Fertility data suggest that the international migration picture is about to change.
As the debate over illegal immigration from Mexico rages in Washington and across the country, and as the administration’s reform bill hangs by a thread, few Americans are aware that this problem is on track to decline, and will eventually become a vague memory.
There has been a stunning decline in the fertility rate in Mexico, which means that, in a few years, there will not be nearly as many teenagers in Mexico looking for work in the United States or anywhere else. If this trend in the fertility rate continues, Mexico will resemble Japan and Italy—rapidly aging populations with too few young workers to support the economy.
Mexican immigration isn’t going away on its own
But if you were to look at how fertility trends and immigration overlap, you might well reach the opposite conclusion from Dowd. In 1970, when Mexico still had a total fertility rate of well over 6, the Mexican immigrant population in the United States was less than 800,000. Over the next 30 years, Mexico’s fertility fell by more than half, yet its immigrant population grew more than ten-fold. In itself, this doesn’t disprove Dowd’s claim, but it sure muddies it up.
