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Editorial
Immigration problem a problem no more?
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Immigration has been a hot-button issue in this and previous elections, with tough immigration laws in Alabama, Arizona -- and even Fremont, Nebraska, drawing attention from both sides of the issue -- a Fremont city ordinance requires employers to double-check the immigration status of new employees.
Part of Fremont's law, requiring landlords to perform similar checks on tenants, was thrown out by a U.S. District Judge, but the employment provisions are going into effect.
Arizona's immigration law is being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.
But according to a Pew Hispanic Center study, the flow of immigrants from Mexico to the United States has slowed and even reversed.
From 1995 to 2000, some 2.9 million Mexicans arrived in the United States, and only 670,000 went the other way, a net U.S. gain of more than 2.2 million.
A decade later, however, just 1.37 million arrived from Mexico, and 1.39 million went south.
The report indicates that the number of illegal Mexicans living in the U.S. fell from nearly 7 million in 2007 to 6.1 million in 2011, according to U.S. census estimates.
Over that same period, the number of legal Mexican migrants to the U.S. rose slightly, by 200,000 up to 5.8 million.
According th the Pew report, a "significant minority" of the 1.3 million people, between 5 and 35 percent, who left the U.S. did not leave voluntarily. The Obama administration reports deporting record numbers of illegal immigrants from 2009 through 2011.
Why the change? According to backers of "self-deportation," it's because the requirement to present documents encourages illegals to leave on their own.
Others say it's because the birth rate in Mexico has declined.
Still others point to the slow U.S. economy. Well, that's one way to solve the problem, but not one we'd prefer.