The number of immigrants from Mexico caught on the border with the United States in the 2015 fiscal year fell to the lowest recorded levels in nearly half a century, data from the US Border Patrol has revealed. The change follows a period in which the overall migration of Mexicans to the United States fell to their lowest levels since the 1940s.
The fall in the number of Mexican immigrants taken into custody on the border coincides with estimates recently released by the top statistical agency in Mexico, the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia, that shows that Mexican immigration, both legal and illegal, to the United States and other nations, has remained stable for the last five years, following a dramatic fall during the recession.
In the 2015 fiscal year Border Patrol apprehended 188,122 Mexican immigrants on the US border, a decline of 18 percent from the 2014 fiscal year and the lowest figures since 1969 when just 159,376 undocumented Mexican immigrants were apprehended. The fall implies that the number of undocumented Mexican immigrants attempting to cross the border into the United States illegally could be on the decline.
Data from the INEGI also shows that legal Mexican immigrants are often choosing other countries to move to rather than the United States. 86.3 of Mexican immigrants still favor the US, but that figure has itself fallen from the 95 percent share that was the case back in the 1990s.