Self deportation at work

Investor's Business Daily:

Thanks to stepped-up U.S. enforcement, being an illegal immigrant is becoming less and less attractive. But powerful forces inside Mexico are also enticing Mexicans to stay home. Rule of law is one.

It may just be the most dramatic story of the year. The U.S. Border Patrol announced a stunning 38% drop in illegal immigrant apprehensions in the fiscal year from October through June.

On the Mexican side, the Associated Press reports that migrant shelters are full, but the emigrants are heading south. In the U.S., towns full of newer illegal immigrants, like Carpentersville, Ill., now report them emptying out.

In harder numbers, migrant remittances are down. Mexico's central bank reported incoming remittances rose only 0.6% in the first half of 2007, compared with a 23% rise in the first half of last year.

In U.S. states with the newest waves of immigration, the drop-off was highest. If, as the Inter-American Development Bank has found, new immigrants are the most likely to send remittances, then fewer illegals are coming.

It's tempting to credit stepped-up law enforcement in the U.S. for the reversal. On the left, there is crowing about how Republican support for immigration enforcement will lose them the Latino vote.

But for a reversal this significant there's much more going on.

A recent Pew Survey of global attitudes revealed that 50% of Mexicans think emigration is their nation's No. 1 problem. It's not surprising, with one out of seven Mexican workers now living in the U.S. As costs of illegal crossings went down and as the U.S. was lax about laws in the past, a point was reached where it got to be too many.

But it left Mexico a strange place. Amusement parks now exist for fun-seekers to spend a night playing illegal immigrants running from the Border Patrol. Towns in Zacatecas state are empty of people, yet many houses sport a shiny new roof financed by U.S. remittances. As an homage to the missing workers, a Mexican artist now plans to create statues representing 2,500 missing emigrants in empty villages. It's clear Mexican culture feels the loss.

Meanwhile, demographers calculate growth in Mexico's work force has already peaked. Political scientists have noticed key improvements in Mexico's long march to development.

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"Mexico is an interesting case because over the last two decades the country has aggressively opened its economy to the rest of the world," UC San Diego economist Gordon Hanson recently wrote. Trade was liberalized in 1985, restrictions on foreign capital ended in 1989 and NAFTA was enacted in 1994.

Now taxes are being cut, industries are being privatized, property rights are being strengthened and jobs are being created. It's a long process that, over time, will translate into citizen confidence.

Increasingly, Mexicans find they have legitimate, legal jobs to do in Mexico, as the chart shows. This is a key reason for rising incomes. With average Mexican income now at $7,000 — the highest in Latin America — average workers can earn nearly as much there as here.

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It helps too that Mexico finally has a President who is fighting for the rule of law and giving his citizens hope against the narco terrorist insurgency that has been robbing many of hope. NAFTA is proving to be a win-win deal and one of the dangers of electing Democrats is that the Labor bosses want to return to the bad old days of protectionism and lose-lose trade policies.

While IBD looks to other points, I would not discount the effect of stricter enforcement. Just as the broken window policy did not mean that you had to fill up jails to over flowing, an enforcement policy that is effective means there will be fewer people violating the law and thus fewer people needing deportation. If they are not being hired they will go home on their own.