Rearrangement of Migration Flows

The WSJ has a very interesting article:

The Great U-Turn: The developed world, which for decades has offered a difficult but promising path to upward mobility, appears to be losing its allure. Unemployment is rising, and backlashes against foreign workers are mounting.The result is potentially the biggest turnaround in migration flows since the Great Depression...

I have no doubt that worsening economic conditions in much of the developed world has contributed mightily to this trend. But there are a couple of extra factors to consider in the U.S. context.

Much of the legal migration to the U.S. goes through the family preference system. There are very long queues in some of those categories. I doubt that current economic conditions have deterred too many of those legal migrants whose number just came up after waiting around for years.

On the other hand, a very large portion of the migration flow (at least a third) is made up of illegal immigrants. I suspect that the illegal immigrants are much more sensitive to changing economic conditions. So much of what we are seeing in U.S. trends is probably driven by illegal immigration.

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[jerseycityjoan]

I wonder how many people will stay because President Obama says he's going to try to tackle immigration this year?

I really like Obama and voted for him, but I disagree 100% on this with him.

We're still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan; the economy and unemployment is a much bigger mess than anyone thought it would be when he was elected; and healthcare is, as Obama and many others have said, overwhelming the nation with its inefficiencies and uncontrolled costs.

How does immigration reform begin to equal the importance of the above issues to the American people? I know it's of enormous importance to the people here illegally, but they aren't Americans.

We should be putting our own interests first at this time of crisis.

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