Gone, baby, gone

“From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families (including U.S.-born children) left the U.S. for Mexico, according to data from the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID). U.S. census data for the same period show an estimated 870,000 Mexican nationals left Mexico to come to the U.S., a smaller number than the flow of families from the U.S. to Mexico.”

(via National Council on La Raza, commenting on this story)

I’ve been hearing as long as I’ve lived here the unsubstantiated figure of a million USAnians living in Mexico, which may even be true by now, but by no means are there a million “expats”… which seems to mean retirees in the gringo ghettos around Chapala, San Miguel, and along the coats, a  sizable number of quasi-illegals (the “border runners” who try to have it both ways — living here on the cheap, but who don’t qualify for residency, and claim to be tourists, making regular trips out of the country) and the relatively large number of those who (as I was for a while), being white people with some money coming in from the outside, don’t like to be called “illegal immigrants”.

Of course, implying that the million gringo figure is people like “us” is self-serving.  When not dished up by real estate agents trying to convince someone that a house is not a house, but a financial instrument that can be sold at a profit to the supposedly limitless gringo community, it’s usually bandied about by those who complain about some minor “inconvenience” to them in the immigration procedures here — the people who somehow get the idea that spending money on rent, and housing, and maybe their underpaid “help” is a boon to the economy.

As opposed to those U.S. born (and U.S. citizen) dependents of Mexicans who have returned here, and who are likely to spend their lives here as taxpayers and will be contributing to the economy (and the culture) long after us geezers have cashed out last Social Security check, and bought our last eight-pack of Pacifico … and whined our last whine about being expected to give the kid who bagged the beer a whole three pesos.

…..

And, as long as I’m on a roll… the U.S. is losing a million families off the tax rolls, and it freaking out that 10,000 Syrians MIGHT be coming.  Absurd.