Recent immigrants employed, educated

ACAPULCO, Mexico — Like the weather in this booming resort, Mexico's economy is hot. The government is awash in oil profits. Exports are at record levels. The stock-market index has almost doubled in the past two years. Unemployment is at 3.3 percent.

So why do thousands of Mexicans, such as beachwear-vendor Cristina Vargas, risk their lives crossing into the United States? And why is the practice expected to continue despite rising prosperity at home and tough border legislation pending in the U.S. Congress?

"The money is just better over there," said Vargas, 40, who swam across the Rio Grande in 1999, worked various jobs in the United States, and returned to Acapulco last year. The single mother did not leave Mexico out of economic desperation. She left simply to improve her family's future.

More and more Mexicans who immigrate to the United States are employed urban dwellers with high-school diplomas and even some college experience who are looking for better prospects, studies in both countries show. Many crossed legally and overstayed a visa, according to a study released last month.

That bucks the conventional wisdom that immigrants are mostly poor people looking for any kind of job and who would stay home if the economy grew. And some analysts say emigration will not stop until Mexico runs out of young people entering the work force and until it begins to offer something akin to the economic opportunities in the United States — which is not likely to happen for 10 to 15 years.

About half of the up to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States are from Mexico, studies show.

"There's a huge wage differential, sometimes 10-to-1," said Andrés Rozental, a business consultant who served as Mexican ambassador to various countries. "Even if people have a job in Mexico, they will go to the United States."

Studies support the suggestion that many Mexican immigrants in the United States were motivated to leave their country by a desire not just for employment, but for better jobs and mobility:

Only 5 percent of Mexican workers who had been in the United States for two years or less were unemployed before they left Mexico, according to a 2005 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, D.C.

The newest Mexican immigrants, those with six months' tenure or less, had relatively high levels of education, with 38 percent completing high school, the same survey found. (The survey was done outside Mexican consulates, and some critics have said it is not representative of all immigrants, especially poorly educated agricultural workers.)

Interviews done along the Mexican border found that two out of three people preparing to cross had come from relatively prosperous urban settings, said Rodolfo Tuiran Gutierrez, a university professor and former head of Mexico's National Population Council. He cited a study by Mexico's border institution, El Colegio de La Frontera Norte.

Between 40 and 50 percent of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States in 2006 entered the country legally, either with a tourist or business visa or a border-crossing card, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center. In Mexico, visas are issued only to those who show financial solvency.

Francisco Higuera, 28, arrived in Dallas four years ago on a tourist visa from Guadalajara, where he received a degree in computer programming. After college, he worked in Mexico for a year but saw few opportunities.

"I had to leave in order to make sense of my education, in order to justify my education," he said.

Higuera, who asked that he be identified by his mother's last name in order to avoid trouble with his employer and U.S. authorities, said he had hoped an education would save him from having to "humiliate myself in this country, but here I am, trying to make the most of the opportunity before me."

He works for a high-tech firm in the Dallas area but expects to go home eventually, especially given the anti-immigrant mood in the United States. "My future is in Mexico," he said.

To be sure, plenty of Mexicans are poor, and emigration remains an important escape valve for them. Nearly 14 percent of workers in Mexico make just the $4-a-day minimum wage, government figures show. If you add underemployment (6 percent) to unemployment, nearly 10 percent of Mexicans don't have enough work.

Mexican politicians, from President Vicente Fox on down, are promising millions of new jobs as a way of keeping would-be emigrants from leaving. In a speech last month, Fox said Mexico was on its way to creating 900,000 jobs this year. Meanwhile, presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo says he would create 9 million jobs over his six-year presidency. A rival, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has proposed giving direct cash subsidies to Mexicans earning less than $800 a month.

But even with more jobs and rising incomes, true social mobility in Mexico will take time, and emigration will continue, some analysts say.

"The expectations that people have for upward mobility in Mexico are insufficient," Tuiran said. "Emigration is not going to be halted by job creation alone."

Perfect match for labor market

Meanwhile, the new immigrants are a perfect match for the U.S. labor market, where the hospitality industry and construction demand inexpensive workers, said Rozental, a member of Mexico's Council on Foreign Relations.

"This has gone from what used to be a principally agricultural labor force to one that is service-oriented and semi-skilled," he said. "It is a major change in the type of people and the type of education."

American critics say they take jobs away from legal immigrants and from citizens, push down wages, and are a burden on social services.

Tuiran said it should take at least a decade for the combination of a growing economy in Mexico and an aging population to slow the northward flow of young Mexicans.

"Right now there are a million new people entering [Mexico's] job force every year," said Tuiran, who teaches at Mexico's Autonomous Technical Institute.

About one-third of that million seek jobs in the United States, another third in Mexico's growing informal economy, and the final third in the formal job sector, where they pay taxes and receive public health insurance.

Mexico's baby boom, which began in the late 1970s and peaked in the early '90s, will continue to place significant numbers of young adults into the work force through 2015, Tuiran said. If Mexico's economy remains strong, the number of emigrants should drop significantly after that.