Illegal Immigration and the International System, Lessons from Recent Legal Mexican Immigrants to the United States

Contrary to conventional views, the process of illegal Mexican immigration does not necessarily originate in the most backward or rural segments of the Mexican population and is not necessarily destined to the agricultural sector of the U.S. economy. Data from a recent sample of formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants indicate that an important segment of this population has nonrural origins, comparatively high levels of education, industrial and service occupational backgrounds, and that most are headed for urban areas and occupations rather than rural areas and agricultural occupations in the United States. These results question the common interpretation that the illegal flow of immigrants is a consequence of economic dualism and rural backwardness in Mexico. They support instead the idea that such immigration is an outgrowth of the accelerating contradictions brought about by capitalist development in Mexico and in other nations in the U.S. periphery. Such international labor transfers are analyzed here as integral components of the progressive articulation of the world economy, a process quite apt to continue linking the U.S. and the Mexican economies. Recently proposed U.S. programs to deal with illegal immigration are reviewed from this perspective. Limitations of using the nation-state as the main unit of analysis and of having an exclusively national perspective on the illegal movement are highlighted.