Thread by @Noahpinion

1/With people freaking out about the Honduran migrant caravan now forcing its way through Mexico, I figured it might be time for a thread about Central American immigration.

bloomberg.com/news/photo-ess…

2/I wrote a Bloomberg post about Central American immigration a few months ago.

bloomberg.com/view/articles/…

3/First, some useful background. MEXICAN immigration to the United States collapsed a decade ago. Since then, there has been a decrease in the Mexican-born population living in America of about 500,000.

4/Why did Mexican immigration to the U.S. collapse?

The Great Recession was a catalyst, but the real reasons are much longer-term things:

1. Mexico got a lot richer

2. Mexicans stopped having lots of kids.

5/But even as Mexicans have left the U.S., Central American immigration from the three "northern triangle" countries of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala has (modestly) increased.

Here are the numbers.

6/A majority of Central American immigrants are unauthorized (pewhispanic.org/2017/12/07/ris…).

In addition, Central American immigrants tend to be much less educated than other immigrants.

7/This is why most of our public immigration debate - family separations, migrant caravans, etc. - now centers around Central Americans.

Central America is the U.S.' only remaining major source of inflows of less-educated, unauthorized immigration.

8/BUT, there are very good reasons to think that the Central American mini-wave of immigrants is a temporary phenomenon that will end soon.

First, Central Americans, like Mexicans a decade earlier, have recently stopped having a bunch of kids.

9/Fewer kids means fewer people to send to America to work and send money home.

It means young Central Americans will need to stay home, to take care of aged parents, to take over family businesses, etc. etc.

10/The second reason is that Central American countries have also been getting steadily richer.

11/Once a country passes about $7000-$8000 (PPP), it usually starts sending fewer migrants abroad. ftp.iza.org/dp8592.pdf

12/Together, the fertility and income numbers mean that immigration from El Salvador - source of the gang MS-13 that Trump likes to scare people about - will collapse very soon. Guatemalan immigration will soon follow.

13/Honduras, the source of the caravan that's now in the news, is still poor, and has slightly higher fertility than El Salvador. Thus, I expect Honduran immigration (or at least, attempted immigration) to continue for about a decade before it too collapses.

14/In other words, the illegal immigration debate AND the low-skilled immigration debate are now almost entirely about three small Central American countries.

And soon it will be only about one small Central American country (Honduras).

15/This should help put the immigration debate in perspective.

Are we really that scared of Honduras? Is Honduras so scary that we're willing to brutalize families and change our whole immigration policy?

I would say no.

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