Regardless of where you stand on immigration, demographic shifts in Mexico will render the issue meaningless in the coming 10 years. I was partaking in a New America luncheon on immigration and the speaker pointed out that the Mexican population is aging 5 times faster than the US population. By 2011, there should no longer be a new inflow of a large pool of unskilled labor every year in the Mexican population. As such within 10 years, it’s reasonable to expect no net inflows of Mexican labor to the US regardless of the immigration regime. Puerto Rico provides an interesting analogy. The US has a free flow of labor with Puerto Rico yet there is no net immigration to the US from Puerto Rico as a result of the changing demographics there.

It’s also interesting to note that the recent increase in border patrols has prevented large pools of migrant agricultural workers from returning to Mexico…