Dear dangus,
As I said, I suppose it varies widely from place to place.
You and I are trading anecdotes. I'd like to see some hard research that looked at Mass attendance at a fairly granular level.
I also think that we're just guessing when we say that folks who immigrate stop going to Mass because they want to be free from the strictures of their old culture. I wonder what Mass attendance is like in Mexico. I wouldn't be surprised it isn't very high, considering how brutally the Church was (and even still is, to a lesser extent) oppressed in Mexico for such a long period of time, or considering that many of the same secularizing effects we see in our culture could be acting on Mexican culture, as well.
As well, most of Latin America suffers from a priest shortage that makes us look comparatively "wealthy" in that regard. I wonder how many folks are emigrating from communities where five Masses per weekend at the local parish church just doesn't happen, and where it might be more likely that Mass happens once a month from a circuit-riding priest.
Mexico, according to www.catholic-hierarchy.org, has about 123 million Catholics, and about 15,000 priests. About 1 priest for every 8,000 Catholics.
We have about 70 million Catholics and about 45,000 priests. About 1 priest for every 1,500 Catholics.
I googled for a minute, and came up easily with only one link, which indicates that just in the last ten years, reported Mass attendance in Mexico has declined from nearly 50% to only about 33%.
Here's the link:
http://cara.georgetown.edu/bulletin/international.htm
As self-reported Mass attendance is usually higher than actual Mass attendance, that would suggest that attendance in Mexico is perhaps only in the 20s%. Not very high to start.
sitetest
Well, I'll tell you what... any illegal who doesn't go to mass in Mexico isn't going to come up here and officially register up here.
just a note - under the Mexican Anti-Clerical laws, the Goverment decided how many priests a diocese could have. The laws were just put aside very recently. Since then there has been an improvement in the number of seminarians. I don't have the most recent numbers, but in 1971 (under the old law) there were 2,264 seminarians in Mexico. In 2001, there were 6,919 seminarians. And I think the number is growing since then.