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A U.S. crackdown is causing the longest and most significant drop in illegal migration from Mexico since the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials say the U.S. economic downturn, tighter security and a more perilous and expensive journey are persuading many who try to sneak into the U.S. to give up sooner.
Border Patrol arrests are down 17 percent so far this year along the U.S.-Mexico border after falling 20 percent all of last fiscal year and 8 percent the year before that. While it’s impossible to know how many people are crossing illegally, the Patrol uses apprehensions to estimate the ebb and flow of traffic.
The downturn in illegal immigration has created labor shortages throughout the United States and several states are considering temporary-worker programs, especially in agricultural fields, where produce is going bad.
Mexicans in the U.S. are starting to send less money home, too.
Remittances soared in the early part of the decade to become Mexico’s largest source of foreign income after oil exports. But they rose just 1 percent in 2007, reaching $24 billion and in the first quarter this year, they slipped almost 3 percent from the same period last year, Mexico’s central bank said this week.
Adolfo Vasquez, a 41-year-old corn farmer from southern Mexico, picked fruit for three years in Washington state. Last year it took him two tries to get to his job. This year, he walked for four nights before U.S. Border Patrol agents caught him. He doesn’t plan to try again.
“It’s very disheartening because every time it gets twice as difficult,” said Vasquez, resting under an aid station tent for deportees in Nogales. “We’re going to go to Los Cabos or Tijuana. We hear there is work there.”
The number of returned migrants who try again through the heavily traveled desert corridor west of Sasabe has dropped from 80 percent to 40 percent since January, said Border Patrol spokesman Jose Gonzalez. Agents keep fingerprints on all those apprehended and can determine multiple offenders, even if they give false names.
U.S. authorities attribute the drop to tighter security and a new program in the Tucson sector that has prosecuted more than 3,000 migrants for crossing illegally since it started in January. They face jail sentences from a few days to six months.