Editorial El Informador (Guadalajara, Jalisco) 

“Fewer migrants and more riches”

For 60 years, the migration of Mexicans to the United States has been, simultaneously, a blessing and heartache for those who remain here.   Many of our fellow citizens, legally or without documents – almost all of them men and women with a clear conviction of improving themselves – have walked North since the Second World War to find their livelihood and, quite often, the future for their family.

Their determination has brought about great benefits for them as well as for their relatives in Mexico. The profit of these millions of Mexicans has been such that presently only petroleum and tourism generate more dollars for the country than those which they send here.

But the great fruit of their labors, which has made an impact in any town of our nation, as small as it might be, must also make us reflect.

Many of the migrants went to the United States because they did not find a way to satisfy their worries; so much so that, according to the Mexico migration Situation (sic), of BBVA Bancomer, despite the fact that many of them have had to tighten up on their expenses due to the recession, they have not stopped sending money to their relatives in our country.

Despite the fact that some of them facing the largest unemployment in many years in the United States, they opt for staying on the other side of the border instead of returning to their country.   

Their courage to migrate has helped financially not only with the family relations they cannot stop but also in easing the need for the creation of jobs that, even though meager, would be much more complicated if the 300 to 400 thousand who go every year did not do so. 

For the first time in many years the amount of individual monetary remittances is decreasing. Luckily for those who get them, the depreciation of the peso versus the dollar does not reduce their purchasing power.

But its fall, on the long run, brings us to realize that the means of support of many Mexicans must depend on our own selves, of the riches that must be generated, for which reason the dependency on foreign resources must be reversed.

June 9, 2009