Human Mobility and Intermixing in North America

http://watchingamerica.com/News/239775/human-mobility-and-intermixing-in-north-america/

Human Mobility and Intermixing in North America
El Universal, Mexico
By Carlos Heredia Zubieta
Translated By Tristan Franz
30 May 2014
Edited by Lau­rence Bouvard

Social classes exist in international travel, too. A handful of us Mexicans belong to the trusted traveler program Global Entry, which allows us to enter the United States in less than a minute, skipping the line by plugging our personal information into a computer at one of the country's main airports.

In contrast, undocumented Mexican migrant workers in the United States are trapped north of the border, unable to visit their families in Mexico and return to work. Gone is the circularity in immigration that existed until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The same is happening to the Dreamers, those who study in the U.S. but were born elsewhere, whose immigration status puts them in the vulnerable situation of being deported at any moment.

~snip~

In 2008, irregular Mexican immigration fell in relationship with the state of the U.S. economy. At the same time, authorized immigration went up. Today, the North American Free Trade Agreement is moving more and more toward shared production in industries like automotive and aerospace, causing an unprecedented exodus of Mexican professionals and engineers to the United States and Canada.

We are in the midst of a demographic tsunami. The Latino population in the United States will have gone from 4.5 percent in 1970 to 25 percent by 2030. Mexico, for its part, is aging quickly and will stop sending undocumented workers to the United States around 2028 simply because there will be a scarcity of Mexicans of working age.