Behind the Debate: Propelled to Protest, Driven to Migrate

“Conventional wisdom has long explained the flood of migrants with a simple formula: Mexicans and other Latin Americans come to the United States for better-paying jobs. But the calculus is more complex because of pressure caused by Mexico’s population explosion, which turned Flores’s generation into one of the most desperate for work in modern Mexican history. Mexico’s failure to create enough jobs after the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement pushed countless young people to migrate to the United States, while a growing U.S. demand for labor pulled them north.

Flores, born in 1979, is a product of Mexico’s 1970s baby boom, a time when Mexican President Luis Echevarrí said, ” G obernar es poblar ” — to govern is to populate. Since 1970, Mexico’s population has doubled. More important, the population of 15- to 34-year-olds — the prime migrating years — has swollen to 38 million, according to U.S. Census figures on foreign populations. That age group is projected to exceed 40 million in 2015. Mexican economists say this is almost certain to push more Mexicans across the border, further intensifying the United States’ already heated immigration debates, unless Mexico’s economy dramatically improves.”

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