NEW YORK TIMES
By Richard Stevenson
January 30, 2013
In many ways it seems like 2007 all over again when it comes to addressing illegal immigration. Senator John McCain of Arizona is trying to build a bipartisan compromise. Rush Limbaugh is inveighing against amnesty. The White House – in this case President Obama rather than President George W. Bush – has staked considerable capital on reaching an agreement.
But much is different this time around, and not just in the Republicans’ newfound urgency to get a deal or risk watching Democrats cement the allegiance of Hispanic voters for a generation or more. By some key measures, the underlying problems – the pressures that have sent Mexicans northward for decades in search of jobs and a better life and the challenges for the United States of securing its borders – have diminished relative to where they were even six years ago when Congress last tried to confront the issue and failed.
There is some debate about whether the changes are permanent or would be reversed again in the event of another sharp economic downturn in Mexico or across Latin American – or a strong rebound in economic growth and demand for labor in the United States.
Several underlying factors contributing to illegal immigration have changed since Congress last considered a bill on the issue in 2007.
But for now the bottom line is that the population of undocumented immigrants in the United States fell to 11.1 million in 2011, the most recent year for which figures are available, from a peak of 12 million in 2007, the Pew Hispanic Center said in a report on Tuesday. By one new estimate, the number of people who managed to come over the Mexican border and make it illegally into the United States fell to 85,000 in 2011, down from 600,000 five years earlier.
With the scale of the problem stabilizing for the moment, or even shrinking, some experts say, there is more room for political compromise than the last time around.
“We are at a moment when the underlying drivers of what has been persistent, growing illegal immigration for 40 years have shifted,” said Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service who is now a fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a research group. “There are some fundamental new realities.”
One of them is economic. Mexico’s economy, while still riddled with inefficiency and inequality, is nonetheless humming along at a healthy rate, outpacing the United States by some standards and driving Mexico’s unemployment rate down even as post-recession job creation north of the border remains modest. The result has been to diminish both the push and the pull of illegal immigration.
Another is demographic. In Mexico, the source of about 6 in 10 undocumented immigrants in the United States, fertility rates having plummeted over the last few decades, and the pool of young workers – those most likely to seek a better life by emigrating – is dwindling quickly. More Mexican children are remaining in school and getting high school degrees, an indication that they see their future at home as a middle class takes root.
Mexico’s population growth has fallen from a 3.2 percent annual rate to 1.1 percent in the first decade of this century, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The population of people under 15 years old is already declining in Mexico, and the population of people aged 15 to 29 will start doing so in coming years, an important shift given that most illegal immigrants arrive in the United States before age 30.
At the same time, one of the most contentious elements in previous battles over the issue – border security – has also become less of a partisan flash point.
Reflecting in part the deterrent effect of tighter border patrols as well as the economic and demographic shifts, the number of apprehensions along the border has fallen sharply. Those people who have gotten through are being caught and deported in record numbers.
Some analysts say the drop in apprehensions reflects not so much greater control of the border as a recognition on the part of potential immigrants that the chances of finding a job in the United States have fallen over the last few years. But even among border-state Republicans there is optimism that the billions of dollars spent in recent years on fences, additional agents, surveillance drones and other measures are having a real effect.
“Yes, there’s been improvement in border security and yes, it helps a lot,” Mr. McCain, the Arizona Republican, said when asked whether the politics of getting a deal this time around are easier because of stepped-up enforcement.
The changes have all developed gradually. They do no alter the most compelling fact of the debate to both sides, which is that there are 11 million undocumented people already living in the United States whose status must be addressed in any comprehensive legislation.
But even though the economic and demographic changes have remained largely in the background of the debate so far, analysts say they could give more reassurance to conservatives in particular that legalizing those undocumented immigrants already in the United States would not simply produce another wave of them.
“The immigration debate in recent years, as it has played out in the last two presidential campaigns, has not kept pace with the facts on the ground,” said Paul Taylor, the director of the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Center. “I do sense that the nature of the debate is changing and catching up with the reality.”
There is no assurance of course that another sharp economic downturn in Mexico or across Latin American would not spur more illegal migration to the north. The prolonged weakness in the American labor market also makes it harder to draw long-term conclusions about the relative attraction of coming to the United States. And many Republicans continue to view Mexico warily, seeing in the government’s difficulties controlling the violence and general lawlessness created by drug cartels a dangerous instability that could create deeper cross-border troubles.
“Mexico is on fire and about to blow up,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a supporter of the bipartisan package, expressing concern about whether the positive trends in illegal immigration from across the border are permanent.
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