Tom Ramstack – AHN News Correspondent
Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico (AHN) – Mexico is losing many of its most highly-educated workers to foreign emigration to the United States, according to a new economic report.
About 20 percent of Mexican university graduates with doctoral degrees emigrate to the United States, according to the study.
In Mexico, “Unemployment rates are higher in people with more education,” says the report by economists Adolfo Albo and Jose Luis Ordaz of the financial group BBVA Bancomer.
They also said any current economic trends resulting from immigration could change soon as the U.S. government and several states consider policy changes to crack down on illegal immigrants.
In Mexico, unemployment among workers with graduate degrees runs 1.5 to three times higher than people with primary school or no education, the report says.
The Mexican unemployment trend runs opposite the United States, where the most highly educated workers generally have the lowest unemployment rates.
The report appears to be a response to complaints by Americans that Mexican immigrants are taking jobs from U.S. workers and draining the economy.
The Mexican study implies that the United States is hurting Mexico’s economy by taking some of its most talented workers.
About 80,000 people with PhDs reside in Mexico, the report says.
However, about 20,000 people who received PhDs in Mexico in the past 14 years moved to the United States.
Mexico transferred the equivalent of $81 billion to the United States in the past 15 years through its own taxpayers’ spending on education and training of Mexicans who later emigrated north, the economists reported.
They also said Mexican immigrants paid $2.5 to the United States in taxes for every $1 they sent home in remittances, or the money they use to help support their families.
“These aggregate figures suggest that the United States seems to be having, in economic terms, a result more favorable than Mexico from the migration of qualified Mexicans,” the report says.
The northward exodus of Mexicans already appears to be changing after Arizona approved its S.B. 1070 law in April. The state law authorizes local police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant.
Until S.B. 1070, immigration enforcement was purely a federal law enforcement activity.
The Mexican economic report says about 100,000 illegal immigrants have returned to their home country after the law took effect in July.
The Nov. 2 elections are likely to continue the trend of tougher U.S. laws against illegal immigrants, according to pre-election polls.
Republicans are likely to win back a majority in the House of Representatives, which would include putting hard-line conservatives at the head of the Judiciary Committee, according to the polls.
The committee holds primary responsibility for crafting any immigration reform legislation.
If Republicans win the Judiciary Committee leadership, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) would become its chairman. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) would become chairman of the immigration subcommittee.
Both congressmen have favored tough laws against illegal immigration similar to Arizona’s S.B. 1070.
Smith was a sponsor of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which expanded the number of illegal immigrants who could be deported.
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