 And one with a very deep cultural aspects and history to Mexico and to Latin America. And I want you to have a great conference, come out of this energized and fed intellectually and so forth as we endeavor into the study of the Latino and Latin American aging. A little bit about the UTSA, we're one of the universities that has been positioned to be tier one research institution in the state of Texas has grown tremendously about 29,000 students now. About 53% of our students are Latino. We're one of the major Hispanic serving institutions at HSI in the country. So it's a university that is on the go. You will meet our president Ricardo Romo in a few minutes after René's talk and he'll tell you, he'll give you his welcoming remarks. Before going on, I'd like to recognize a few individuals. Michelle Skidmore. Michelle is somewhere here. She's still running. Okay, there she is. And Michelle has been doing a lot of the organizing and it is without any exaggeration to say that without her, this conference wouldn't be taking place. So we very much appreciate her work. And also Miguel Gutierrez, he went upstairs. Okay, he's still. So he's been assisting Michelle with the work. Blaine Walter also in our staff at Public Policy has been involved in traveling and hotel booking. Melissa Osuna has been helping out a lot with the conference and also Harold Kielabasa is helping out with the, with the photographing. So now, and I also want to thank Jackie Angel for this major work that she's done, the effort to build and foster the development of Latino aging. Now I want to introduce my colleague and friend, René Centeno, who is the keynote speaker for today. René is a professor in the Department of Demography here in our College of Public Policy. He's also the Vice Provost for International Initiatives and Senior International Officer. So he wears a lot of hats here at UTSA. As the Under Secretary of Population, Migration and Religious Affairs, from 2010 to 2012, Centeno was instrumental in writing and also professor at the College of North Mexican Studies at UC San Diego. René has received numerous prestigious awards and appointments and we're very glad that that he took time from his busy schedule to talk to us about the important work that is going on. I hope this microphone stays all steady. Well, let me start. I would like to thank you to thank Prokelyu Science and Jackie for the invitation to be part of this conference. I think it's a great opportunity for me to present some of the work in progress I have. I'm working with Roberto Surro on USC. On this paper trying to think and reflect on what is really happening, what happened these 10 years, of what we thought was going to be just pause in the history of US-Mexico migration, but we are just about to enter 10 years of very low migration flows from Mexico coming here and also a very significant return from Mexicans and US citizen children from the United States to Mexico. So the idea of this work together is to try to understand and put all the pieces together to see where we are and we try to also at the same trying to figure out what are the real causes and the consequences that are in Mexico and the US. These change are really producing in many arenas. This is economic one in the business, in the family, so on and so forth. We are just about to enter these things from the late mid-1960s or mid-1960s. I think one of the most important very important changes in the United States was immigration from Mexico to the US and of course this is particularly important for the growth of the Mexican-American population and the Latino population by 2000 new era of US-Mexico migration and I will talk to you about the most recent something that at least in sociology and demography hasn't been emphasized enough that more and more enforcement in the US is playing an important role on really discouraging Mexicans to come to the United States. I will give you more or less the perspective of how sociologists we have thought about this when we look at data in a long term period but I will try to do the same just looking at these 10 years, the most recent 10 years to see what are the effects of the enforcement in discouraging migration from Mexico to the US. We had the first signs of the stress about what was happening with migration because the construction industry began to collapse and also because after many years, first year 2006 that border apprehensions are starting to decline. Of course by the time that the economy really hit bottom and really affected the demand for labor in the United States we already hit by 2009-2010 thanks to the results of the Mexican census 2010 that the net migration between Mexico and the United States was reaching zero. Nobody thought even in 2007-2008 that we were going to come to this point. What do we know? This is a very brief summary of what we know about this, what happened these 10 years. I already talked about this net migration zero. Jeff Pacer is very important to really quantify these changes in the demography of migration between Mexico and the US. Undocumented migration flows but also border apprehension are a historical law during this time. We never seen these numbers during the last 60 years. Yeah, also we saw which this related to the net migration zero that many Mexicans went back to the United States. Many were deported but many were by their own will to back to Mexico and with them many, many children the US born were also brought to Mexico and of course I'm not going to talk about that today but that has represented a very important challenge for Mexico too because they are going to the educational system in the country without the system being ready to receive children that they don't speak Spanish and they don't have documents to be in Mexico. But that's another conversation. Also we know because of the work of Doug Massey to very important things that documented migration is becoming more important and documented migration and even before the recession we knew we were already having signs about the end of circularity between Mexico and the United States that characterized for almost 40 years the migration flows. People going for a short period of time coming to the United States returning to Mexico with the families and repeating that process as a rate of passage for teenagers and later on with people that were starting families in Mexico. With the end of circularity and migration net zero the Mexican born population in the United States within these 10 years is pretty much the same. What has declined a little bit is the number of undocumented migration but we're talking about between 11 and 12 million Mexican born immigrants in the United States within these 10 years. We know also because of the work of Rogelio Sain that Mexican immigrants that have been coming more recently are more educated. They have higher levels of education. They are all there and they are more they speak very English than they usually the old migrants that came to the United States. And also and we will see the data here during these 10 years even if migration has been low we have never seen this investment on border agents and technology budget along the US-Mexica border. So the enforcement efforts in the US-Mexico border but also in the interior of the United States has no presence in the history of the United States. And I will talk a little bit about that. What is driving and I think this is a kind of this is one of the areas that there is a lot of consensus about what is happening. Of course we all know because the research of Andres Villarreal and many others that the economy is the major mean the very poor performance of the economy including jobs in the United States is the main factor behind the lack mean the decline of flows from Mexico to the United States. I mean I want I don't want to talk about the last year the Mexican economy it says they improve in Mexican economy. I would say now at least the Mexican economy is not collapsing. Right. It's holding there. It's not very strong. Yeah. And that's very positive for Mexico because for many years especially after the 1980s there has been several severe economic recessions in the country especially the 1990s that brought almost five million Mexicans to cross the border and stay and live in this country. Mexican demographics is more and more and we have more data to provide a perspective a very important factor behind. We don't have the large families in Mexico that used to have in the 1960s 70s and 80s. We put a lot of pressure you know access of labor supplies in Mexico nobody strong demand and then many people in the decision family were sent to the United States when you the decisions about who migrates and when or if you migrate completely changed and the opportunities also for from a micro perspective changed in the terms of the opportunity of the family. The fourth factor which is tougher border and interior enforcement in the United States. The key here and this is part of the discussion to understand the causes and what may happen late is that in essence the mechanism that really create this much migration from Mexico to the United States are still here. Yeah. We don't have an immigration reform that will create the channels the formal channels to bring Mexicans here. The social capital is here and if the economy recovers significantly we don't know how this may or not attract more migrants. So we don't we haven't seen from the policy framework or from the reality of the two countries that the mechanism that are there has disappeared. So what may happen later is still kind of a matter of discussion. The scholars here and there. And for enforcement is going to talk today. We know that because of the fundraise via real that we know that increases in border enforcement. It's happened just like 15 declined. Border enforcement has an effect on reducing undocumented immigration in the United States or the stock of unauthorized migrant work by Angie Lucy using the MMP data of Douglas Marcia. The third bullet here is really the dominant perspective. Enforcement is a waste of money. They don't discourage undocumented migration. And of course if you look the data from the 1970s to today. Yeah. I mean the time serious that would be a very clear conclusion. I mean the question I have here is that we look at more recent data if that would be that would still hold for the last 10 years. How is the connection between enforcement and migration flows for Mexico. And that's why Roberto and I are trying to make sure in this paper at least to open this discussion that enforcement is becoming more significant and we cannot ignore its effects on migration flows. Yeah. Of course we know also because of the work on reducing the share of Hispanic population in the case of Arizona and border enforcement is also very important to define especially where do you go and live in the in the United States. But I want to present trends about the migration flow especially on and the relapse of undocumented flows stays. I would use I don't know if everybody anybody here or everybody's family. They've been doing this border survey of Mexican migration. Everybody knows it as a myth and I will be saying a myth a lot during my presentation. This is a survey that takes place along the U.S. Mexican border and trying to estimate the flow of undocumented migrants coming to the U.S. but also the flow of deportees which I'm going to use for this analysis today by the deportees along the U.S. Mexican border. In order to evaluate the impact of enforcement I will use I will pull this data from 2006 to 2005 to 2014 and I will also pull the data in order so I can see different effects period effects with within these 10 years especially the most recent one which is 12 14 in comparison with 25 26 just before the recession hit very badly the migration flows and the onset of the recession 2007 2011 to see the impact of all these variables. And of course I'm going to include interaction terms to see the period changes when I analyze migration deportation experience and period effects for the results. The myth is a very old surveys is supported by the Mexican government different agencies of the Mexican government but the methodology and the design was really done by El Colegio La Frontera Norte since the late 1980s it was a project it was called Canyon Zapata. They were taking pictures back then like 1980s most of the migrants came to Tijuana across to California and there was a very important neighborhood in La Colonia Libertad in Tijuana Canyon Zapata where everybody came here in the afternoon they crossed from Tera Norte started to take pictures every afternoon the same time every day Monday to Sunday and count how many of these people to make to make sure seasonal changes and yearly changes on the migration flow that later developed to a more sophisticated methodology where they for today to every entry point into entry point into the northern Mexican border to measure and count the flow of people and identify who is coming to the border with the intention to cross to the US and if they have documents or not to do so. So it's a sample that is carried up every quarter of the year since 1996 we have very consistent information and that's the information I'm going to use that for the migration flows not bound but also for the deportees coming from the United States to Mexico. This is how it looks the the the daughter lines marched the from this trying to measure the people coming to the northern border of Mexico with the idea to cross with not papers to the US. As you know me migration was very seasonal and has related also especially in California with the agriculture and you will see this jump especially at the beginning of the year and then you will see a drop at the end of the year where most migrants usually come to Mexico go to Mexico to celebrate Christmas and to be with the families in the country but you can see and in order to see more the general trend I smoothed the line the trend yeah and you can and then you the first time I wrote a report with Roberto pseudo about what is happening with the flows we were looking at this period the conclusion that we have in this immigration report is that okay this is as low as we can see it we have stabilized a lot later with a very significant decline again a collapse of everybody can hear me more or less well hopefully with this mic better thank you yeah you can see that also that giving this the dramatic decline all the seasonal things disappear I mean it's like it's responding to a very different conditions that happen in the past where you have the huge fluctuations in the size of the flow and here you have to stabilize a very low levels and you don't have seasonal variations anymore like we used to see in the past yeah you can see here more measuring quarter by quarter in comparison with the previous year what is the effects of the collapse this is this is the the substantial collapse that we have during the recession in the United States this is when I wrote with Roberto pseudo the first report and this is the most recent relapse decline which is very substantial almost of the same magnitude or more than what happened during the economic recession and this is the question what is happening what is going on yeah is this really something that is going to stay or this is something that it may change again very quickly if the economic conditions and the political environment in the united states change I'm going to skip this one and this is more information about because of the migration zero how stable is the stock of Mexican immigrants in in the united states again is between 11 and 12 million people enforcement is very key and this is part of what we try to bring to the discussion here yeah this is border patrol apprehension in the southwestern border and how they classify this data in in in homeland security and you can see the blue line reflects the numbers which is also a very important decline during this time especially during the recession and what you see in the bars is the percentage the change in comparison with the previous years and consistent with the results of the myth you see a relapse in 2014 and 2015 usually the myth data and the border patrol apprehensions they go in very different directions but at least for these two years they are depicting the same picture of a new decline of flows from Mexico to the united states and see flows declining declining declining declining but security in the border enforcement is increasing yeah you can see here both the number of agents you can see when the bars are the prehensions which is the same that you saw in the previous one but here you see in the red line the I think that's the staff and the kind of brownie line is the budget and budget is becoming more important than border agents because there is more use of technology today to identify and to really find migrants crossing the border than in the past so this investment is not has no connection pretty much with what what is happening with the flows of course we have a very dramatic year in 2014 with all these minors came from Central America crossing through Texas that really created an emergency in the united states to to to protect and to see how they can request a a ceiling or a refugee status in united states and this is also part of the enforcement picture which is now after 10 years taking a toll I mean no other administration like president Obama this years has deported as many Mexicans to Mexico from the United States to Mexico we are talking about almost two and a half millions Mexicans that have been deported in the last since 2006 to 2015 of course there has been a change recently that is kind of slowing down but still the numbers are very high and this is why one of the candidates recently said that he will follow with the same policy of Obama of deportations because these numbers are probably before that that person was not aware of the numbers and he would like to follow on the same path of keeping deporting families and breaking families because many of them already settled in the states and have families here anyway this has to do again with how enforcement may be playing more and more on the decisions to migrate what we do with the data and this is the the analytical strategy I would like to present today of course we have limitations to really have the to measure the effects on the total number of flows but one of the positive aspects of a myth is the the parties that we have a very good sample of the parties and you couldn't ask somebody better in terms of measuring what is the risk of creating somebody who was deported already has done it and the dependent variable is going to be the intention to enter the united states after being deported in the next seven days right almost in the past 90 percent of the people that was deported 95 used to say I'm going to go back yeah you will see now that the numbers are declining over time and my the idea of this analysis is to see what are the factors behind that decline one important factor to understand also this decision is that in the deportees intentions to re-enter the u.s. is not driven by the mexican demographics or mexican economy so they were ready united states the decision that happened and they will tell you really what is the story of really deciding to re-enter the united states or not emif data for i already explained we're talking about 69 000 deportations that were measured here with emif data of course we need to place these results in the context that this is a very unique historical time at least when you see the whole picture of deportations between Mexico and the united states so there is a very self-selective population in many sense yeah but we try to kind of deal with that with the period effects we have within this 10 years and of course in the united is a crucial issue because both enforcement and migration flows are connected enforcement is resolved also of trying to see or to stop what is happening with flows but also flows respond to what is happening with enforcement we i really see that given the unique period this is not going to be very significant and when we'll try to see the effect of enforcement especially because the flows are very low yeah this is a binary logistic models with intention to measure the intention to return to united states in the next seven days and i told you already about the interactions to see the different superiors within these 10 years we use demographic and socioeconomic data information to see how this decision is how these factors are associated with the decision to reenter united states migration experience is going to be important as we will see deportation experience the same border enforcement which is what we're trying to measure the best we can and the time period effects and here is just this is more or less the dependent variable these are the rates the chair of deportees who said that they want to get back in the next seven days as you can see the numbers i was telling you about it used to be around 90 percent it was back to 70 percent and today is almost half yeah so it's not as easy to think okay i'm going to get back as soon as i can that's how it used to be in the past something that is very important i'm i'm a kind of uh neglecting in my talk of course but it has an effect is the security the insecurity along the us-mexical border because of the organized crime especially in the states of tamagolipas but also sonora and bahá california that also plays a role on what happened and the decisions to reenter the united states but i don't have data to include that in the model as you can see here i'm just trying to highlight from the model the different aspects you can see that when you only measure the main effects no interactions by the period i will see later with more information when you compare with the pre recession period this has been a significant decline for 2010 7 and 11 but also the most recent period 12 14 in the intention to return mean there is less likely that the deportee even holding constant of the variables will return to the united states i'm going to skip these demographic variables so i can finish very soon and here i'm just going to uh just to have the discussion to we can see here what is the negative effect i mean the more investment in the us-mexical border but the united states less likely that the the the deportee we said that will re-enter the united states year by year right so there is a decline over time on on the livelihood of trying to re-enter the united states and when we go to the migration experience and also how was the experience of being deported by the mexican immigrants you will see that more and more important is becoming more and more important to measure the intention to return if you have experience migrating the border and you have experience being deported on the one hand so it's becoming more difficult for those who have no experience to really make that decision of trying to cross the border again and experience become more important which it will make sense if the difficulties are have been increasing over the time but this is also something that reflects very clearly on the data yeah and we know that because of qualitative work by many scholars that has been an increase in the physical aggression and the verbal aggression of the us border patrol or ICE in the way they treat immigrants when they are detained so we ask about that physical aggression how was experienced and the verbal aggression and we included these variables and as you can see it's a very important as you can expect at least from a logic sense it was have an important factor of discouraging people to get back to the united states i don't want to say with this that i want to encourage this kind of policies because it can be read in the wrong direction but i think the intention of this paper of this presentation is that we need to move a little bit away from the fact to say all the time enforcement money what happened in the border has no effect on the migration flows if you have been in the us-mexico border you have been in tijuana you have been in reynosa you have been in the la redo you have been in the shelter houses and you can start seeing the data it has a very profound effect on what's happened to migrants and their families in the life we cannot keep ignoring that and we have to really fight for the right treatment of immigrants when they are detained in the united states and the way they are being deported and this is part of the discussion but again also i wanted to present data to you about how the migration flows have been declining over time controversial to what people is saying there mexican is not sending its people anymore yeah we never thought that we were going to come to this historical five seven years ago we've seen that what the future really can bring that's a very good question how the different factors that have been driving the migration will really surface again to to drive more migrants yeah norban flows have been relapsing and we already said that and i think and this is part of the discussion with and i'm happy to listen to you you have any questions and comments i think the united state is starting to look at less inviting place for immigrants like used to be in the past i don't think i need to explain that much about it intentions to border reentry have experienced a significant reclining recent years migration experience became crucial to attempt a new unauthorized crossing and the physical and verbal abuse also of course the terror yeah affect the decision to reenter i really believe we need to keep looking more at this data to see what is happening with the flows but also i will emphasize we cannot keep ignoring the role of enforcement as a crucial policy in terms of making a decision of a migrant from Mexico coming to the united states thank you very much i think we have like seven minutes for questions or comments anybody that's the tricky question when you present these kind of results yeah because there is a meet at least with this data of course we need to be more careful with the indigeneity especially in that part it's enforcement driving the migration of migration driving enforcement yeah at least from this data and with the assumption that we have there is a clear connection that more budget and more staff in the budget is at least having an effect on the decision to get back to the us by the parties i have no idea and i cannot really extend this conclusion to the general flow from mexico that is also responding to other forces but that's what i wanted to really concentrate on this part of course somebody will tell you okay it's working very well yeah but i think and not only the the investment that enforcement enforcement uh investment on enforcement by the u.s government but also the way they treat migrants when they are detained yeah according to the research yes i mean if you if you look at the the historical research on the data that would be the case yeah but mexico since 1995 of course there was a small recession 2001 like in united states because it's the two economies are very linked but mexico has been for almost what 20 years without any significant recession so but to answer your question you may expect more migration if there is a negative outcome on the mexican economy next story no i haven't done it here and i haven't i didn't i didn't do it here especially because of the nature of the migration population which is the portese yeah but of course if you want to really talk about the northbound flow you will have to include that variable yeah paula of course the the presence of organized crime in the mexican nor the border cities has increased the cost of crossing and we know that cost is a very significant variable explaining the size of the flows so more organized crime higher the cost yeah more difficult to cross and that's especially true in the case of tamo lipas yeah and sonora fernando and i don't want to fernando yeah i cannot distinguish here very clearly i mean you ask how long they were detained but you don't really in terms of the classification of removals by the homeland security i cannot really exactly have a match between them yeah that's true correct correct please the well that that's one of the arguments that people like dog massey my scholars like dog massey has now that people is making decisions more to try to cross with documents and not like in the past undocumented well you can question if all the documents will be exactly legal but people is trying to do it more through legal kind of channels that in the past yeah undocumented migration is again and this is what i'm talking about now undocumented migration coming to the northern border crossing to the united states the migration flow total it may be a little bit different yeah than this picture yes no i'm not with this data yeah yeah and that's one of the things that roberto suran i would like to understand better you know what is happening with it within the enforcement officers in terms of organizing and making decisions about the treatment of migrants and how they really see that that may have an effect on the decisions of migrants to return mean we know because of qualitative what we send on american migrants that of course is a huge distress being uh in detention centers jackie no i haven't looked at the data so i i i will come into the border i will say still very young because of the race of crossing yeah for example arisona is the most dangerous part to cross the united states you have to be healthy you need to walk a lot you need to be strong yeah so if you are in your ferries forest the chances are lower to really cross there so i think in general given the risk and the conditions i would say more younger people that's why it's very important to to connect with the results of regal science what is happening with documented migration coming to the east which i think they will be the more educated older and with better english proficiency yeah i think one more question i have one yes yeah my first question my answer is canada imposed the visa to mexico like five or six years ago before that there was no visa and we didn't see anything like that happening yeah so at least from the previous experience yeah mexicans didn't go to canada because they didn't require visa and then come to united states it was easy enough to come to the border and cross the second part the visa is going to be kind of eliminated but still you will need a special permit it's not called visa to come to canada so it's not going to be just come with your passport to canada from mexico you still need a paper to fill although they don't want to call that visa that's my understanding how it's going to be handled yeah well thank you very much everybody enjoyed the conference and welcome to uts cns and antonio and then i have a gift for you as a token of our appreciation rene for for your wonderful talk we have this beautiful plaque that says rene centeno in recognition and appreciation for your presentation and contributions at the 2016 international conference on aging the americas we will be taking a five minute break while we adjust our camera and then i will introduce president ricardo romo who has a few welcoming remarks to make thank you so in about five minutes we'll be back on on circuit