The enforcement of laws against illegal immigrants remains a bone of contention between states and the federal government (and on the GOP presidential campaign trail), and the U.S. Supreme Court has now agreed to weigh in on the issue. There is, however, an irony to this battle that appears to be lost on deportation proponents: many people are already leaving voluntarily or choosing not to come.
That’s right, for the first time in sixty years, net illegal migration from Mexico has gone to zero; it may even have tipped into the negatives. Approximately six out of ten illegal immigrants in the United States originate from Mexico, but in just the past three years apprehensions along the southern border have fallen by 53 percent. In fact, the Pew Hispanic Center puts the current number of illegal immigrants at 11.2 million, down from a peak of 12 million in 2007.
A further testament to the reversal is that the demographics of illegal residents are changing. Just 15 percent of today’s illegal residents arrived within the last 5 years, for example; it was 32 percent in 2000.
And it’s not only illegal immigrants eyeing distant lands. The Census Bureau’s net international-migration measure has been trending downward since 2000 (PDF, p. 17). Even if the accuracy of that data may be questionable, anecdotes abound of immigrant communities packing up shop and heading home. The Atlantic magazine went so far as to call this trend “The End of Chinatown.”
As fewer immigrants come, legal or otherwise, and more return home, two grains of truth become apparent for those willing to observe. First, immigration is not the cause of America’s problems, so its reversal will do nothing to restore economic prosperity or individual liberty. Second, America is no longer the shining city on a hill that many people revere. It is becoming less free and prosperous at an alarming rate, and the changing immigration flows reflect that.
Click here for the full article at The Future of Freedom Foundation.
