MIGRATION MEXICO – UNITED STATES: DIMENSIONS AND PERSPECTIVES

Migration flows in the Americas have expanded in the last decades, especially from Central and South America to North America. The Americas comprise the largest flows of migration worldwide. While Mexico is the largest exporter of migrants, the United States becomes the largest receptor of migrants in the world. Most of the contemporary migration towards the United States is undocumented and clandestine generating risks for both the migrants and the recipient country as the border becomes porous. Migration flows respond mainly to economic factors, geographic proximity and the wage-related disparities between the United States and Latin American countries. The solution to these problems requires cooperation between the expeller and receiver countries through a multilateral agreement that regulates the flows of migrants to meet the demands of labour force in the United States, especially in the agricultural sector and the low-paid services sector.


Dimensions of International Migration
Migration is one of the modern global issues that have drawn attention of academics, analysts as well as of national and institutional organizations. Migration flows between countries have constantly increased which has brought diverse problems to origin, transit and destination countries. While the origin countries face problems such as brain drain, reduction of working population, and the lowering of taxes collection, the destination countries confront difficulties to attend a floating and clandestine population, especially to provide them with social, public and health services. Transit countries, in turn, have to deal with migrants crossing their inlands, and in many cases, they become victims of organized crime and drug cartels but also of corrupt officials who extort them to let them continue their journey. Research-Professor, Universidad del Mar, Campus Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico. PhD in Politics. Master on Studies of North America. Research areas: democratization, neoliberalism, narco-trafficking, security, migration. E-mail: zepeda_roberto@hotmail.com Migration challenges constitute a fundamental element not only of the domestic governmental agenda, but also of the international organisms and is present in many discussion forums. The main migration related topics are as follows: examine the reasons for which an individual or group of persons, in a given period of time, relocates from their origin place to a distant country; analyse the reasons for which migrants arrive to a certain destination country; and whether they stay temporarily or permanently. All of these aspects may explain the causes or factors of the migratory process.
The migrants' socio-demographic characteristics have also stimulated the attention of academics. Traditionally, men have migrated more than women, although this has changed substantially in recent years. At the present time, female migrants have more participation in the migratory movements.
The main objectives of this article are as follows. First, to delineate several key aspects of the migration flows in the Americas, as well as the number of people living in a different place where they born but they saw the necessity to move by a variety of factors. The dimensions of the migration process are identified; the levels of migration from Mexico to the United States and Central and South American countries to the United States are relevant to assess and evaluate this phenomena in order to establish the dynamics of migration between the countries of the Americas but also to identify their relevance impacting on others issues like domestic security in its widest meaning. In the final section, a critical assessment of the migration phenomena will be done, especially over the last decades of the 20th Century and the early 21st century.

Main factors of Migration
Migration is a historical process, which has been propelled by a variety of reasons. From a global perspective, migrant population has increasingly expanded. By 1970, there were in the world a migrant population of 81.5 million; then it went up to 99.8 million by 1980; that is to say, an increase of 22.5 per cent in the 1970s. However, the expansion was most significant from 1980 to 1990, when the flow of migrants moving around the world triggered from 99.8 to 154.0 million, representing a growth of 54.3 per cent in the 1980s. The same pattern continued during the last decade of the past century, although in a lesser extent, when the stock of migrants reached 174.9 million, an increase of 13.6 per cent in such a decade (Koser 2007).
In table 1 we can perceive that countries from the developed world host the largest number of migrants comparing with the countries of the developing world. Almost two thirds of the conglomerate of international migrants is concentrated in developed countries, mainly in the United States, as we will see below. It is important to observe that this characteristic of international migration was not present in the 1970, when migrants were mostly concentrated on developing countries. However, such a situation was reversed drastically within the last three decades of the past century.

Table 1.-International migrants by region in the world, 1970-2005
Year 1970 1980 1990 2000 2005 1970-1980 % 1980-1990 % 1990-2000 %  Year  81,5 99,8 154  174,9 200  22,5  54,3  13,6  World  38,3 47,7 89,7 110,3 /  ------Developed countries 43,2 52,1 64,3  More recent data reveal that the approximate number of international migrants spread in the world in 2010 was of 214 million. This number has remained relatively stable in the last years; increasing barely 0.1% between 2005 and 2010 as a percentage of world population. The United States still hosts the largest conglomerate of migrants than any other country in the world, while six out of ten countries with most migrant population (France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Ukraine and the United Kingdom) are European countries. This means that the biggest recipient of migrants in the world is the United States and Europe (Koser and Laczko 2010).
As we can see, in the last few decades the flow of migrants has directed mainly towards the developed countries, in this case, to the United States and the main European economies. The just mentioned mean that the predominance of the migratory flows towards the developed countries as recent phenomena.
Several scholars have highlighted the uneven economic development in the world as a major factor accounting for migration. Castells (2010: 130) points out the notable expansion of international migration, "in spite of the rise of unemployment and heightened border controls", because the uneven development of an interdependent world and the networks of connectivity between societies (including the Internet) offer greater possibilities for the expansion of transnationalism from below". Castells summarizes the paradox of modern globalization: "While capital is global, and core production networks are increasingly globalized, the bulk of labor is local. Only an elite specialty labor force, of great strategic importance, is truly globalized" (2010: 131).
Over the last four decades or so, Mexico has been one the biggest expellers of migrants in the world. Between 1975 and 1995, Mexico was the largest source of international migration sending abroad more than six million people, mainly to the United States (Table 2). Mexican emigration has been motivated by economic factors, while the rest of origin countries have also had additional catalysers for expelling migrants such as social revolution and civil war. These cases include countries like Afghanistan (4.1 million); Kazakhstan (2.6 million); and Ruanda con 1.7 million in the same period (Vaidya 2006: 153-54). That is to say, in the list of expelling countries of international migrants, most of them suffer political conflicts or civil war, whereas in the case of Mexico, the main reason for migration is economic problems.
At the worldwide level, in 2010 Mexico was the country with the highest percentage of emigrants regarding the total national population. Spread over the world, especially in the United States, in 2010 there were 10.1 million of Mexican migrants, which represented around 10% of their total population, that is, the highest percentage in the world in this regard. Considering total numbers, Russia had the highest number of inhabitants (12.1 million) living abroad in 2010; Mexico had the second position with 10.1 million; but considering the total number of migrants with regard to the total population of the country, Mexico became the country expelling more international migrants (Koser & Laczko 2010). Furthermore, we have to point out the peculiar role of Russia in this category related to migration, given that after the collapse of the Soviet Union a geographical change was produced which altered the migratory situation of millions of people, who suddenly saw themselves living in a different country (main defining characteristic of migrants). Although in the last years the bulk of Mexico-US migration has declined slightly, it still continues being significant.

Main causes of migration
Migration is a complex phenomena and difficult to precise; it is generated by multiple factors, rather than by one single factor. Scholars have created diverse theories to explain the factors behind the migration process. Heywood (2010) identifies basically two kinds of theories in this regard: first, theories that remark the role of the individual; second, theories that observe the importance of structural factors. In reality, it is probable that these factors interact and overlap each other, due to the fact that decision making of the individual cannot be understood in a separate way of the structural context in which individual decisions are taken.
From our own perspective, migration from Mexico to the United States is due mainly to both expelling and attracting factors. Notwithstanding, we can assert that the biggest flows of migration have taken place when the recipient country has had more favourable conditions for the reception of international migrants. In this idea coincide Lowell et al (2008), who detected that the most evident reason for the increasing of migration Mexico-United States was the economic boom in the United States. Both Mexico-US migration and the economy really took off in the second half of the 1990s. Indeed, these scholars point out that the trends in the flow of undocumented Mexican migrants are well correlated with the growth of the US economy and the labour rate in the country. On the other hand, the large flow of Mexican migration towards the United States, generated immediately after the economic crisis in Mexico in 1994-1995, can be attributable to expelling factors, especially for the lack of job opportunities in the country.
On the other hand, we can identify the rise of migration moving from Mexico and Central America to the United States as one of the most devastating effects of the recurrent economic crises and the poor economic performance in the country.
Furthermore, the pernicious effects of neoliberal globalization can be perceived in Mexico in the case of salaries and remunerations of the working class. Workers in this country have testified the erosion of their incomes in the period 1980-2000. In 2000, the minimum wage represented, in real terms, a third of what is was in 1980. The salaries of workers of federal jurisdiction industries were in real terms half of what they were in 1980 (Zepeda 2009: 65).
Over the last decades, the exodus of Mexican workers has gone up mainly by scarce labour opportunities in their home places and the increasingly deteriorated salaries. Mexican and Latin American immigrants have become a wandering group within the U.S. land looking for low-qualified jobs: they work not only on temporary jobs in the agriculture sector but also they are employed in fast-food restaurants, cashiers in supermarkets, cleaners and janitors in governmental offices and hotels and other occupations rejected by native workers. A large share of female workers is employed as babysitters in houses where the parents work during the day.
Despite the fact that immigrants are essential in the functioning of the economic activity, they are humiliated while the Mexican and Latin American cultures (classified as Hispanic by the U.S. government) is suppressed by the mass media and U.S. society, who do not recognize the contribution of these workers to a labour market and economy that exploit them. Nevertheless, Mexicans prefer to work in low-qualified jobs where they are exploited, due to the wage disparity since in their home country they cannot access to those incomes.
In the case of the migration from Mexico to the United States there are diverse kinds of migrants, but from our perspective most of the Mexican migration to the U.S. is for economic reasons, especially for improving their living conditions, encouraged for the enormous wage differential between these countries. "Economic migrants are those who migrate primarily for economic reasons-that is, to improve their material standard of living, apart from any other consideration-whether or not they intend to take up permanent residence" (Goldin 2006: 109).Therefore, Mexican migrants can be best classified as economic migrants.
On the other hand, during the period 1987-1994, most of the migrants from Mexico to the U.S. were mainly family migrants, as they moved to another country to reunify with their relatives. This took place after the approval of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which favoured the family reunification after the awarding of amnesty to those migrants working in the United States by that time with a labour experience (although undocumented) of five years or more in the country (Durand and Massey 2003: 169).

Nature of migration Mexico -United States
A wide literature has been written about migration Mexico -United States in the last decades especially since the migratory flows have risen drastically, but also because the factors accounting for this phenomenon have been an issue of debate and controversy. Migration from Mexico to the U.S. dates back several decades ago; nevertheless, it is possible to detect that it has intensified considerably since the 1980s decade. Geographic proximity, the close social and cultural links, the increasing economic integration, and the wide relations between both countries have contributed to the generation of such migratory flows. Moreover, the common border with an extension of more than 3,000 kilometres is the most crossed in the world, and 98 per cent of the Mexican migration goes to the United States (Delgado-Wise and Márquez 2007: 117).
According to recent data, based on official statistics of the Mexican government, Mexico -U.S. migration has been characterized since its origins as a labour process in which can be seen a dichotomy continuity / change, its elements reveal patterns of stability until the 1980s when they present certain transformations. Migration patterns can be explained by the successive economic crisis registered in Mexico, especially in the period 1980-2000, but also by causes such as the restructuring of the economic model, the transformations of the economic structure in the U.S., the effects of the diverse unilateral migratory policies of the U.S., the impact of the free trade agreements and a general context of increasing globalization (Zúñiga et al 2004). Durand and Massey (2003) identify various historical stages of the migration of Mexicans to the United States. The first stage was the Enganche system ("hooking"), from 1900 to 1920, comprising the period of the Mexican Revolution. The second stage, massive deportations, refers to the period between 1921 and 1942. Third, the Bracero program that took effect from 1942 to 1964. Fourth, the era of the undocumented  migrants and, finally, the stage of the clandestine migration which initiates in 1987 with the approval of IRCA and comprises until the early 21st century.
The stages that favoured most the migration process were the Bracero period and the clandestine migration, especially the latter because it modified the migration pattern established during and after the Bracero program, from a temporary migration, outbound and return, masculine, rural origin, first legal and then undocumented, to a established, legal, without return and family migration, of both rural and urban origins.
Although the authors identify and describe accurately these stages of the migration from Mexico to the U.S., the analysis of the causes that triggered the migration flows since the 1980s is limited and underestimates other crucial factors taking place in Mexico. For instance, they do not recognise the relevance of the adoption of economic neoliberal policies in Mexico, which initiated in that same decade, in the rise of migration. Another overlooked factor is the wage differential between these countries, which can be in the centre of the engine that triggers the migratory process. Similarly, it has to be taken into account the economic model adopted in Mexico, which promoted a low level of labour costs in order to increase productivity and increase the benefits for the transnational companies and maquiladoras plants in Mexico. In contrast of integration processes such as the European Union (EU) wherein the standardization of labour costs and social benefits has directed towards a convergence or at least it has reduced the gap in terms of salaries and incomes among the countries of the EU region.
Most of the specialists of the migratory process Mexico -United States considers the Bracero Program  as the trigger of the migration from Mexico to the U.S. Tuirán and Ávila (2010: 104) confirm that such a program created an importation model of cheap labour force with a distinctive feature from the bureaucratic-administrative perspective (governmental control and administration) and four resulting characteristics of the migratory pattern: legality, circularity, masculinity and rurality.
That is to say, the Bracero Program established a migratory flow of legal character, completely recognized by the United States, which permitted Mexicans to move to work and then return every certain period. In the same way, the majority of workers were male and came from the rural sector. After the conclusion of the Bracero Program in 1965, a migratory pattern characterized by undocumented migration followed, which nevertheless maintained the same characteristics: most migrants were male, rural origin, return migration, but now the migration became illegal or undocumented. Furthermore, such migrants were low educated with primary studies and in some cases secondary studies.
The stage of undocumented migration starts when the Bracero Program concludes by the mid-1960s. The United States decided to finish that program that had been valid for more than 20 years, and opted for regulating the migratory flow of Mexicans relying on three types of complementary measures: the legalization of a sector of the working population, under the system of quotas by country; the institutionalization of the border to constraint the transit and limit the free transit, and the systematic deportation of migrants who did not have the legal documents (Durand and Massey 2003: 47-8).
The period of undocumented migrants, which restrained the legal and organized migration and favoured the migration without documents, ended with the enactment of the immigration law known as the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) promoted by the government of Ronald Reagan and took effect in 1987. This was one of the factors that encouraged the rapid increase of the migration Mexico -U.S. in the second half of the 1980s and during the 1990s. Latapí and Martin (2006) coincide with other analysts in the fact that the IRCA law resulted in the legalization of slightly more than 2 million of Mexican immigrants. In turn, the new legal status of these people, previously undocumented, enabled them encourage more migration through the support of direct relatives and inviting and hosting others.
On the other hand, IRCA failed to implement any important limitation or restriction to the hiring of undocumented immigrants in workplaces, while the new methods of reinforcing and surveillance in the border were implemented. Apparently, the new border regime failed to stop migrants, who simply found new routes of access to the country; the new regime may have led to an increasing rise of migrants to finish with the circulatory migration and opted for the permanent residency in the United States (Lowell et al 2008).
These developments redefined the migratory process in such a way that marked a new era of Mexican migration to the U.S. The main characteristics of the patterns of migration became as follows (Zúñiga et al 2004): -A decrease of the mechanisms of circularity of migration and the propensity to increase the staying period in the United States. -A rise of the magnitude and intensity of the flows and stock of permanent migrants, both documented and undocumented. -The extension of the expelling and destination regions with a tendency to the configuration of a migratory pattern of national character but not regional. By the mid-2000s, the states of Mexico expelling more migrants towards the United States were Zacatecas, Michoacán, Durango and Jalisco. While the recipient states in the U.S. where migrants mostly arrive are California, Texas and Arizona.
-More heterogeneity in the profile of migrants (higher urban proportion, increasing female presence, higher levels of education). -A considerable diversification in terms of the occupations and sectors where migrants were employed.

Levels of Mexican migration to the United States
According to estimations of the United States, Mexican migration to the U.S. reached on average 500,000 per year, a number higher (in 150,000) than the estimates of sources of the Mexican government (Lowell et. al 2008).
These estimations reveal that in 2007, the annual average number of Mexicans leaving the country looking for employment was around 500,000. That is, around 1,700 persons were abandoning the country every day searching for new job opportunities as a result of the lack of labour opportunities and poor labour conditions. As can be seen in the Figure 1, official data on migration provided by the U.S. government, standardized with the official data of the population censes of this country, have estimated a higher number than the one calculated by the official institutions of the Mexican government. Indeed, the gap between these estimations has expanded since the decade of 1980.
(Source: prepared with data of Lowell et al 2008: 5.) As we can see in Figure 2, by the year 2006 there were a total of 12.0 million of people born in Mexico but residing in the United States. Between 1970 and 2006, the migrant population multiplied more than 15 times. Indeed, Mexican migration grew with more intensity and continuity since the decade of 1990. As we have seen, migration from Mexico to the United States went up fundamentally due to the generous legalization of IRCA, which created stable networks for the rise of migration, whereas the regimes of implementation of this law failed to control the migratory flow (Lowell et al 2008;Massey and Durand 2003).
Source: prepared with data of Lowell et al, 2008: 2.

Migration and Remittances
Strongly related with the notable expansion of international migration the flow of remittances is detected, which has also went up over the last decade. Remittances sent by Mexican migrants in the United States to their relatives in Mexico represent one of the main sources of incomes in the country, only surpassed by the oil incomes. In 2007, for instance, Mexico occupied the third position regarding the countries with the highest level of remittances in the world, only overcome by India and China. In 2007 alone, the incomes in this area represented $ 25 billion of U.S. dollars, an amount that had been increasing in previous years. For example, in 2002 the remittances sent to Mexico by international migrants were $9.8 billion, however, in 2004 the incomes by this concept went up to $16.6 billion and subsequently reached $20 billion in 2005 (Banco de México, 2007). Raul Delgado Wise (2007) estimate that one out of every five households depend on the remittances to sustain their expenses of maintenance. On the other hand, the charge for sending remittances from the U.S. to Mexico is one of the highest at the international level, as we can observe in Table 3. For instance, in order to send their remittances from the United States to Mexico, migrants had to pay a commission of 9.2 per cent of the total remitted, a percentage higher than the one paid to send remittances from the United States to Mozambique (1.0%), Turkey (4.9%), Portugal (5.0%) y Ecuador (5.6%); it is interesting to note that such countries (despite of being to more distant of the U.S. and of not having a close trade relation with the remittent country) paid fewer commissions regarding the amount of money sent to their families. Considering the just mentioned above, we can suggest that the economic model of development applied in Mexico has failed to reactivate the economy and create decent employment, making it more dependent on external factors and conditions (for instance oil and remittances), as it is demonstrated by various economic indicators such as the flow of remittances and the oil exports. This situation invites to reflect what would happen if these incomes decline, since these factors depend on external forces and processes.

Collateral effects
Even when Mexico became in 1994 one of the most important trade partners of the United States, with the beginning of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it has not been possible to achieve a migratory agreement which regularize the situation of various million of undocumented workers of Mexican origin that are employed in the United States. As we have seen, the undocumented Mexican migration towards the U.S. has increased significantly since the NAFTA took effect in 1994. Livingstone (2009) highlights that despite the NAFTA facilitate free trade of goods and services, it does not permit the free movement of workers, such as exists in the European Union, which originally was created as a multinational trade bloc. Mexican migrants, going across the border with the United States, face deportation and criminalization. More than 1,600 Mexicans died when trying to cross the border between 1998 and 2004 (2009: 204).
According to more recent studies, it is estimated that the deaths of Mexicans in the border with the United States has continued. For example, in 2011 alone, 767 deaths of Mexicans trying to cross the border with the U.S. were registered; most of them were young and female people with university degree. Around 85 % of these deaths were caused by dehydration, sunstroke, persecutions, and indeed some were shot dead by the U.S. Border Patrol, according to a report of the Institutional and Revolutionary Party (PRI by its Spanish initials) deputies in the Congress (López Villalobos 2012).
Trying to find a decent job in the United States, Mexicans and Central American Migrants risk their lives and travel through a road that some consider it as the most dangerous route in the planet for migrants. Mounted on trains and going through the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco, Veracruz and Tamaulipas, migrants heading to the U.S. face the arrest, deportation and violent attacks. Criminal offenses like kidnapping and extortion have boomed in the northern border of Mexico while the drug cartels have expanded and diversified their criminal activities. Many incidents of this kind suggest that the criminal organizations have the support or complicity, by omission, of the police bodies.
Drug cartels have seen migrants as an opportunity to diversify their business exploiting to one of the most vulnerable groups in the world. The attacks include the robbery to migrants; in some cases they are kidnapped and a ransom to release them is requested to relatives. If the relatives do not fulfil with the accorded payment, the kidnapped are tortured, beaten, raped, and sometimes, killed. In August 2010, in the Ranch San Fernando, Tamaulipas, 72 migrants (from South America, Central America and Mexico) were found executed (Watt y Zepeda 2012: 165).

Conclusions
In this article we examined several characteristics of international migration but also the relevance of the Mexico -U.S. migration in this dynamic. As we have seen, international migration has augmented worldwide in the last decades. Such a tendency is observable in the case of Mexico. The position of Mexico at the international level is regarded as the biggest expeller of migrants. Mexico has registered the highest level of emigrants in the last three decades, according to official data of international organizations. Whereas the United States remains as the major recipient country of migrants in the world and, in turn, it hosts almost the total stock of Mexican migrants.
Considering the analysed here, we can assert that migration is a transnational issue, and the solutions imply regional agreements, which go beyond the national confines. Migration between Mexico and the United States has to be understood, therefore, taking into account two essential aspects: a migratory flow which involves the country that generate more migrants in the world and the country that host the largest volume of international migrants.
We have seen that the stock of international migrants has increased in the last decades, which claim for global solutions in various aspects. For instance, in the journey to other countries, migrants suffer harassment and human rights violations, which should be prevented by the authorities of the countries, involved in the migratory flow from the origin to the destination. Migration from Mexico to the United States generates diverse effects for every country. The causes of such effects have to be examined in order to reduce them and translate them in mutual benefits.
A supranational institution focused on migration in order to attend the problems and propose solutions could be pertinent. Supranational institutions concentrated on labour and environmental issues exist, but not regarding migration, therefore its pertinence.
On the other hand, it is vital a migratory agreement between Mexico and the United States, which fulfil with two objectives: on the one hand, that legalize (through an amnesty that enables citizenship) undocumented workers who have been working in the United States for various years (at least five, as it was the case in IRCA). On the other hand, the agreement must facilitate the legal flow of temporary Mexican workers according to the requirements of the different labour sectors: agriculture, industrial and services related jobs. The achievement of these two objectives would permit not only recognize the effort that for many years have been doing million of undocumented Mexican workers in the U.S., but also to eliminate or significantly reduce clandestine and undocumented migration and the high risks that migrants face to arrive and cross the U.S-Mexico border.
Mexico -U.S. migration respond to a specific dynamic and is conditioned by multiple factors, within which, we consider the following as the most relevant: 1) the wage disparity between these countries makes that labour migration generated by economic reasons be determinant. 2) The absence of an economic model of development in Mexico to create remunerated jobs becomes automatically in expeller of migrant workers. 3) The lack of a regulatory framework which enable the free flow of workers between Mexico and the U.S., in order to diminish the clandestine migration and its related risks, such as deaths in the border and kidnapping and extortion during the journey.
There are other factors that determine the migratory flow between Mexico and the United States, but we consider that if the three objectives just mentioned above are achieved, then there will be a significant advance in the solution to a problematic issue that actually violate human rights of people who abandon their home countries in search job opportunities that fulfil their basic needs of surviving.