❝ The estimated number of undocumented immigrants living in the USA reached a 12-year low in 2016, continuing a decade-long decline in which that population fell from a high of 12.2 million in 2007 to 10.7 million in 2016…
Researchers from the Pew Research Center, which conducted the analysis, said economics played a major role in that fall. The Great Recession wiped out millions of jobs that attracted undocumented immigrants to the USA, while the Mexican economy steadily improved, giving Mexicans more reasons to stay in their country…
❝ In fact, Pew concluded in 2015 that more Mexicans returned to their home country than entered the USA, a historic shift in the source of illegal immigration.
Anyone who works building trades along the southern border could have told USA Today the same.
“You’re insane! They’re not creatures you can fight – they’re an elemental – an ‘act of God!’ Ten miles long, two miles wide – ants, nothing but ants! And every single one of them a fiend from hell…” http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html
“The US is a country shaped by immigration – but at many times in its history, there has been controversy over new arrivals : A closer look at those who call the country home reveals the great changes that have taken place and the contribution immigrants make.” (BBC News) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-46034400
Today at least 80 percent of farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley are undocumented Mexicans. Most of them have been working the fields for at least a decade, have established families here, and live in terror of la migra, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement is called, and instant deportation or imprisonment that would wrench them from their children.
indocumentadoshttps://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/12/20/in-the-valley-of-fear/ As things stand, there is a labor shortage the magnitude of which hasn’t been seen in at least ninety years. It has prompted growers to rip out labor-intensive fruits like table grapes and plant almond trees, which require relatively few workers. Housing costs, especially in the Coastal Valley, have made it even harder to attract and keep workers. In recent years, millions of dollars’ of unpicked crops have been plowed under or left to rot in the fields.
New Lancet Study Shows Right-Wing Attacks on Refugees and Migrants Based on ‘White Nationalist Propaganda’—Not Facts : “Migrants commonly contribute more to the economy than they cost, and how we shape their health and well-being today will impact our societies for generations to come.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/12/06/new-lancet-study-shows-right-wing-attacks-refugees-and-migrants-based-white The report, published in the Lancet on Wednesday, follows a number of xenophobic, fear-mongering segments on Fox News in which media personalities—after spending weeks claiming that the group of refugees was made up of criminals—resorted to a new tactic, dubbing the group a “caravan of diseases”—provoking outrage but not surprise on social media. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32617-5/fulltext