Goodby Immigrant Stereotype : RAND study shows powerful struggle to thrive behind complex reality

The movement of people across the U.S.-Mexico border began generations before that border even existed. It’s so fundamental to the economy and culture of California and the Southwest that we take it for granted.

A recent survey by two RAND Corp. researchers, published in Science Magazine, is a useful and timely reminder of just how complex and historic a phenomenon illegal immigration is. For example, the latest research on illegal Mexican immigrants indicates they are a much more heterogenous people than the conventional wisdom would have us think. No longer are they the braceros many U.S. citizens remember from the 1940s through the late ‘60s--single men, working at stoop labor in the fields, migrating on a seasonal basis.

Instead, many of the modern Mexican migrants come from urban areas in their homeland and they are looking for manufacturing or services jobs in U.S. cities. Many more of them are women, some with children. In fact, it is not unusual to now find entire families trying to move from Mexico to the United States, with the intention of staying in this country as permanent immigrants.

Ironically, the researchers point out, the latter process may have been accelerated recently by a change in U.S. law that was supposed to slow illegal immigration. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 allowed an estimated 2.3 million Mexicans to legalize their status in this county under its amnesty provisions. While that brought many otherwise honest and hard-working people out of hiding, it was probably also an incentive for many newly legalized men to bring their wives and children to the United States.

The researchers, quite properly, do not try to reach any conclusions as to whether this continuing process is good or bad. But the RAND experts point out is that the very complexity of the Mexican immigrant population suggests that the problems posed by illegal immigration will resist any easy solutions. That’s useful to remember as both Mexico and this nation begin to explore what their relationship will be as the “new world order” emerges.

For better or worse, a world in which economic competition is more important than political or military rivalries is pushing the two “distant neighbors” closer together than ever. So while some may use the latest research to argue for tougher immigration laws, we see in it the best argument for pursuing a free-trade agreement with Mexico and Canada.

For all the negative effects feared from such a pact in the three countries, in the long run it could provide the only real solution to illegal immigration: economic development that creates jobs for Mexican workers where we suspect most such workers would prefer them--in Mexico.