Mexican Migration May Be Over

Townhall.com ^ | December 10, 2012 | Michael Barone

[Kaslin]

Is mass migration from Mexico to the United States a thing of the past?

At least for the moment, it is. Last May, the Pew Hispanic Center, in a study based on U.S. and Mexican statistics, reported that net migration from Mexico to this country had fallen to zero from 2005 to 2010.

Pew said 20,000 more people moved to Mexico from the United States than from there to here in those years. That's a vivid contrast with the years 1995 to 2000, when net inflow from Mexico was 2.2 million people.

Because there was net Mexican immigration until 2007, when the housing market collapsed and the Great Recession began, it seems clear that there was net outmigration from 2007 to 2010, and that likely has continued in 2011 and 2012.

There's a widespread assumption that Mexican migration will resume when the U.S. economy starts growing robustly again. But I think there's reason to doubt that will be the case.

Over the past few years, I have been working on a book, scheduled for publication next fall, on American migrations, internal and immigrant. What I've found is that over the years this country has been peopled in large part by surges of migration that have typically lasted just one or two generations.

Almost no one predicted that these surges of migration would occur, and almost no one predicted when they would end.

For example, when our immigration system was opened up in 1965, experts testified that we would not get many immigrants from Latin America or Asia. They assumed that immigrants would come mainly from Europe, as they had in the past.

Experts have also tended to assume that immigrants are motivated primarily by economic factors. And in the years starting in the 1980s, many people in Latin America and Asia, especially in Mexico, which has produced more than 60 percent of Latin American immigrants, saw opportunities to make a better living in this country.

But masses of people do not uproot themselves from familiar territory just to make marginal economic gains. They migrate to pursue dreams or escape nightmares.

Life in Mexico is not a nightmare for many these days. Beneath the headlines about killings in the drug wars, Mexico has become a predominantly middle-class country, as Jorge Castaneda notes in his recent book, "Manana Forever?" Its economy is growing faster than ours.

And the dreams that many Mexican immigrants pursued have been shattered.

You can see that if you look at the statistics on mortgage foreclosures, starting with the housing bust in 2007. More than half were in the four "sand states" -- California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida -- and within them, as the Pew Hispanic Center noted in a 2009 report, in areas with large numbers of Latino immigrants.

These were places where subprime mortgages were granted, with encouragement from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to many Latinos unqualified by traditional credit standards.

These new homeowners, many of them construction workers, dreamed of gaining hundreds of thousands of dollars as housing prices inevitably rose. Instead, they collapsed. My estimate is that one-third of those foreclosed on in these years were Latinos. Their dreams turned into nightmares.

We can see further evidence in last month's Pew Research report on the recent decline in U.S. birthrates. The biggest drop was among Mexican-born women, from 455,000 births in 2007 to 346,000 in 2010.

That's a 24 percent decline, compared with only a 6 percent decline among U.S.-born women. It's comparable to the sharp decline in U.S. birthrates in the Depression years from 1929 to 1933.

Beneath the cold statistics on foreclosures and births is a human story, a story of people whose personal lives have been deeply affected by economic developments over which they had no control and of which they had no warning.

Those events have prompted many to resort to, in Mitt Romney's chilly words, "self-deportation." And their experiences are likely to have reverberations for many others who have learned of their plight.

Surges of migration that have shaped the country sometimes end abruptly. The surge of Southern blacks to Northern cities lasted from 1940 to 1965 -- one generation. The surge of Mexicans into the U.S. lasted from 1982 to 2007 -- one generation.

The northward surge of American blacks has never resumed. I don't think the northward surge of Mexicans will, either.

[momincombatboots]

US and Mexican statistics... why would they lie? I would believe the testimony of a few border agent, but not the some shadowy statistics. Why don’t they post a website for the border cams so we can see for ourselves? That would be very.. what’s the word.. transparent.

[Kaslin]

I feel the same way as you do

[allendale]

Simple. No jobs, no immigrants. The prime reason people came here has always been economic. No reason to come and experience the cultural jolt if there is no real opportunity. By the way, the immigration reforms of 1965 fundamentally changed America culturally, ethnically and politically. Obama was no accident.

[DH]

Is mass migration from Mexico to the United States a thing of the past?

---

What an absolutely stupid statement!

Is anyone stupid enough to believe that these statistics are even anywhere near accurate? Do these “researchers” stand at the border and actually count how many illegals cross into the U.S. daily? Answer: Hell no!

And....how about a study on how many get across the border and dump “anchor babies” on our soil along with how fast they breed and dump little bundles of welfare joy upon the tax paying citizens of our country each year.

I just cringe when I read reports like the one posted.

[Kaslin]

They only want to make that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave look good

[dirtboy]

Barone also predicted a Romney landslide. Makes ya wonder where he pulls his numbers from.

[al_c]

Maybe if they’re just counting the legal ones. There’s no way to track the ones that sneak across.

[Fresh Wind]

Simple. No jobs, no immigrants.

No jobs or welfare, no immigrants.

[driftless2]

An interesting observation made by Barone is about the large numbers of Hispanic immigrants whose dreams of owning a house were crushed by lib-leftist activists. The radical activists were the ones in the Clinton admin pushing for the relaxation of the normal lending rules leading to the disaster of the sub-prime, financial crisis of 2007. They can "thank" a number of Hispanic activists who along with the prime masters of disaster, Clinton and Janet Reno, who forced banks and lending institutions to grant these people mortgages they couldn't afford. Blacks, Hispanics, and Amero-Indians were the people hurt most by the criminal actions of the Clinton admin.

So when libs go about Clinton's great economic record of the 1990s, remind them that Slick Willy was the prime wrecker of the economy in the first decade of the new century. Read Paul Sperry's "The Great American Bank Robbery" or Tom Sowell's "The Housing Boom and Bust" to get the info on yet another lib-caused catastrophe. And as in all the other cases, it hurt the people they were trying to help more than any other group.

[Graybeard58]

Its economy is growing faster than ours.

A big part of the reason for that, is that Obama's economic policies are rapidly bringing our economy downward to meet their third world economy.

[Liz]

Barone should have been more detailed WRT Mexican immigrants' wily plans to profit off America----that were shattered along with massive mortgage foreclosures, via the 2007 housing bust in Latino-dominated states like California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida.

Latinos calculated they'd make thousands of dollars as housing prices inevitably rose. Instead, they collapsed---some one-third of those foreclosed on were Latinos.

Subprime mortgages were granted, with encouragement from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to Latinos unqualified by traditional credit standards lenders established for nonn-Mexican borrowers.

Keep in mind----the sub-prime mtge story is ultimately about “criminal” behavior that has eluded prosecution.

==============================================

TIME TO NAIL THE CONGRESSMAN WHO COLLUDED IN THE BILLION DOLLAR SUB-PRIME DEBACLEThe Congressional Hispanic Institute, Inc, is an entity organized by Cong Joe Baca (D-Cali) in his capacity as head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Cong Baca created "HOGAR" (Spanish for home) in 2003 to work with the mortgage industry, lender and banks and latino community groups to increase mortgage lending to what savvy observers considered to be unqualified Latinos.

"HOGAR" colluded w/ Cong Baca in what was to become a massive bilking of taxpayers. Cong Baca calculatedly hyped the fact that the national Latino homeownership rate was 47%, compared with 68% for the overall population.

HOGAR was coached to call the figure "alarming," and to say "a concerted effort was required to ensure that by the end of the decade Latinos will share equally in the American Dream of home ownership."

HOGAR and Cong Baca conned the public, failing to note that most of the "dreamers" were illegals, citizens of Third World countries who had violated US borders.

Predictably, HOGAR colluded w/ co-conspirators which included:

(a) shaky mortgage companies that ran into big trouble;

(b) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both now under federal control after billions in taxpayer bailouts;

(c) Countrywide Financial Corp., sold to Bank of America Corp;

(d) Washington Mutual Inc., taken over by the US government and sold to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; and,

(e) New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Corp, both now defunct, killed by defaulted subprime Latino mortgages.

HOGAR's ties to the subprime mortgage industry were substantial. Bribery and self-dealing were rampant:

<><> Companies that donated $150,000 to Cong Baca got the right to have their own research fellow who would conduct fraudulent studies, which were cunningly used by industry lobbyists to pump lending.

<><> Bribery and extortion in the form of $100,000 annual donations to Cong Baca, for which HOGAR provided phony news releases from Cong Baca's Hispanic Caucus promoting a lender's commercial products to the Latino market,

<><> The most shocking example of bribery well-substantitated by Hogar's literature..... HOGAR announced it worked with Freddie Mac on a self-serving two-year examination of Latino homeownership in 63 congressional districts.

The "study" found Hispanic ownership on the rise thanks to "new flexible mortgage loan products" that the industry was adopting at the urging of Cong Baca's collusive coterie.

<><> HOGAR conned lenders into even more lenient down-payment and underwriting standards.

<><> As the subprime debacle unfolded, HOGAR declined repeated requests for comment despite the economic havoc their activities precipitated.

The mortgage schemes demonstrated the criminal activities of border violators with multiple identities---perhaps violent, terrorist-connected foreigners---colluding and conspiring to defraud private companies and public entities. And mortgage racketeering enterprises which employed sub rosa finance and business practices to carry out deceptions and frauds.

The alleged ring of swindlers---a Congresman, individuals with multiple identities, banks, insurance companies, mortgage nrokers--might be charged with cheating the US govt, taxpayers and bank share holders out of hundreds of millions of dollars via an elaborate web of mortgage and bank frauds.

The mortgage Dreamers used multiple phony identities, fraudulent Social Security numbers, purchased from identity forgers in order to obtain govt-subsidized benefits.

L/E will find that individuals with multiple identities obtained fraudulent mortgages then flipped the houses at ever-higher prices to family member who then absconded to foreign countries, sticking banks (and taxpayers) with hundreds of millions in fraudulent mortgages.

BACKGROUND A Wall Street Journal investigative report related that, according to the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council examination of the borrowing spree, uncovered financial schemes by low-income housing groups, Hispanic lawmakers, a congressional Hispanic housing initiative, mortgage lenders and brokers, all colluding in fraduent schemes to increase homeownership among Latinos with forged documents which enabled massive fraud.

This was not simply the mortgage market at work. It was fueled by avarice, greed, and Congressional enabling fraudulent practices. In 2005 alone, mortgages to Hispanics jumped by 29%; Latinos with multiple fraudulent identities in low-paying jobs obtained subprime mortgages for prime properties---soaring to 169%.

(Research provided by Wall Street Journal. Some material excerpted from the NY Times.

[Liz]

N-I-C-E take. Could not agree more.

========================================

GENESIS OF THE F/M BILKING--- Clinton appointee. Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines' Letter to Shareholders--excerpted from 2003 Fannie Mae Annual Report

Excerpt ...Ten years ago the typical conforming mortgage required a down payment of 10- 20%, and low-down payment mortgages were considered too risky. But then we helped to standardize the 3-5% down payment loan, brought it to global capital markets, and made it available to lenders and communities nationwide. Now low-down payment loans are commonplace. And we just adopted a new variance in our underwriting standards that will make the $500 down payment loan widely available as well...

In 1994, we pledged to provide $1 trillion in capital to ten million underserved families by the end of 2000. Thanks to our housing and industry partners, we met that goal early.

Then in 2000, we launched our American Dream Commitment, a pledge to provide $2 trillion in capital to 18 million underserved families by the year 2010, including $400 billion targeted specifically for minority families (later raised to $700 billion in response to President Bush’s Minority Homeownership Initiative). After four of the strongest years in housing and mortgage finance history, we’ve already surpassed the top-line goals of this commitment. But our work is far from complete.

So in January 2004, we announced our Expanded American Dream Commitment and pledged significant new resources to tackle America’s toughest housing challenges. Our new commitment has three main goals.

First, we will expand access to homeownership for six million first- time home buyers in the next ten years, including 1.8 million minority first-time home buyers.We also will help raise the national minority homeownership rate from 49 percent to 55 percent, with the ultimate goal of closing it entirely.

Second, we will help new and long-term homeowners stay in their homes through a series of initiatives, and commit $15 billion to preserve affordable rental housing and $1.5 billion to support the revitalization of public housing communities.

Third, we will increase the supply of affordable housing and support community development activities in at least 1,000 neighborhoods across the country through our American Communities Fund, and through targeted investments like Low-Income Housing Tax Credits that help finance affordable rental housing.

It is because of initiatives like our Trillion Dollar Commitment and our American Dream Commitment that we have exceeded our HUD affordable housing goals for ten consecutive years. (End Raines excerpt.)

==================================================

FANNIE-MAE--THE DEMOCRATS' CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE / By Michelle Malkin

Fannie/Freddie are centerpieces of the criminal enterprise called the Democrat Party-—where Dem cronies and collaborators loot the organization, get cushy jobs, bonuses, and the like.

Fannie Mae’s political machine dispensed campaign contributions, gave jobs to friends and relatives of legislators, hired armies of lobbyists (even paying lobbyists not to lobby against it), paid academics who wrote papers validating the home ownership mania, and spread “charitable” contributions to housing advocates across the congressional map.

Fannie Mae serves as an industrial-sized patronage factory — sharing profits with political allies, spreading taxpayer funds to voting blocs——like ethnic groups-——and doling out jobsto left-wing academics, Washington has-beens and back- scratching buddies.

Obama insider Fannie Mae exec Jim Johnson got sweetheart loans from shady subprime Countrywide. Pols raked in six- figure salaries as F/F engaged in Enron-style accounting, plunged into debt and helped usher in the subprime housing meltdown through cockamamie lending practices.

Bill Clinton appointed Franklin Raines, Daley and Rahm Emanuel just as the quasi-governmental F/M engaged in rampant book-cooking so that F/M insider could help themselves to massive bonuses.

The Chi/Tribune exposed how political whore Rahm Emanuel’s “profitable stint” was low-show w/ no work involved. Emanuel was not even assigned to committees, according to company proxy statements. Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other insiders qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, public records indicate. W/ Wall Street Rahm Emanuel at F/M, accounting tricks were used to mislead shareholders about outsize profits F/M reaped from risky investments.

The goal was to cook the books to keep fraudulent earnings on the books, to make Freddie Mac look profitable on paper- ——AND to fraudulently obtain humongous annual bonuses for political insiders.

[Kaslin]

What an absolutely stupid statement!

Wrong, You posted a stupid statement.

Did you notice the question mark at the end of the sentence? Is mass migration from Mexico to the United States a thing of the past?

Statements do not end with a question mark

[Kaslin]

Yes he did, and Romney would have probably won had that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave not stolen the election.

Why do you think he was so sure month ago before the election, that he would be reelected?
Think about it.

[txrefugee]

If it weren’t for the Democrats’ free stuff that exchanges welfare for votes, illegals would be leaving the USA. The economy in Mexico is better than in the USA and the cost of living is much cheaper.

Of course, the lawlessness due to drug and illegal alien smuggling is a negative, but it’s really not as bad as living in the Chicago ghetto.

[Elsie]

There's a widespread assumption that Mexican migration will resume when the U.S. economy starts growing robustly again.

'IF' might be the better word here...

[Elsie]

Is mass migration from Mexico to the United States a thing of the past?

'INVASION' fits better as well...

[raybbr]

Pew Hispanic Center, huh? Relying on them for these stats is pure folly. Let’s see how long it takes PHC to call for more open immigration from messyco or relaxing the rules.

[Elsie]

I just cringe when I read reports like the one posted.

---

 

 

Party ownership of the print media
made it easy to manipulate public opinion,
and the film and radio carried the process further.

 

16. Ministry Of Truth

.......

The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below.

The Ministry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.

The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary.

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to rectify.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.

In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs.

There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed.

And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.