Friday, April 07, 2006
DOUGLAS SOUTHGATE
Alarm over immigration has reached a fevered crescendo. Congressmen talk of fortifying our southern border. News anchors worry aloud that migrants are bringing in diseases such as leprosy. A few even suggest that Texas, California and the states in between are becoming part of Mexico (again).
Not too many years from now, however, we are apt to look back on the immigration debate of 2006 and wonder what the hyperventilation was all about. In all likelihood, we will find that charged rhetoric on the issue peaked just about when Mexicans were moving to the United States in the greatest numbers.
The argument that migration from Mexico – the origin of about threequarters of the new arrivals in this country – is likely to trail off rests on solid demographic and economic realities.
Like the rest of the developing world, our neighbor to the south has undergone a profound demographic transition in recent decades. The first part of the transition was a sharp drop in mortality, thanks to improved sanitation services and water supplies and, above all else, the use of pharmaceuticals. Like other people around the world, Mexicans have reacted to this happy change by procreating less.
The decline in human fertility has been remarkable – much faster, by the way, than the reduction in family size that had occurred a few decades earlier in the United States. As of the early 1960s, Mexican women bore nearly seven children each. Twenty years later, the total fertility rate had fallen to four births per woman. Today the rate is about two per woman, which is the replacement level.
As the norm of small families is sustained, demographic expansion in Mexico will abate. Chances are the country’s population will stabilize in three or four decades. However, high fertility as recently as the 1980s means that many young Mexicans are now entering the work force. There are many more of them than the number of available jobs. Better mannered than young Frenchmen, they do not respond to economic adversity by rioting. Instead, they decamp for the United States, where the work that awaits them offers wages that are attractive by Mexican standards.
Just as day follows night, recent declines in fertility are sure to cause the number of young Mexicans seeking jobs in the United States eventually to fall off. Moreover, market forces will adjust in ways that diminish the incentives for migration. Mexican newspapers carry articles about labor scarcities in selected sectors of the national economy. Such scarcities are bound to push up wages, thereby diminishing the cross-border gap in earnings.
Something else that lessens the incentives for migration is that intermediate-sized Mexican cities are attracting investment. The North American Free Trade Agreement is partly responsible. In addition, single-party rule came to an end during the 1990s, which means that local office holders must now compete for votes. In cities such as Puebla and Queretaro, which I visited in March, mayors and other officials seek support these days by improving garbage collection and other services, which in turn attracts investment and creates employment.
Demographic transition takes a while to play out and market adjustments tend to be below the radar screen, while illegal migrants hopping over a fence are not. But we must keep in mind the demographic and economic realities that are bound to cause migration to ebb, even if governments do nothing.
Sure, it is reasonable to oblige illegals to take their place in line behind people applying for work visas and citizenship in the proper way, pay fines for having entered the United States illegally and learn the language. Mexico’s government, by the way, demands this much and more of foreigners moving to that country. And if immigration benefits the U.S. economy, as various studies indicate, while burdening selected communities – those trying to educate large numbers of children who do not speak English – then federal assistance for such communities is in order.
But there is no need for mass criminalization or deportation of undocumented workers. Neither do we need to build the sort of barrier that Israel erected.
As President Bush evidently appreciates, extreme proposals of this sort strain a bilateral relationship that is important to us in myriad ways. The stakes involved are too great for uninformed, populist grandstanding.
Douglas Southgate is a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at Ohio State University.
southgate . 1 @osu.edu
DOUGLAS SOUTHGATE
Alarm over immigration has reached a fevered crescendo. Congressmen talk of fortifying our southern border. News anchors worry aloud that migrants are bringing in diseases such as leprosy. A few even suggest that Texas, California and the states in between are becoming part of Mexico (again).
Not too many years from now, however, we are apt to look back on the immigration debate of 2006 and wonder what the hyperventilation was all about. In all likelihood, we will find that charged rhetoric on the issue peaked just about when Mexicans were moving to the United States in the greatest numbers.
The argument that migration from Mexico – the origin of about threequarters of the new arrivals in this country – is likely to trail off rests on solid demographic and economic realities.
Like the rest of the developing world, our neighbor to the south has undergone a profound demographic transition in recent decades. The first part of the transition was a sharp drop in mortality, thanks to improved sanitation services and water supplies and, above all else, the use of pharmaceuticals. Like other people around the world, Mexicans have reacted to this happy change by procreating less.
The decline in human fertility has been remarkable – much faster, by the way, than the reduction in family size that had occurred a few decades earlier in the United States. As of the early 1960s, Mexican women bore nearly seven children each. Twenty years later, the total fertility rate had fallen to four births per woman. Today the rate is about two per woman, which is the replacement level.
As the norm of small families is sustained, demographic expansion in Mexico will abate. Chances are the country’s population will stabilize in three or four decades. However, high fertility as recently as the 1980s means that many young Mexicans are now entering the work force. There are many more of them than the number of available jobs. Better mannered than young Frenchmen, they do not respond to economic adversity by rioting. Instead, they decamp for the United States, where the work that awaits them offers wages that are attractive by Mexican standards.
Just as day follows night, recent declines in fertility are sure to cause the number of young Mexicans seeking jobs in the United States eventually to fall off. Moreover, market forces will adjust in ways that diminish the incentives for migration. Mexican newspapers carry articles about labor scarcities in selected sectors of the national economy. Such scarcities are bound to push up wages, thereby diminishing the cross-border gap in earnings.
Something else that lessens the incentives for migration is that intermediate-sized Mexican cities are attracting investment. The North American Free Trade Agreement is partly responsible. In addition, single-party rule came to an end during the 1990s, which means that local office holders must now compete for votes. In cities such as Puebla and Queretaro, which I visited in March, mayors and other officials seek support these days by improving garbage collection and other services, which in turn attracts investment and creates employment.
Demographic transition takes a while to play out and market adjustments tend to be below the radar screen, while illegal migrants hopping over a fence are not. But we must keep in mind the demographic and economic realities that are bound to cause migration to ebb, even if governments do nothing.
Sure, it is reasonable to oblige illegals to take their place in line behind people applying for work visas and citizenship in the proper way, pay fines for having entered the United States illegally and learn the language. Mexico’s government, by the way, demands this much and more of foreigners moving to that country. And if immigration benefits the U.S. economy, as various studies indicate, while burdening selected communities – those trying to educate large numbers of children who do not speak English – then federal assistance for such communities is in order.
But there is no need for mass criminalization or deportation of undocumented workers. Neither do we need to build the sort of barrier that Israel erected.
As President Bush evidently appreciates, extreme proposals of this sort strain a bilateral relationship that is important to us in myriad ways. The stakes involved are too great for uninformed, populist grandstanding.
Douglas Southgate is a professor in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at Ohio State University.
southgate . 1 @osu.edu
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