In August 2021, more than thirty years after sneaking across the southern border to work and support their families in Mexico as young adults,
Irma and Javier Hernández checked in at LaGuardia Airport for a one-way trip from New York to Oaxaca.
They were leaving behind four American children, steady jobs where they were valued, and a country they’d grown to love.
Irma and Javier Hernández dance during the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patroness of the city of Guadalupe de Cisneros in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Photo Marian Carrasquero for the New York Times But after years of living in the United States without legal status, the couple decided it was time to return to their homeland.
Irma Hernández’s mother was 91 years old and they feared she would die before seeing each other again (as happened with Irma Hernández’s father and in-laws).
With the dollar savings, they had built a small house, where they could live, and invested in a tortilla shop, which they could run.
His children, now young adults, were able to fend for themselves.
“God knows how hard we work day after day in New York,” said Irma Hernández, 57.
“We are still young enough to continue there, but in the end we made the difficult decision to return.”
The Hernandezes are part of a wave of immigrants who have left the United States and returned to their home countries in recent years, often after spending most of their lives working as day laborers with no legal status.
Some of them never intended to stay in the United States, but say the cost and danger of crossing the border kept them there once they arrived, and they made a living.
Now middle-aged and still in good health, many are on a reverse migration.
Guadalupe de Cisneros in Oaxaca. After years of living in the United States without legal status, the Hernandezes decided it was time to return to their homeland. Photo Marian Carrasquero for the New York Times Representing the largest and most transformative migration to the United States in modern history, Mexicans began a gradual return more than a decade ago as Mexico’s economy improved and exports declined. job opportunities in the United States during the last recession.
However, departures have increased in recent times, which began with the crackdown against immigrants under the Trump administration and continued under the president Joe Biden, as many older adults decide that they have achieved their original goals to immigrate and can afford to trade the often grueling work usually offered to them for a slower pace in their home country.
Mr. Hernández puts corn dough into the tortilla machine at the couple’s business. Photo Marian Carrasquero for the New York Times Their departures are one of many factors that have contributed to keeping the total number of immigrants living illegally in the country relatively stable, despite the race to stops of immigrants on the southern border, which reached two million last year.
“It’s a myth that everyone comes here and nobody leaves,” said Robert Warren, a visiting fellow at the Center for Migration Studies (a think tank), who wrote a recent report on this trend.
Mr. Hernández and his horse, Paloma, in the land where the couple keep the animals and the crops they tend to in the afternoon after preparing the daily batches of tortillas. Photo Marian Carrasquero for the New York Times “There are a lot of people leaving the country voluntarily,” said Warren, one of several demographers, including academics from Emory and Princeton Universities and the University of California, Los Angeles, who have documented this trend.
The current population of immigrants living in the United States illegally has remained more or less constant by around 10.2 million in recent years, after reaching a peak of almost 12 million in 2008, despite the large number of new arrivals at the border.
Ms. Hernández made sales notes with her son Steven, left, after the day’s tortilla making. Photo Marian Carrasquero for the New York Times An emergency health order adopted to curb the transmission of the coronavirus has allowed border authorities to quickly deport more than 2.5 million of newcomers since 2020; hundreds of thousands more were admitted to the country during that time, but a largely voluntary exodus of more immigrants has kept global population numbers relatively stable, demographers say.
(While deportations soared under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump, those numbers were too small to be a significant factor.)
The number of people living illegally in the United States who have immigrated from about a dozen countries, including Poland, Philippines, Peru, South Korea and Uruguayit decreased by 30% or more between 2010 and 2020.
The population of immigrants living in the United States illegally from Mexico, the main source of immigrants to the United States, declined to 4.4 million from 6.6 million during that period.
During the decade, declines were recorded in all but two states, 49% in New York; 40 percent in California, which lost 815,000 Mexicans; 36 percent in Illinois; and 20 percent, or 267,000, in Texas.
The data suggests these residents weren’t moving to other states but returning to their home countries, Warren said.
Mrs. Hernández outside the tortilla shop in Guadalupe de Cisneros. “God knows how hard we work day after day in New York,” she said. Photo .Marian Carrasquero for the New York Times Illegal immigration has known ups and downs for some time.
People are leaving their countries in response to push factors, such as economic hardship, drought, and escalating violence, as well as in response to attractive conditions in the United States, primarily employment and security.
The number of immigrants poly living illegally in the US halved between 2010 and 2019 due to improved conditions in Poland.
THE Brazilian They returned in large numbers when their country’s economy was prosperous, thanks to booming food exports and successful bids to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, which spurred a building fortune.
Rubén Hernández-León, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who has conducted field research with Mexicans who have returned to their country, said the main reason people gave for leaving the United States was the desire of Rjoin the family.
Hernández-León said Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, coupled with his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, has caused anxiety that has also led some people living in the United States illegally, particularly Mexicans, to leave.
“Most never wanted to stay. We complicated everything when we militarized the border,” said Douglas S. Massey, a Princeton immigration expert.
“Increasingly, they stayed longer and had families.”
Now, he said, census data suggests many of them are choosing to go home.
“If they have savings and a house in Mexico, they can retire there,” he said.
“Their U.S.-born children are old enough to take care of themselves and can come and go to see them.”
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