentiment was a major problem—almost double the percentage who said so in 2001.
UNCLEAR TRENDS
Not everyone agrees the trend is clear-cut. A consular official in Miami said many Brazilians are going home—some unwillingly, because deportations have increased, and others drawn by an economic revival at home.
{snip}
One difference, he said: Those coming to stay increasingly have work visas, in part in response to U.S. immigration enforcement.
Hundreds of Brazilians have returned in recent months to Governador Valadares, an area in the southeast of the country.
Sociology professor Sueli Siqueira, who interviewed hundreds of the returnees, found that 43 percent left the United States because they weren’t satisfied with their earnings. About 28 percent had been deported. “The cost-benefit of this experience of migration stopped being positive,” Siqueira said, “and they began thinking about coming back.”
The departures are evidence that the Bush administration’s decision to tighten the screws on enforcement is paying off, say proponents of stricter immigration laws.
Several states passed their own laws, from tighter employment verification requirements to authorizing local police to act as immigration agents.
Passage of similar laws in Georgia, coupled with a construction slowdown, prompted Salinas to join a relative in South Florida.
“That’s the whole point of enforcement, to change the climate, to make it as hard as possible for you as an illegal alien, so you can’t just melt away into the shadows,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington group favoring sharp curbs on immigration.
But the crackdown’s critics say it has mainly succeeded in spreading fear among the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country without solving the underlying problem.
ECONOMIC REASONS
{snip}
For some immigrants who return home, the U.S. experience has paid off in added skills.
Cesar Buitrago left his ruined real-estate and loan agency in San Francisco to open a 12-room, pastel pink hotel in Managua.
“My business had gone under. This was a sudden solution, something of a test,” the 59-year-old said, leaning into a wicker rocker in the shade of his Gran Marquez Hotel in the wealthy Los Robles neighborhood. “I am living off this right now.”
{snip}
That’s a feeling shared by Padilla, the former roofer now back in Nicaragua. After only four months, he’s opened one clothing store and is planning to launch a hamburger joint. In dollar terms, he doesn’t earn much—$400 a month—but in the hemisphere’s second-poorest country, that’s more than enough.
‘There’s that phrase about working in the States for a ‘pair of years,’ earning a little something, and then returning home in triumph,” Padilla said. “But with the economy in crisis, you can’t save much and you discover that the so-called dream is false.”
(Posted on June 2, 2008)
Comments
Tough beans, amigos. We Americans are not happy either. Having had to SUPPORT too many of your fellow illegals. Not to mention the crime and problems you insist on bringing to us when you get here. STAY HOME WHERE YOU BELONG! We Americans neither need nor want any more Hispanic problems.
Posted by Fed Up at 5:47 PM on June 2
“43 % left the United States because they weren’t satisfied with their earnings.” Sure, they come here, drive down wages and drive up the cost of living so they can’t afford it here, then bolt back home and leave Americans stuck with the bill. Muchas Gracias y adios.
Posted by at 6:06 PM on June 2
The more that leave, the more the U.S. will improve. I honestyl believe that most Americans sense this intuitively.
Posted by Bobby at 6:08 PM on June 2
A mass exodus of illegals from the US is demonstrably not true. I see more and more of them on the streets, in traffic, and in stores in Washington state. They may be leaving some areas of the US, but they are not going home; they are going to places that they have not yet invaded. I hear reports that they are in Montana and Idaho—places where there is no economic reason for them to be. Why are they in small towns that do not have an agricultural base? They are there to (1) establish an invastion beachhead, (2) take advantage of our ridiculous welfare benefits, (3) and sell drugs.
I am firmly convinced that a large number of immigrants (who invariably are driving nicer pickup trucks than the 1996 truck I drive), are the tip of the iceberg of drug distribution networks.
I was taught that we were fighting a war on crime and poverty, yet we permitted huge numbers of poor criminals to enter this country. My conclusion: we are not a serious country. We are a joke.
Posted by at 6:30 PM on June 2
My wife and daughter can attest to the fact that hispanics are going home.They went shopping in a newly built part of southwest broward county.They noticed the lack of Hispanics behind the counters in many of the stores.Too bad they did not mention all the immigrants who may have lost their homes.We in broward county have many newly built homes with no occupants.So much for how immigrants have created a vibrant economy.
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Posted by Mike Matthews at 7:35 PM on June 2
” In dollar terms, he doesn’t earn much—$400 a month—but in the hemisphere’s second-poorest country, that’s more than enough.”
$400 per month is a fairly decent income in most Latin American countries, including Mexico.
The MSM always emphasizes the low pay in those countries, compared to the US, but they always fail to point out that the cost of living is extremely low.
Notice the illegals sneaking into this country on video. None of them are wearing rags. Statistics published not long ago revealed that most of them had jobs they left, but came north because of the promise of higer earnings, shiny cars, boats, and other material items. As the alien quoted in the above article said, “the dream is false.” I imagine many of them expected to become wealthy or they wouldn’t have dropped their families, their homes, and their jobs to sneak across the border. Greed can be a strong motivator.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 7:38 PM on June 2
The hardest hit have been in construction, food-processing and service jobs? Excellent! These were traditionally entry-level jobs for US citizens. Perhaps American high school students will actually be able to find work this summer.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 10:29 PM on June 2
The US economy is nothing more than a ponzi scheme. It can only keep ‘thriving’ and ‘growing’ by bringing in new consumers. That’s how it runs.
Because of our modern day investment paradigm, company profits can only grow by a) getting consumers spend more money and to buy more products (all this while average wages are falling) or b) increasing the number of consumers. And every year, investors demand that they see an increase in profits and a larger return on investment. It’s a ravenous and self-destructive cycle.
The problem is that such systems eventually collapse under their own failure to provide long term stability. People have finite incomes so they can’t keep increasing their spending every year and you can only bring in new consumers for so long until even their ever increasing numbers can’t keep the economy growing.
That’s why all the economists (and the CATO Institute) are ga-ga over immigration and population booms. They know how to make a killing in the market while the average worker gets killed off and replaced by two more immigrants and their family.
That’s modern economic theory 101. Until we change that, we’re doomed to keep ‘growing’ while we die off.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 11:28 PM on June 2
So, are they really leaving, or are articles like this appearing just before elections to pacify voters? Guest workers were supposed to be agriculture workers to pick the crops no US worker ‘wanted’ to: so how come they are in construction, and food service jobs?
Posted by Observer at 2:18 AM on June 3
I wish I could say illegals are leaving the Central Valley of California. It’s most certainly not true at all. There are as many of them as ever. Also, the housing crisis has not hit the homes many of the Mesoamericans, legal or illegal or whatever, are living in. My town is as Hispanic as ever, with no signs whatsoever of this emigration. Surely it would be a wonderful thing. This town used to be full of Portuguese and Italians. I would gladly trade 5000 Iberians and Italians for 5000 Mexicans.
In a town of 50,000, it is estimated that there are 6000 gang members absolute minimum. That does not include associates and whatnot. Think about that for a minute. That means something like 50% of young males are in gangs. Overwhelmingly, gang members are Hispanic.
Posted by Robert Lindsay at 6:32 AM on June 3
This is the one good thing about the slowing economy, the illegals and a lot of legal ones too will go home.
Posted by KC at 7:13 AM on June 3
“The departures are evidence that the Bush administration’s decision to tighten the screws on enforcement is paying off, say proponents of stricter immigration laws.”
Those who read this site would say that the screws have not yet been tightened nearly enough. This goes to show what even a LITTLE enforcement — and of EXISTING laws — can do. Imagine what SERIOUS enforcement and NEW laws could accomplish!
(And hey, howzabout this radical idea: maybe build some kind of WALL or something? I’ve heard the Chinese have one, and apparently it works pretty well.)
As for the “68 percent [who] said anti-immigration sentiment was a major problem -— almost double the percentage who said so in 2001,” well, that ought to tell you something, too. If anti-immigration sentiment is way up, it’s only because illegal immigration is way up. Americans have double the resentment because we have double the immigrants to resent.
I’m glad to hear some progress is being made. But as poster Robert Lindsay points out, there are certain parts of the country, like Southern and Central California, where a tipping-point has been reached: the socio-cultural damage wrought by the mestizo invasion has been so extensive it may be irreparable.
Posted by The Incredible Shrinking White Man at 9:15 AM on June 3
I think that the housing industry downturn is playing a larger role than laws that are supposedly being enforced.
My wife and I often go to Wal-Mart after church on Sunday (not that I want to go, she does). Sunday is the “off-day” in the Mexican community, a “family-day” of sorts, and they would literally fill Wal-Mart on Sunday. Since the housing downturn, I’m seeing about half the numbers of Mestizos in Wal-Mart on Sunday.
I live in Georgia. Perhaps it is anecdotal evidence, but on some days, it does seem like I’m seeing fewer Mestizos, but other days, their presence is very noticeable.
Posted by Ryan at 9:53 AM on June 3
“The US economy is nothing more than a ponzi scheme. It can only keep ‘thriving’ and ‘growing’ by bringing in new consumers. That’s how it runs.”Posted by sbuffalonative at 11:28 PM on June 2
Well that explains the entire fiasco in a nutshell. Every program the government has is dependent on “growth.” Excellent points.
And, spending the SS trust fund, utilizing it to help balance the budget, depletes the cash accumulation that is supposed to be there, requiring more warm bodies paying into the system in order to keep it afloat. That’s why a decreasing population worries the feds so much, and why they sacrifice a relatively peaceful society in favor of a tumultuous multicultural one. They need the tax paying units to keep them afloat. And they would rather try to contain constant riots than see their bottom line affected.
A ponzi scheme is exactly what it all boils down to.
Posted by Robert Kelly at 2:18 PM on June 3
“certain parts of the country, like Southern and Central California, where a tipping-point has been reached: the socio-cultural damage wrought by the mestizo invasion has been so extensive it may be irreparable.”
Is that easily translated to - white boy get out?
Posted by at 2:42 PM on June 3
Now that they have sucked what they could out of the U.S. economy and sent it back to Mexico (and elsewhere), their work is done. This ought to make a clear statement to the INS, who should be made to make notations on every “naturalized” immigrant who is going home. Those at least, ought to never be considered for admittance again as it is clear that their only motivation was economic.
But I doubt this is as widespread as the article makes it sound. We have so many Hispanics that it will take a long time for a significant number to have any real effect.
Posted by Whiteplight at 3:22 PM on June 3
For my part, they are not leaving fast enough….now if only the indians (from India) and the hmongs, and africans, muslims,and blacks would also leave….this country would be a paradise….but listen to me on this one….we have to fight to bring back the jobs that have gone overseas….OUR CHILDREN WILL HAVE NO JOBS….IT IS THAT BAD NOW A DAYS…THROW OUT THOSE UNDESIRABLES BUT BRING OUR JOBS BACK TO THE STATES!!!
Posted by lydia at 11:35 PM on June 3
This is the best news I’ve seen in a long time. Cheap labor enthusiasts, ethnic politicians, labor unions may mourn the return of immigrants, legal or not, to their country of origin. I choose instead to cheer.
In the name of God, go!
Posted by Carl at 1:34 PM on June 4
Americans should not be fooled by election year stunts of Jorge Bush. A President McCain will return to Bush’s open border policies.
Posted by Mike at 3:26 PM on June 4
I am truly sorry about the rapid inflation in corn hence tortilla prices in Mexico but what we used to say back in the day to unwanted “guests” was this: Don’t let the door hit you in the behind on the way out.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 1:51 AM on June 5