MEXICO CITY - Mexico, whose economic woes have pushed millions of people north, is increasingly becoming an immigrant destination. The country’s documented foreign-born population nearly doubled between 2000 and 2010, and officials say the pace is accelerating as changes in the global economy create new dynamics of migration.
Rising wages in China and higher transportation costs have made Mexican manufacturing competitive again, with some projections suggesting that it is already cheaper than China for many industries serving the U.S. market. Europe is sputtering, pushing workers away. And while Mexico’s economy is far from trouble-free, its economic growth easily outpaced the giants of the hemisphere - the United States, Canada and Brazil - in 2011 and 2012, according to International Monetary Fund data, making the country more attractive to fortune-seekers worldwide.
Mexican officials said Friday that residency requests, including foreign executives and laborers, had grown by 10 percent since November, when a new law intended to streamline the process took effect. And they are coming from nearly everywhere.
Guillaume Pace saw his native France wilting economically, so with his new degree in finance, he moved to Mexico City.
Lee Hwan-hee made the same move from South Korea for an internship, while Spanish filmmakers, Japanese automotive executives and entrepreneurs from the United States and Latin America arrive practically daily - pursuing dreams, living well and frequently succeeding.
“There is this energy here, this feeling that anything can happen,” said Lesley Tellez, a Californian whose 3-yearold business running culinary tours served hundreds of clients last year. “It’s hard to find that in the U.S.”
The shift with Mexico’s northern neighbor is especially stark. Americans now make up more than three-quarters of Mexico’s roughly 1 million documented foreigners, up from around two-thirds in 2000, leading to a historic milestone: More Americans have been added to the population of Mexico over the past few years than Mexicans have been added to the population of the United States, according to government data in both nations.
Mexican migration to the United States has reached an equilibrium, with about as many Mexicans moving north from 2005 to 2010 as those returning south. The number of Americans legally living and working in Mexico grew to more than 70,000 in 2012 from 60,000 in 2009, a number that does not include many students and retirees, those on tourist visas or the roughly 350,000 American children who have arrived since 2005 with their Mexican parents.
“Mexico is changing; all the numbers point in that direction,” said Ernesto Rodriguez Chavez, the former director of migration policy at Mexico’s Interior Ministry. He added: “There’s been an opening to the world in every way - culturally, socially and economically.”
The effect of that opening varies widely. Many economists, demographers and Mexican officials see the growing foreign presence as an indicator that global trends have been breaking Mexico’s way - or as President Enrique Pena Nieto said, “the stars are aligning” - but there are plenty of obstacles threatening to scuttle Mexico’s moment.
Inequality remains a huge problem, and in many Mexican states education is still a mess and criminals rule. Many local companies that could benefit from Mexico’s rise also remain isolated from the export economy and its benefits, with credit hard to come by and little confidence that the country’s window of opportunity will stay open for long. Indeed, over the past year, as projections for growth have been trimmed by Mexico’s central bank, it has become increasingly clear to officials and experts that the country cannot expect its new competitiveness to single-handedly move the country forward.
“The fact that there is a Mexican moment does not mean by itself it’s going to change our future,” said Ildefonso Guajardo Villarreal, Mexico’s economy minister. “We have to take advantage of the Mexican moment to do what is required of us.” The challenge, he said, is making sure that the growing interest in his country benefits all Mexicans, not just newcomers, investors and a privileged few.FROM PROTECTION TO OPENNESS
For most of the 20th century, Mexico kept the world at arm’s length. The 1917 constitution guaranteed that Mexicans would be given priority over foreigners for various jobs, and until the 1980s the country favored policies that protected domestic industry from imports.
Mexico was never totally closed - midcentury wars in Europe and the Middle East sent ripples of immigrants to Mexico, while Americans and Central Americans have always maintained a presence. But it was a not a country that welcomed outsiders; the constitution even prohibited non-Mexicans from directly owning land within 31 miles of the coast and 62 miles of the nation’s borders.
Attitudes began to soften, however, as Mexico’s relationship with the United States began to change. Many economists and social scientists say that closer ties with Mexico’s neighbor to the north, through immigration and trade, have made many Mexicans feel less insular. Millions of emigrants send money earned abroad to relatives in Mexico, who then rush out to Costco for more affordable food and electronics. Even the national soccer team, after decades of resistance, now includes two Argentine-born midfielders.
“It’s a new era in terms of our perspective,” said Francisco Alba Hernandez, a scholar at the Colegio de Mexico’s Center for the Study of Urban and Environmental Demographics. “We are now more certain about the value of sharing certain things.”
Many of Mexico’s newcomers are landing where earlier arrivals can be found. Some of the growth is appearing in border towns where foreign companies and binational families are common. American retirees are showing up in new developments from San Miguel de Allende to other sunny spots around Cancun and Puerto Vallarta. Government figures show that more Canadians are joining their ranks.
But the most significant changes can be found in central Mexico. More American consultants helping businesses move production from China are crisscrossing the region from San Luis Potosi to Guadalajara, where Silicon Valley veterans such as Andy Kieffer, the founder of Agave Lab, are developing smartphone applications and financing new startups.
In Guanajuato, Germans are moving in and carpooling with Mexicans heading to a new Volkswagen factory that opened a year ago, and sushi can now be found at hotel breakfasts because of all the Japanese executives preparing for a new Honda plant opening nearby.
Lee compared the changes in Mexico with South Korea, where career options were limited by test scores and universities attended, Mexico allowed for more rapid advancement. As an intern at the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, he said, he had learned up close how Samsung and other Korean exporters worked.
“Here,” he said, “the doors are more open for all Koreans.” He added that among his friends back home, learning Spanish is now second only to learning English.
The results of that interest are becoming increasingly clear. There were 10 times as many Koreans living in Mexico in 2010 as in 2000.
A CREATIVE MAGNET
Perceptions drive migration worldwide, and in interviews with dozens of new arrivals to Mexico City - including architects, artists and entrepreneurs - it became clear that the country’s attractiveness extended beyond economics.
Artists such as Marc Vigil, a well-known Spanish television director who moved to Mexico City in October, said that compared with Spain, Mexico was teeming with life and an eagerness to experiment. Like India in relation to England, Mexico has an audience that is larger and younger than the population of its former colonial overlord. Vigil said that that allowed for clever programming, adding that he already had several projects in the final stages of negotiation.
“In Spain, everything is a problem,” he said. “Here in Mexico, everything is possible. There is more work, and in the attitude here, there is more of a spirit of struggle and creativity.”
Diego Quemada-Diez, another Spanish director who said he was the first person in his family to leave Spain since at least the 1400s, moved to Mexico in 2008 after working as a camera operator in Hollywood. He went to film school at the American Film Institute and completed a short film that won several awards, but he said he had moved to Mexico because the United States had become creatively restrictive. He wanted to make a film without famous actors, about Central American immigrants.In Los Angeles, no producers would bite. In Mexico, the government provided more than $1 million in financing. The film, La Jaula de Oro, had its premiere at Cannes this year, with its young actors winning an award.
“Europe feels spiritually dead and so does the United States,” Quemada-Diez said. “You end up wanting something else.”
Mexico’s immigrant population is still relatively small. Some officials estimate that 4 million foreigners have lived in Mexico over the past few years, but the 2010 census counted about 1 million, making around 1 percent of the country foreign-born compared with 13 percent in the United States. Many Mexicans, especially among the poor, see foreigners as novel and unfamiliar invaders.
Race, ethnicity and nationality matter. Most of the immigrants who have the resources or corporate sponsorship to gain legal residency come from the United States and Europe. The thousands of Central American immigrants heading to Mexico without visas - to work on farms or in cities, or to get to the United States - are often greeted with beatings by the Mexican police or intense pressure to work for drug cartels. Koreans also say they often hear the xenophobic refrain, “Go back to your own country.”
Manuel Sanchez, a hair products salesman who moved to Mexico from Venezuela two years ago, said Mexicans who had not been able to rise above their economic class mostly seemed to resent the mobility of immigrants. In a country still scarred by the Spanish conquistadors, he said many of his Mexican neighbors responded with shock when they discovered that his younger sister was studying medicine at Mexico’s national university. Not that the quiet scorn is enough to deter him.
“I earn more here in a year than I would in 10 years in my own country,” he said. “Mexicans don’t realize how great their country is.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/22/2013