[阅读小分队] 【揽瓜阁 外刊精读7.0】Day10 2021.04.21【社会科学-移民、行为研究】

Swelling numbers of Mexicans are heading north across the border, propelled by a deep recession at home and drawn by the promise of a stimulus fueled resurgence in the U.S.

Apprehensions at the southern U.S. border of working-age Mexicans traveling without children have more than doubled since October, to about 40,000 a month, from an average of fewer than 16,000 a month during the previous two years, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. At this pace, 2021 could see the most apprehensions of Mexicans in a decade.

The influx has been largely ignored so far, as the Biden administration struggles with a steep rise in the number of unaccompanied children and families from Central America seeking asylum. Most Mexicans caught at the border are adults traveling without children. The number of repeat attempts at crossing is up sharply from previous years, largely because of a change in U.S. policy last year that resulted in migrants often being expelled within hours of being apprehended instead of being formally deported.

From a high point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, apprehensions of Mexicans at the U.S. border declined steeply as opportunities back home improved, families became smaller financial support from those settled abroad grew, and crossings became more dangerous and costly. But they began to climb back in 2018, the year President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office and economic growth began to stagnate.

Then the coronavirus crisis hit, crippling the economy. The vast majority of Mexicans who lost their livelihoods in the past year didn’t have unemployment programs for support. And López Obrador has refused to fund a major fiscal stimulus, arguing that past bailouts benefited only the elite. Growth in the U.S. has rebounded more quickly, thanks in part to large injections of government aid, including enhanced jobless benefits.

These divergent realities have led a new generation of Mexicans to weigh the painful decision to leave home and family behind. “What drives migration is relative conditions between Mexico and the United States,” says Brian Cadena, an economist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “It is not just booms that matter, it is also being hit less hard by a similar shock. If the U.S. is weathering the pandemic relatively well in terms of what the labor market looks like, that is going to continue to drive migration.” Both of José Granadino’s sons departed for the U.S. in recent months. Ramiro, 20, was helping pay for his agronomy degree by working as a sound engineer for events around the family’s home near Ixmiquilpan, about 70 miles north of Mexico City. But the pandemic killed the quinceañera and wedding party business. Meanwhile, his uncles in Oklahoma told him there was plenty of work north of the border. “He started to get desperate,” says Granadino, who went to Florida when he was just 16. “He said, ‘I want to improve myself, I want to do something.’”

In October, Ramiro set off for the U.S., braving a 10-day journey through the Texan desert. Granadino’s 23-year-old son, Victor, followed a month later. The brothers are now working double shifts at bakeries and restaurants in Tulsa.

“Every time there is an economic crisis in the United States, undocumented workers play a key part in the recovery because they are the cheapest to hire and are willing to work in the most adverse conditions,” says Jorge Santibañez, president of the Mexa Institute, based in Washington, D.C., which studies Mexican communities in the U.S.

Ixmiquilpan has been transformed by successive waves of emigration, starting in the 1980s. Thousand of migrants from the region have settled around Clearwater, Fla. Many stayed in the U.S. only five or 10 years, long enough to save money to build their own house in Mexico, buy a truck and a tractor, or start a business. Others stayed, leaving rocky fields at home dotted with half-finished or unoccupied U.S.-style dwellings built with money sent home. Remittances to Ixmiquilpan, mainly from the diaspora, totaled $129 million last year, more than 10 times the municipal budget.

The pandemic hit as many children of the first migrant generation were coming of age. Benigno Ñonthe’s youngest son, Lauro, finished high school and left four months ago. Ñonthe says the boy liked to watch internet videos about the rich and famous. He read Henry Ford’s autobiography and personal finance bestsellers like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and idolized Michael Jordan and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Lauro’s older siblings had all managed to secure professional jobs in Mexico, but Ñonthe’s youngest told him, “You only go to school to become an employee.”

Ñonthe, who bought a tractor with the money he earned in Florida years ago, warned his son of the risks involved, but he couldn’t dissuade him. “Sometimes you have to let the fear go,” he says. “When he returns, he will have a lot to tell.”

He isn’t even sure which state Lauro is living in, but says he’s found plenty of work in construction. The industry, which relies heavily on unauthorized migrants, has fared better than many others. While nonfarm employment fell about 6% from February 2020 to February 2021, construction employment fell only 3.8%.

Republicans have seized on immigration and asylum as issues that could win them back seats in Congress in next year’s midterm elections. Members of the party have said Biden created a crisis by easing Trump’s rules and using more welcoming rhetoric—even though most of the previous administration’s policies remain in place. On March 23 senior U.S. officials met with Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard to discuss how to defuse what some are calling a humanitarian crisis.

Santibañez, of the Mexa Institute, says it will be difficult to prevent Mexicans from emigrating as long as demand for labor that’s “diligent, cheap, and available” continues to build north of the border. “Businesses that are trying to recover say to the cook, the handyman, or a construction worker, ‘Get me a cousin of yours or a brother,’ ” he says. “That’s what gets people to go.”

In Mexico, Fabián Morales Marchán, head of Guerrero state’s office for migrant issues, says he doesn’t have data to confirm that migration is picking up. But he points to a morbid marker: In the past three months alone, the bodies of five migrants from his state, all of whom died near the U.S.-Mexico border, were sent home. “In Mexico there’s not any help from governments, which means that the situation in places like Guerrero, or in Mexico more generally, has been far worse than in the U.S.,” he says. “People have had to find a way to help their families.”