Options for Estimating Illegal Entries at the U.S.-Mexico Border (2013) / Chapter Skim
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2 The Process of Unauthorized Crossing at the U.S.Mexico Border
2 The Process of Unauthorized Crossing at the U.S.Mexico Border
Pages 15-38
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From page 15... ...
Then, the chapter describes the contemporary border crossing process for unauthorized migrants aiming to enter without inspection. Finally, the chapter discusses what is known about the apparent extent of the involvement of organized crime and drug cartels in migrant smuggling.
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From page 16... ...
Still, changes in the stock of illegal immigrants should roughly capture net flows, once attrition and deaths are subtracted and an upward adjustment is made for the household survey undercount.3 For instance, the unauthorized immigrant population increased in net terms by about 500,000 annually during the early 2000s. After allowing for undercount, mortality, and return migration, the inflow of unauthorized immigrants was estimated at around 850,000 per year during the period 2000 to 2005 (Passel and Cohn, 2010)
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From page 17... ...
. Characteristics of the Unauthorized Population Not all unauthorized immigrants "enter without inspection" at the border.
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Almost half of adult unauthorized immigrants have not completed high school, and they make up 22 percent of all non-high school graduates in the United States. Undocumented workers are disproportionately employed in construction; food service; building, grounds keeping, and maintenance; and farming (Passel and Cohn, 2009b)
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Department of Homeland Security, 2011b:Table 2) , due in part to increasing restrictions on European immigration.
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In 1942, the U.S. and Mexican governments crafted the Bracero Program, which would bring in about 200,000 Mexican workers annually over the next 22 years, although flows varied greatly over time.
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Notwithstanding the more than 4 million admissions during the 1942-1964 period, the number of Mexican immigrants living in the United States increased by only about 200,000 over 20 years, from 377,000 in the 1940 census to 576,000 in 1960. With the end of the Bracero Program in 1964, the United States implemented a new immigrant preference system favoring family reunification and, to a lesser extent, certain forms of skilled labor.
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From page 22... ...
A Legally Authorized Workers program granted legal permanent residence to immigrants who could document continuous presence in the country since January 1, 1982.7 A Special Agricultural Workers program granted legal status to circular and seasonal migrant workers as long as they had worked at least 90 days during the past year. Together, these programs regularized 2.7 million undocumented immigrants, three-fourths of whom were from Mexico (Durand et al., 1999:523; Orrenius and Zavodny, 2003:439; Phillips and Massey, 1999:233)
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From page 23... ...
Attempts are influenced by socioeconomic conditions in sending areas and potential destinations; by security conditions on the southern side of the U.S.–Mexico border; and by U.S. immigration policy, including legal immigration opportunities and border and interior enforcement.
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. We discuss these two factors in a separate section, "Effectiveness of Border Enforcement." Continuing undocumented inflows in the early 1990s prompted USBP to change strategies and adopt a "prevention through deterrence" strategy, which "called for reducing unauthorized migration by placing agents and resources directly on the border along population centers in order to deter would-be migrants from entering the country" (Nuñez-Neto and Viña, 2006:1; U.S.
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The site-specific crackdowns resulted in two responses by border crossers, neither of which suggests that overall illegal immigration was deterred. First, operations such as Gatekeeper deflected attempted crossings away from areas with increased USBP activity toward less-patrolled territory.
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laid the groundwork for consequence policies by instituting expedited removal, interior repatriation, and 3- and 10-year admission bars for previously unauthorized immigrants seeking to be admitted legally to the United States.15 Expedited removal is the process by which a non-U.S. citizen present in the country for less than 14 days and located within 100 miles of the border can be physically 15 The law also set harsher punishment for smugglers.
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Border Patrol, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, with seasonal adjustment by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
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wages has always been a powerful incentive for Mexican migration. When jobs -- particularly in the construction sector -- dried up in the recession that began in 2008, unauthorized immigration plummeted (Papademetriou and Terrazas, 2009)
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by diversifying their sources of income through the allocation of family labor abroad. Migration serves as a mechanism for risk management if market conditions in destinations are negatively or weakly correlated with those in the sending community; if local economic conditions deteriorate, the household can then rely on migrant remittances for support.
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From page 30... ...
. Given that the demand for immigrant labor continued after the end of the Bracero Program, and given that major changes in immigration law in the late 1960s eliminated provisions for legal temporary and permanent labor migration,18 social networks have played an even larger role in facilitating undocumented migration from Mexico (Massey and Riosmena, 2010)
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From page 31... ...
Conversely, the fact that the number of apprehensions and stock of undocumented migrants has decreased in more recent years might suggest that the stepped-up enforcement efforts at the border have been effective. As discussed briefly in the previous section, the incentives to engage in unauthorized migration have been changing due to economic and social changes in destination and sending areas and due to the expansion of migrant networks.
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Under this program, state and local law enforcement agents receive DHS training and supervision to check the immigration status of arrestees in jails and prisons and to apprehend suspected unauthorized immigrants through traffic stops or other community interventions (National Research Council, 2011:42-43)
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Figure 2-3 shows a stylized version of the undocumented border crossing process, along with the sources of survey and administrative data (which are described and evaluated in Chapters 3, 4, and 5) that can potentially and partially measure these flows.
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Broadside dMMP/MMFRP. ACS: American Community Survey CPS: Current Population Survey EMIF-N: Survey of Migration at the Northern Border of Mexico ENADID: National Survey of Population Dynamics ENOE: National Survey of Occupation and Employment MMFRP: Mexican Migration Field Research Program MMP: Mexican Migration Project MxFLS: Mexican Family Life Survey
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From page 35... ...
. First, some undocumented crossers succeed in eluding USBP after being detected; these are termed "got-aways" and become part of the unauthorized population, along with individuals who manage to cross undetected by USBP.
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From page 36... ...
and Mexican enforcement, migrant smugglers may find it increasingly necessary to negotiate agreements with local "plaza bosses" who control specific segments of the border. The growing role of organized crime could also have something to do with the rising numbers of non-Mexican border crossers (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2010)
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From page 37... ...
Furthermore, the border itself can be seen as a "system" of its own, in which enforcement efforts and policy changes can have spillover effects and generate adaptive responses by unauthorized migrants and others. As can be seen in Figure 2-3, none of the existing survey and administrative data sources captures the entire migration process.
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