Given current demographic trends, nearly one in five U.S. residents will be of Hispanic origin by 2025. This major demographic shift and its implications for both the United States and the growing Hispanic population make Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies a most timely book. This report from the National Research Council describes how Hispanics are transforming the country as they disperse geographically. It considers their roles in schools, in the labor market, in the health care system, and in U.S. politics. The book looks carefully at the diverse populations encompassed by the term "Hispanic," representing immigrants and their children and grandchildren from nearly two dozen Spanish-speaking countries. It describes the trajectory of the younger generations and established residents, and it projects long-term trends in population aging, social disparities, and social mobility that have shaped and will shape the Hispanic experience.

History and geography have given Mexico a unique status in the U.S. immigration system, and have made the Mexico-U.S. migration flow the largest in the world. Mexicans are the largest group of U.S. migrants across most types of immigration statuses--a fact that may have important implications for how Congress makes U.S. immigration policy. This report reviews the history of immigration policy and migration flows between the countries and the demographics of Mexicans within the United States. It also analyzes contemporary issues in U.S. immigration policy and the impact Mexico may have on U.S. immigration outcomes.

Middle Eastern immigration to Mexico is one of the intriguing, untold stories in the history of both regions. In So Far from Allah, So Close to Mexico, Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp presents the fascinating findings of her extensive fieldwork in Mexico as well as in Lebanon and Syria, which included comprehensive data collection from more than 8,000 original immigration cards as well as studies of decades of legal publications and the collection of historiographies from descendents of Middle Eastern immigrants living in Mexico today. Adding an important chapter to studies of the Arab diaspora, Alfaro-Velcamp's study shows that political instability in both Mexico and the Middle East kept many from fulfilling their dreams of returning to their countries of origin after realizing wealth in Mexico, in a few cases drawing on an imagined Phoenician past to create a class of economically powerful Lebanese Mexicans. She also explores the repercussions of xenophobia in Mexico, the effect of religious differences, and the impact of key events such as the Mexican Revolution. Challenging the post-revolutionary definitions of mexicanidad and exposing new aspects of the often contradictory attitudes of Mexicans toward foreigners, So Far from Allah, So Close to Mexico should spark timely dialogues regarding race and ethnicity, and the essence of Mexican citizenship.

This report describes for the first time the totality and evolution since the mid-1980s of the current-day immigration enforcement machinery. The report's key findings demonstrate that the nation has reached an historical turning point in meeting long-standing immigration enforcement challenges. The question is no longer whether the government is willing and able to enforce the nation's immigration laws, but how enforcement resources and mandates can best be mobilized to control illegal immigration and ensure the integrity of the nation's immigration laws and traditions.

Discussion of Mexican migration to the United States is often infused with ideological rhetoric, untested theories, and few facts. In Crossing the Border, editors Jorge Durand and Douglas Massey bring the clarity of scientific analysis to this hotly contested but under-researched topic. Leading immigration scholars use data from the Mexican Migration Project—the largest, most comprehensive, and reliable source of data on Mexican immigrants currently available—to answer such important questions as: Who are the people that migrate to the United States from Mexico? Why do they come? How effective is U.S. migration policy in meeting its objectives? Crossing the Border dispels two primary myths about Mexican migration: First, that those who come to the United States are predominantly impoverished and intend to settle here permanently, and second, that the only way to keep them out is with stricter border enforcement. Nadia Flores, Rubén Hernández-León, and Douglas Massey show that Mexican migrants are generally not destitute but in fact cross the border because the higher comparative wages in the United States help them to finance homes back in Mexico, where limited credit opportunities makes it difficult for them to purchase housing. William Kandel's chapter on immigrant agricultural workers debunks the myth that these laborers are part of a shadowy, underground population that sponges off of social services. In contrast, he finds that most Mexican agricultural workers in the United States are paid by check and not under the table. These workers pay their fair share in U.S. taxes and—despite high rates of eligibility—they rarely utilize welfare programs. Research from the project also indicates that heightened border surveillance is an ineffective strategy to reduce the immigrant population. Pia Orrenius demonstrates that strict barriers at popular border crossings have not kept migrants from entering the United States, but rather have prompted them to seek out other crossing points. Belinda Reyes uses statistical models and qualitative interviews to show that the militarization of the Mexican border has actually kept immigrants who want to return to Mexico from doing so by making them fear that if they leave they will not be able to get back into the United States. By replacing anecdotal and speculative evidence with concrete data, Crossing the Border paints a picture of Mexican immigration to the United States that defies the common knowledge. It portrays a group of committed workers, doing what they can to realize the dream of home ownership in the absence of financing opportunities, and a broken immigration system that tries to keep migrants out of this country, but instead has kept them from leaving.

DIVStudies poor and working-class Mexicans in the USA, showing how migration influences the creation of identity, family, and community and how it affects even those who don't themselves actually migrate./div

Migration between Mexico and the United States is part of a historical process of increasing North American integration. This process acquired new momentum with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which lowered barriers to the movement of goods, capital, services, and information. But rather than include labor in this new regime, the United States continues to resist the integration of the labor markets of the two countries. Instead of easing restrictions on Mexican labor, the United States has militarized its border and adopted restrictive new policies of immigrant disenfranchisement. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors examines the devastating impact of these immigration policies on the social and economic fabric of the Mexico and the United States, and calls for a sweeping reform of the current system. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors shows how U.S. immigration policies enacted between 1986–1996—largely for symbolic domestic political purposes—harm the interests of Mexico, the United States, and the people who migrate between them. The costs have been high. The book documents how the massive expansion of border enforcement has wasted billions of dollars and hundreds of lives, yet has not deterred increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants from heading north. The authors also show how the new policies unleashed a host of unintended consequences: a shift away from seasonal, circular migration toward permanent settlement; the creation of a black market for Mexican labor; the transformation of Mexican immigration from a regional phenomenon into a broad social movement touching every region of the country; and even the lowering of wages for legal U.S. residents. What had been a relatively open and benign labor process before 1986 was transformed into an exploitative underground system of labor coercion, one that lowered wages and working conditions of undocumented migrants, legal immigrants, and American citizens alike. Beyond Smoke and Mirrors offers specific proposals for repairing the damage. Rather than denying the reality of labor migration, the authors recommend regularizing it and working to manage it so as to promote economic development in Mexico, minimize costs and disruptions for the United States, and maximize benefits for all concerned. This book provides an essential "user's manual" for readers seeking a historical, theoretical, and substantive understanding of how U.S. policy on Mexican immigration evolved to its current dysfunctional state, as well as how it might be fixed.

"Without a doubt, Tomas Jimenez has written the single most important contemporary academic study on Mexican American assimilation. Clear-headed, crisply written, and free of ideological bias, Replenished Ethnicity is an extraordinary breakthrough in our understanding of the largest immigrant group in the history of the United States. Bravo!"--Gregory Rodriguez, author of Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America "Tomas Jimenez's Replenished Ethnicity brilliantly navigates between the two opposing perils in the study of Mexican Americans--pessimistically overracializing them or optimistically overassimilating them. This much-needed and gracefully written book illuminates the on-the-ground situations of the later generations of this key American group, insightfully identifying and analyzing the unique factor operating in its case: more or less continuous immigration for more than a century. Jimenez's work provides a landmark for all future studies of Latin American incorporation into U.S. society."--Richard Alba, author of Remaking the American Mainstream "Tomas Jimenez's study adds a much-needed but long absent element to our understanding of how immigration contributes to the construction and reproduction of Mexican American ethnicity even as it continuously evolves. His work provides useful and needed detail that are absent even from the most reliable surveys."--Rodolfo de la Garza, Columbia University "In a masterful piece of social science, Tomas Jimenez debunks allegations about slow social and cultural assimilation of Mexican Americans through a richly textured ethnographic account of Mexican Americans' lived experiences in two communities with distinct immigration experiences. Population replenishment via immigration, he claims, maintains distinctiveness of established Mexican origin generations via infusion of cultural elixir-in varying doses over time and place. Ironically, it is the vast heterogeneity of Mexican Americans-generational depth, socioeconomic, national origin and legal-that both contributes to the population's ethnic uniqueness and yet defies singular theoretical frameworks. Jimenez's page-turner uses the Mexican American ethnic prism to re-interpret the U.S. ethnic tapestry and revise the canonical view of assimilation. Replenished Ethnicity sets a high bar for second generation scholarship about Mexican Americans."--Marta Tienda, The Office of Population Research at Princeton University

In the past two decades, changes in the Mexican government's policies toward the 30 million Mexican migrants living in the US highlight the importance of the Mexican diaspora in both countries given its size, its economic power and its growing political participation across borders. This work examines how the Mexican government's assessment of the possibilities and consequences of implementing certain emigration policies from 1848 to 2010 has been tied to changes in the bilateral relationship, which remains a key factor in Mexico's current development of strategies and policies in relation to migrants in the United States. Understanding this dynamic gives an insight into the stated and unstated objectives of Mexico's recent activism in defending migrants' rights and engaging the diaspora, the continuing linkage between Mexican migration policies and shifts in the US-Mexico relationship, and the limits and possibilities for expanding shared mechanisms for the management of migration within the NAFTA framework.

The book investigates the formation of the Cristero diaspora, a network of Mexican emigrants, exiles, and refugees across the United States who supported a Mexican Catholic uprising during the late 1920s. These emigrants had a profound and enduring impact on Mexican American community formation, political affiliations, and religious devotion.