Mexican Immigration Ending

As I said a while back, immigration from Latin America will cease to be a problem in America before we ever figure out what we want to do about it. The Post:

A four-decade tidal wave of Mexican immigration to the United States has receded, causing a historic shift in migration patterns as more Mexicans appear to be leaving the United States for Mexico than the other way around, according to a report from the Pew Hispanic Center.

It looks to be the first reversal in the trend since the Depression, and experts say that a declining Mexican birthrate and other factors may make it permanent.

The birthrate in Mexico is now down to the replacement rate. Also, most Mexican migrants to the US come from rural areas, and the Mexican population is now increasingly concentrated in the cities. Throughout the world, one of the major events of the modern period has been a "demographic transition" that goes something like this:

1) death rates fall
2) birth rates start to fall, but more slowly than death rates
3) this leads to rapid population growth
4) the countryside cannot provide work for all of those people, so they leave, either going to cities in their own countries, or emigrating
5) eventually, the falling birth rate catches up with the falling death rate, and population stabilizes
6) emigration effectively ends

Mexico is going through exactly the same series of events as Scotland between 1720 and 1850, and Italy between 1870 and 1920. Some border cities in US may continue to have a large Mexican presence and close ties to Mexico, but you know what? Those areas have had close ties to Mexico since 1848. In the rest of the US, new migrants from Mexico will stop coming in, Mexican immigrants will follow the same path as Irish and Italians, and crotchety conservatives will have to find something else to grouse about.