I couldn't believe that someone would write this, unbelievable.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

Fall in illegal migration as Mexican life gets better
Damien Cave
July 9, 2011
AGUA NEGRA: The Mexican migration that has delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: changes in Mexico have made staying home more attractive.
A growing body of evidence suggests that a mix of developments - expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families - are suppressing illegal traffic as much as economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the US.
In Jalisco, one of Mexico's top three states for emigration over the past century, a new dynamic has emerged.
For a typical rural family such as the Orozcos, heading to El Norte without papers is no longer an inevitable rite of passage. Instead their homes are filling up with returning relatives - older brothers who crossed illegally are awaiting visas - and the youngest Orozcos are staying put.
''I'm not going to go to the States because I'm more concerned with my studies,'' Angel Orozco, 18, said.
Indeed, at the new technological institute where he is earning a degree in industrial engineering, all the students in a recent class said they were better educated than their parents - and that they planned to stay in Mexico rather than go to the US.
Douglas Massey, a co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton University, a long-term survey in Mexican emigration hubs, said his research showed that interest in heading to the US had fallen to its lowest level since at least the 1950s.
''No one wants to hear it but the flow has already stopped,'' Dr Massey said. ''For the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.''
The decline in illegal immigration, from a country responsible for roughly six of every 10 illegal immigrants in the US, is stark.
The Mexican census recently discovered 4 million more people in Mexico than had been projected, which officials attributed to a sharp decline in emigration.
US census figures analysed by the Pew Hispanic Centre also show that the illegal Mexican population in the US has shrunk and that fewer than 100,000 illegal border-crossers and visa-violators from Mexico settled in the US last year, down from about 525,000 a year between 2000 and 2004.
In simple terms, Mexican families are smaller than they once were, shrinking the pool of likely migrants. Despite the dominance of the Catholic Church in Mexico, birth control efforts have pushed down the fertility rate to about two children per woman from 6.8 in 1970, according to government figures.
Even in larger families like the Orozcos' - Angel is the ninth of 10 children - the migration calculation has changed. Crossing ''mojado'' - wet or illegally - has become more expensive and more dangerous, particularly with drug cartels dominating the border.
At the same time, educational and employment opportunities have greatly expanded in Mexico. Per capita gross domestic product and family income have each jumped more than 45 per cent since 2000, according to one prominent economist, Roberto Newell.This is what I reported on this board about two months ago and have said all along, Mexico is not a poor country and it is doing better economically that the US in recent years. Despite all the depictions of Mexico as ''nearly a failed state,'' he argued, ''the conventional wisdom is wrong''.
The New York Times

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/fall-in-...#ixzz1RYBCGpZ9

[Don]

If this is really true, it's good news. The best solution to the Mexican invasion would be for Mexico to succeed as a country so that its native sons and daughters and it's expatriots in the USA would want to live and prosper there. I hope things are getting better for Mexicans in Mexico.