Finally, though, the Pew Center tried asking Mexicans in Mexico rather than journalists in Georgetown.
Via Mangan, Pew Research reports:
Released: April 29, 2013
U.S. Image Rebounds in Mexico: Fewer See Better Life North of the Border, but 35% Would Migrate
SURVEY REPORT
On the eve of President Barack Obama’s visit to Mexico, the United States is enjoying a resurgence of good will among the Mexican public, with a clear majority favorably inclined toward their northern neighbor and more now expressing confidence in Obama.
A national opinion survey of Mexico by the Pew Research Center, conducted March 4-17 among 1,000 adults, finds that roughly two-thirds (66%) of Mexicans have a favorable opinion of the U.S. – up from 56% a year ago and dramatically higher than it was following the passage of Arizona’s restrictive immigration law in 2010, when favorable Mexican attitudes toward the United States slipped to 44%.
Obama also receives higher ratings than he did in recent years. ... Mexicans are also now more of the view that the U.S. takes their country’s interests into account when deciding international policy.
Views on Immigration
More than 11 million Mexicans live in the U.S., including about 6 million who are in the country illegally.1 Mexicans are divided on whether this is good or bad for their country; 44% say it is good for Mexico that many of its citizens live in the U.S., and an equal share say this is bad for Mexico.
About six-in-ten Mexicans (61%) say they would not move to the U.S. even if they had the means and opportunity to do so. However, a sizable minority (35%) say they would move to the U.S. if they could, including 20% who say they would emigrate without authorization.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the population of Mexico will be 116,220,947 by mid-year. So, 35% of that is 40.7 million who want to move here if it were legal. And of those, 23 million would like to move here even if it were illegal.
Mexicans are less likely than they were a year ago to say that people from their country who move to the U.S. have a better life there; 47% say life is better in the U.S., compared with 53% in 2012. About one-in-five (18%) say Mexicans have a worse life in the U.S., while 29% say it is neither better nor worse. However, among those who have close friends or relatives living in the U.S., 70% say these friends or relatives have achieved their goals, while just 25% believe they have been disappointed.
Three-in-ten Mexicans say they personally know someone who went to the U.S. but returned to Mexico because the person could not find work. About a quarter (27%) know someone who has been deported or detained by the U.S. government for immigration reasons in the last 12 months.
I think TPTB would love that.
ReplyDeleteThere must be a psychological cost for Mexicans as they consider that moving to the U.S. gives them better opportunities than they have in their homeland. Perhaps this adds to their resentment. And our willingness to give away the store might also foster contempt. It's a vicious circle.
ReplyDeleteI'm curious why the Acela press is so blase about Mexican official turpitude these days. L.A. Times coverage especially leading up to NAFTA (inevitably merged with the Drug War in media narratives back then) did not flinch from pointing out the neo-feudalism stylings and Caligula-esque corruption around every corner, before expressing the fervent goo-goo opinion that U.S. shouldn't "enable" it; whether they connected the dots to the chain-migration safety-valve with Mexico/Central Am.'s poorest offloaded here, I don't recall. I've read Steve explaining it away as the mediaites all being monolingual East Coast prep school product who can't be bothered to care--except of course for the Spanish-surnamed ones playing some intricate double game, or however that "Occam" theory gets compounded as necessary. However I think the truth is worse. Post-USSR the media has defined barbarism down and Mexico wouldn't even make the top 25 of villainous "failed states" if applying pre-1990s standards, not even close. The Mexican elite saw to avoiding that. The gov't is worth something on paper and that's good enough for modern journos.
ReplyDelete"According to the CIA World Factbook, the population of Mexico will be 116,220,947 by mid-year. So, 35% of that is 40.7 million who want to move here if it were legal. And of those, 23 million would like to move here even if it were illegal."
ReplyDeleteAt this point, it hardly matters which. The elites/gov't/Republicans/Democrats/treasonous damn fools won't lift a finger to deport or punish those who come here illegally, and are well on their way to once again give citizenship to them, despite how disasterous this was the last time it was tried.
According to the law:
Under Title 8 Section 1325 of the U.S. Code, "Improper Entry by Alien," any citizen of any country other than the United States who:
• Enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers; or
• Eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers; or
• Attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact; has committed a federal crime.
Violations are punishable by criminal fines and imprisonment for up to six months. Repeat offenses can bring up to two years in prison. Additional civil fines may be imposed at the discretion of immigration judges, but civil fines do not negate the criminal sanctions or nature of the offense.
Despite the fact that it's a crime, if there's no enforcement, then it might as well be jaywalking.
It's not just the Mexicans. Look at these photos of Central Americans riding on the tops of Mexican trains heading towards the USA. The Mexicans aren't doing anything about it because they don't want the Central American illegals any more than we do. So they let them come in through the south, and then let them transit their nation so long as their final destination is the USA.
ReplyDeletePew, shmew. What people say they want in a poll and what they actually do are two different things. Have not the Great and Good perennially assured us that there won't be any noticeable effects at all from whatever border-dissolving scams, er, improvements they've got in the works?
ReplyDeleteI ask you, did Fat Teddy mislead us about changes in ethnic composition or urban population density? I daresay you could find a Pakistani or a Pole in London, but only if you looked really hard. Why, I'm told that the BBC recently found some Bulgarians who sniffed at the very idea that they would want anything to do with migration to Britain once the controls were lifted.
To listen to you chicken-littles, one would think that Brussels and Malmö were swarming with Moors, and de facto bilingualism creeping across the U.S. Tsk.
Hey, we should feel flattered that so many foreigners recognize the awesomeosity of America, and want to come to this great country any way they can! Doesn't that make you feel proud to be an American? Doesn't that make it feel kind of mean spirited to try to keep them out?
ReplyDeleteI think the unemployment stats have been changed to get immirgation reform, we are told that the hotel and resturant industry is getting more jobs than accounting and so forth, if that is true why is it that a lot of jobs in the hotel industry and resturant industry have higher unemployment rates. Is Obama and his adminstration stating much higher growth in lower paying jobs to get the comphresive reform thru outside of certain regions hotel and retail and resturants are not picking up as much. In fact retail has lost a lot of bookstores to Amazon and Blockbusters has closed because people get DVD out of machines.
ReplyDeleteInteresting study on demographics in California, the high Hispanic counties that can have more babies grew slower than the Bay Area counties. In fact I believe that Bushes pushed for minority ownership cut a lot into the growth rate of the Inland more conservative and moderate counties and helped the more liberal ones long term. The job market in Santa Clara is much better than Riversde. So, Santa Clara grows 1.6 percent while Riverside grows .9 percent. In fact most of the high growth among cities in either the north or south were small towns with the exception of Santa Clarita which high a very high growth rate because it annexed property or Irvine in the OC which is heavily Asian but with more higher income Asians than places like Garden Grove. Santa Clarita and Irivine are now over the 200,000 mark while the other cities were under 100,000.
ReplyDeleteContrary to popular perception, not all Asian Americans are basking in financial security and working high-income jobs after years of intensive schooling.
ReplyDeleteThe official poverty rate of Asian Americans in 2011 actually exceeded that of whites by 2.5 percentage points, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The numbers are even more grim when adjusted for cost-of-living differences between regions....
I was aware of this and it explains Asians supporting Obama since most folks think all Asians have money. Also, as mention, Asians are mainly in the Bay Area, La, New York, Hawaii, Orange County and parts of New Jeresey and Virginia and Washington State where cost of living is high.
Actually, there have been some pretty remarkable advances in efficiency. Many homes are being framed in shops rather than in the field, which results in fewer hours needed to raise a house. Holes for electrical and plumbing are being pre-shot, and the advent of PEX piping in plumbing is cutting hours out there too. HVAC systems are coming in with pre-fab duct systems fabricated in shops at half the time or less. Subcontractors have also done wonders on the logistics side, incorporating bar code scanners and computerized tracking to make sure that every needed part is there when needed, both eliminating delays at the job site and reducing the number of workers needed in the shop to pull materials. Finally, the workers who survived were the ones who worked fastest, and they have set the pace that the industry has come to expect in new home construction.
ReplyDeleteBottom line is that each incremental improvement has helped shave some time, and the cumulative impacts are fairly large. Interesting I found this why illegal immirgant cities in Ca and other places have high unemployment because the way of doing housing construcation has changed in the past 5 years.