Mexico has not been a nation characterized by immigration, but by emigration. According to the 2020 Population and Housing Census, the number of people born abroad who lived in Mexico amounted to one million 212 thousand 252.
The low representation of foreigners is seen in the fact that these individuals represented 1.0 percent of the country’s population. Furthermore, immigrants to Mexico were approximately one tenth of Mexican emigrants to other latitudes.
The low proportion of foreigners has limited the exploitation of the potential benefits of immigration. In addition to non-economic benefits, such as cultural diversity, in any country, the immigrant population can drive economic improvement.
Specifically, as economies develop and go through processes of change and diversification, new needs for human capital arise. It is possible that low-skilled migrants complement and even eventually replace local workers, who can perform more sophisticated jobs, as has been observed in the advanced stages of development of other nations.
More important for progress is the immigration of highly qualified labor. The main factor of sustained economic growth is technological change, derived from innovation and the application of new knowledge.
There is ample evidence that highly skilled immigrants, including but not limited to scientists, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and teachers, support economic advancement. In particular, these individuals disseminate ideas from outside, innovate, make discoveries, lead and coordinate the activities of other people and, in this way, boost productivity.
No economy has benefited more from highly competitive immigration than that of the United States, as demonstrated, among other indicators, by the considerable proportions of inventors, innovation output, patents, Nobel prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics, and new businesses associated with immigrants in that territory.
Given its relative abundance of low-skilled labor, Mexico would be especially favored by more high-skilled immigration. The obvious question is: why hasn’t it attracted more immigrants? The simple answer is that the country has not provided a conducive environment for that purpose.
Among the possible factors that determine the attractiveness of a nation to the immigration of skilled labor, the opportunities to interact, closely, with other people of similar or greater abilities stand out. Such conditions, referred to in technical language as ‘agglomeration economies’, help explain why the high-skill immigrant population tends to concentrate in a few countries and, within these, in certain regions and cities.
For example, according to the World Bank, while OECD nations represent less than a fifth of the world’s population, they are home to two-thirds of highly skilled migrants. In addition, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are the destinations of about 70 percent of these migrants. Likewise, talent gathers around cities such as New York, London, Boston and San Francisco.
In the competition for highly qualified labor, Mexico has faced structural weaknesses, among which stand out a basic educational system whose average quality is low and its coverage limited, universities with medium or low prestige by international standards, and meager investment. in research and development.
Consequently, Mexico’s integration into the global economy has remained oriented toward the manufacturing of components and the assembly of parts in manufacturing processes with imported technology. Since cheap labor is the main advantage, innovation has been minuscule.
Far from having noticeably increased talent from abroad, the salary differential, the unchallenging intellectual environment and the increase in schooling have meant that Mexican emigration is increasingly highly qualified, which has benefited, in particular, To united states. Thus, a significant proportion of people born in Mexico with a doctorate degree currently live in that country.
Mexico should take advantage of its proximity to the United States to build an accessible and attractive environment for the immigration and retention of professionals. This requires, among other aspects, a government strategy that allocates sufficient resources to fundamentally transform the educational system and permanently promote investment in research and development.
