Mexicans Are Minority of Illegal Residents for First Time in Five Decades

By Alicia A. Caldwell

For the first time since at least 1965, less than half of all foreigners living in the U.S. illegally are from Mexico, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.

The change reflects a decadeslong shift at the southern border in which more migrants are fleeing violence and poverty in Central American nations such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, while fewer Mexicans are coming to the U.S. for work.

Mexicans made up 4.9 million, or 47%, of the estimated 10.5 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally in 2017, the researchers found. The population of Mexican immigrants without legal authorization to be in the U.S. dropped by about two million since reaching an estimated peak of 6.9 million in 2007, according to the Pew report.

Jeff Passel, senior demographer at Pew, said the majority of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. had been Mexicans since researchers first started making estimates around 1965.

Illegal migration from Mexico, as measured by arrests at the American border, has been declining since 2004, when U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested more than one million Mexican nationals. During the 2018 federal fiscal year, border agents made just 152,257 such arrests.

Mr. Passel said the number of Mexicans living illegally in the U.S. first started to decline around 2007, as more Mexican nationals left the country than arrived.

“We’re still getting some unauthorized immigrants from Mexico, but there’s a lot more leaving than coming,” said Mr. Passel, who co-wrote the study released Wednesday.

Mr. Passel said the decline is likely the result of both increased security at the U.S. border and an improving economy in Mexico.

“People are moving around Mexico,” Mr. Passel said, adding that more agriculture and manufacturing jobs have become available in recent years. “There are a lot of factories in Mexico that offer employment opportunities so people don’t have to leave.”

Migrants from Central America and Asia have largely replaced departing Mexican immigrants, the Pew report said.

The arrival of hundreds of thousands of Central American migrants traveling as families or as unaccompanied children in the past eight months has severely strained U.S. government resources at the border.

Last week, President Trump threatened to levy tariffs on Mexico if authorities there didn’t do more to curb the flow of Central Americans through that country to the U.S. The Mexican government agreed to deploy National Guard troops to its southern border and let U.S. authorities send more asylum seekers back to Mexico while they wait for American judges to decide their fate.

Since 2014, more than 851,000 Central Americans have been caught crossing the U.S. border illegally, according to federal government data. Nearly all have requested asylum, claiming they fear for their safety if they were to return home.

Those with children are released into the interior of the U.S. to wait for an immigration judge to decide whether they will be allowed to stay in America, a process that can take years to complete.

Overall, the population of foreigners living in the U.S. illegally has remained steady in recent years at about 10.5 million, according to Pew.

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