When thinking about immigration, there are both push and pull factors that lead a person to cross borders (legally or illegally), entering a country not their own, and try start a new life. Today, we shall talk about the push. What are some of the reasons, Mexicans in particular are being pushed out of their own country?
1) Employment - I would argue this is the largest push factor in most immigration to the US. When fathers and mothers can't feed their children, or pay their school fees, or provide them with shelter in their own country, they are pushed out to find a better life.
Many individuals in Mexico, historically, were farmers. When I studied in Mexico, way back in my youth, we spent a couple of days talking about the 'Mexican' relationship to the land. From my memory, it was very much the idea of Mother Earth. The agrarian lifestyle was built around this principle of tenderly nurturing new life from the soil, of putting blood, sweat, and tears into the process of producing food for the family - particularly corn. There was a relationship between the food people ate daily and the land from which it came. In 1994, when NAFTA was implemented, US-Subsidized food products, particularly corn, flooded the Mexican market. They were produced through huge agri-business in the US and subsidized to such an extreme that the small, earth respecting farms in Mexico could not compete. In many of the families, for generations farming was the only way of life and now those jobs simply did not exist, there was no market for their food. While the brief influx of factory work - through NAFTA- was meant to help offset the shifting economy, there were far fewer jobs and in drastically different parts of the country. This pushed many people to both migrate internally, and to leave the country in search of work within their skill set, farming.
One report points out, "an average of 500,000 Mexicans migrate to the U.S. each year since the implementation of NAFTA, compared to 235,000 per year previously. Two thirds of Mexican born immigrants in the U.S. came after 1994. This estimated 4.13 million people arrived due, in large part, to the influx of cheap subsidized grains from the U.S, resulting in the decimation of at least two million farming jobs and eight million small farmers. The 1.3 million jobs created during the peak period of the maquiladora industry –assembly plants, typically foreign owned – have only provided a small portion of the jobs needed to cover the millions of workers pushed off their farms or forced out of Mexico’s devastated domestic industries." It should also be noted, many of the maquiladoras have shut down because labor is much cheaper in China or Southeast Asia so these jobs have again moved. Also, unrelated to the push factors but worth noting, the working conditions in these factories was often very undesirable.
2) Violence is also a huge motivation to migrate and can take many forms. Much of the violence in the Mexican context does stem from the drug trade and drug cartels.
For a while now, Mexico has been getting progressively more violent, largely due to the waring drug cartels. Around 2008, Mexico received funding through the Merida Initiative, as Mexico's recently elected president sought US assistance to fight crime and drug trafficking. In theory, this is a great idea fight crime and drug trafficking. However, the consequences have led to extreme violence in many areas because of the drug cartels fighting for power. Additionally, when the leader of a drug cartel is 'taken out' other members of that cartel start competing for the leader position, which increases the violence. The cartel La Familia, which is the one headquartered largely in Morelia - where I studied in college - had just that happen. I have had a number of friends tell me, returning to Morelia now would not be a wise idea because the violence has gotten so bad. Also, the high levels of corruption within the military and police forces have also escalated the situation. When normal citizens can't depend on the police force to protect them, because they are on the cartel payroll, that is a scary situation. When it is not safe to walk down your own street and you constantly fear your children will be caught in the crossfire, migrating becomes worth the associated risks, again, pushing many from their homeland.
To learn more about the Merida Initiative, here are some links:
NPR on Merida
Witness for Peace on Merida
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