Where will ageing illegal US immigrants from Mexico retire?

SeniorScopie ^

[Happy2BMe]

In recent decades, millions of working-age Mexicans have entered the United States. Most of them have done so illegally, taking jobs on the bottom rungs of the American labor market.

While much of the attention remains on the persistent inflow of illegal workers, a new question is beginning to worry some analysts and policy makers on both sides of the border : What will happen when the 10 million Mexicans living in the United States become too old to work?

Will they retire in the United States or will they return to Mexico?

As they age, the choices these old-timers make could fray the social fabric on both sides of the border.

Mexico is not prepared to receive them back. With a fast-aging population living in Mexico and virtually no system of social security or health insurance, Mexico could hardly cope with millions of returning immigrants who spent their working lives in the United States.

But the United States is also unprepared to deal with millions of poor, aging immigrants, eking out a living without recourse to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or most other forms of federal assistance. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2003, an estimated 710,000 Mexicans older than 60 lived in the United States, 63 percent more than a decade earlier. About a quarter lived below the poverty line.

The International Herald Tribune (Aging immigrants could strain 2 countries ; 04/08/2005) writes that those numbers are expected to swell for the current generation of illegal immigrants. Unlike earlier migrants – many of them now legal residents in the United States – illegal immigrants of today are likely to see Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as little more than mirages. While most have paid taxes over their working lives to these programs, under current law they are not entitled to benefits.

According to data from the Mexican Migration Project from Princeton University and Mexico's Universidad de Guadalajara, family ties are perhaps the most powerful forces. But they can pull either way : the probability of return is much higher for the 58 percent of immigrants older than 50 who left spouses in Mexico than for the 24 percent who have spouses in the United States.

In the past ten years, crossing the border has become much more difficult as immigration restrictions have been tightened.

Unwilling to face the border patrol and the desert crossing more often than is absolutely necessary, illegal immigrants are returning home less often than they used to. Instead, they are taking their wives and children to the United States, becoming more settled in their new land

[moehoward]

Mexico is not prepared to receive them back. With a fast-aging population living in Mexico and virtually no system of social security or health insurance, Mexico could hardly cope with millions of returning immigrants who spent their working lives in the United States.

Of course Mexico doesn't want them back. Sure they are happy to have all that remittance cash propping up their economy, but they NEVER wanted these people to begin with.

[potlatch]

Our children will suffer. I've been telling mine to start saving NOW!

[SF Republican]

You are probably right about the majority, my friends work with migrant workers that for the most part do not bring their family.