San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial

Immigration decline

Economy is bigger factor than border fence

2:00 a.m. June 6, 2009

When Americans learn that fewer Mexican immigrants are coming to the United States, many assume enhanced border enforcement is paying off. Not so fast. A new study suggests that the lower numbers of migrants have more to do with diminished job opportunities in the United States.

When a team of researchers from the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UCSD interviewed more than 1,000 people from a small town in the Mexican state of YucatĂ