Studies by Mexico’s BBVA Bancomer Foundation lay out the general trends of
Mexican migration in an international context. A periodic, bilingual
publication sponsored by the Foundation’s economic services unit,
Migration Watch Mexico, details demographic, geographic, economic,
environmental and even technological characteristics of contemporary
migration in Mexico and other countries.

While many of the findings are not new, the reports underscore the
centrality of migration in the lives of tens of millions of Mexicans.

The data on migration and migrant dollars in specific regions of Mexico
pose a  question: In the Washington policy debate over immigration reform,
why is discussion of the impact of migration on individual US communities
not extended to particular communities south of the border, many of which
maintain historic ties and even official sister city relationships north
of the border?

Given the US’ economic relationships with Mexico, a country which is
ostensibly a major partner of Washington, the omission is a glaring one.
It is perhaps another indication that serious prospects for comprehensive
immigration reform are far from around the country.

According to the latest figures compiled by the BBVA Bancomer, migrant
remittances brought in $2.13 billion to the state of Michoacan alone in
2009. Mexico’s leading remittance receptor, Michoacan was followed in
order by Guanajuato, Mexico state, Jalisco, Veracruz, Puebla, Oaxaca and
Guerrero. The sparsely-populated states of Campeche and Baja California
Sur ranked lowest in participation in the remittance economy.

Nationally, remittances plunged 15.7 percent in 2009, a drop which was
compensated in part by the decline in the value of the peso relative to
the dollar. In the three years prior to the economic crash, BBVA-Bancomer
pegged migrant remittances in Mexico at $25-26 billion annually. In 2009,
however, the total fell to about $21.2 billion. More recently, the flow of
migrant remittances has picked up again, though the peso-dollar advantage
of late 2008 and early 2009 has diminished.

According to BBVA-Bancomer’s comparisons, the decrease in Mexican
remittances was steeper than 2009’s average regional decrease of 9.6
percent for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Separately, the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment
Fund found that remittances in Latin America and the Caribbean became far
more important to national economies than net direct foreign investment
and official external assistance by the early part of the decade.

Elsewhere, remittances-or the lack of them-have had a huge impact on local
economies. Remittances were slashed 30 percent in the former Soviet
republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan last year. Several Asian
countries including the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal bucked
the global trend. In 2009 the countries registered remittance increases by
3-4 percent, the world recession notwithstanding.

A recent University of California report stated that the Philippines
earned a record $17.3 billion in remittances in 2009. With nearly 1.5
million workers abroad last year, the Philippines could be the world’s
proportionally largest “migration economy” in that the majority of youth
plan to work abroad at some time during their lives, the report concluded.

In its latest publication, the BBVA Bancomer Foundation outlined a steady
rise in international remittances from 1986 to 2008, a year when migrant
dollars reached $444 billion. Citing the United Nations, the foundation’s
researchers estimate the current population of international migrants
stands at 214 million. The leading continents for migrants are Europe (70
million), Asia (61 million) and North America (50 million).

The impacts of climate change and social networking on Mexican migration
were two other issues recently explored by BBVA Bancomer’s researchers.

Although limited research exists on the links between climate change and
migration in Mexico, BBVA Bancomer said there is evidence correlating the
movement of people with changing environmental conditions or preexisting
ecological degradation, which could be worsened by climate change.

The states of Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Jalisco, Mexico and Tabasco were
identified as the entities most vulnerable to climate change. On the Gulf
of Mexico, the coast of Tabasco might be penetrated 25 or 30 miles by
higher sea levels, according to the report.

Raging waters whipped up by more frequent extreme weather events could be
a growing threat far from the coast lines.

In a barely noticed story, El Universal reported this month that Mexican
authorities  estimated 14 million people, or almost one in eight people in
the country, live in areas prone to flooding, including especially risky
zones inhabited by 10 million people.  Based on National Water Commission
(Conagua) sources, El Universal said the border states of Baja California,
Chihuahua, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas are among the most at risk of
flooding.

To solve the problem, the Mexican government has drawn up massive
relocation plans, the newspaper said.

“The effects and costs provoked by the last hurricanes have shown us that
it could be cheaper to gradually relocate 14 million Mexicans than spend
enormous quantities every year on reconstruction projects,” an anonymous
Conagua source was quoted.

In the last two weeks, as many as 500,000 people in the northern border
states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas have been touched by
flooding following Hurricane Alex. The emergency situation is far from
over; more neighborhoods were evacuated in the city of Reynosa on the
Tamaulipas-Texas border over the past weekend.

Finally, BBVA-Bancomer’s latest report noted how the emergence of
technologically-based social networks like Facebook could play a greater
role in future migration trends. Additionally, the common use of
cell-phones by migrant households encourages rapid, cross-border
communication. The widespread availability of new communication tools
could facilitate “the movement of people toward other regions within and
outside a specific country,” the report hypothesized.


Additional sources: El Diario de Juarez, July 18, 2010. El Sur, July 17,
2010. Article by Xavier Rosado. El Universal, July 11, 14 and 18, 2010.
Articles by Noe Cruz, Ignacio Alvarado and Julio Manuel Loya.
Inter-American Development Bank, May 3, 2010. Article by Priscilla Murphy.
Migration News (UC-Davis), April and July 2010.


Frontera NorteSur (FNS): on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico

July 19, 2010