Record Arrests Suggest Immigration Trend Shift

U.S. Border Patrol agents here arrested record numbers of undocumented immigrants in the late fall and early winter, a trend that points to a shift toward more year-round immigration, experts say.

U.S. officials have long viewed November and December as a relatively slow period for illegal immigration. That period after the agricultural harvests is a time when many undocumented foreign-born residents head south to visit families left behind in Mexico and Central America.

But border guards in the San Diego area now record almost 1,000 arrests per day--a record pace for December.

The brisk pace comes after San Diego-based agents recorded 33,687 arrests in November, an increase of 22% over November, 1989.

Officials trace the current winter upswing to a variety of factors, including economic problems in Mexico and the increasing tendency of immigrants to relocate permanently in the United States--not just to work for a few months and then return home in the classic migratory pattern.

“I don’t think we’re seeing as much of the so-called ‘seasonal’ immigration as we used to see,” said Ted Swofford, supervisory Border Patrol agent in San Diego, the busiest site for legal and illegal traffic along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. “We’re finding that people are coming 12 months a year.”

Agricultural laborers, whose treks to the United States tend to be seasonal, now account for only about 15% of illicit border crossers, a much smaller number than a decade ago, according to research at the UC San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and elsewhere. Immigrants now find work in a wide variety of settings, from the fields to factories to construction sites.

Academic researchers on both sides of the border also have found that women and children are increasingly making the voyage north, underlining the intention of many new immigrants to remain in the United States permanently.

“Ten years ago, everyone said they would come to the north for six or eight months and then return to Mexico,” said Jose Luis Perez Canchola, who heads an immigration study center in Tijuana. “But now, the idea is to stay. People see no economic alternative in Mexico. The Mexican government has done nothing to provide them with alternatives.”