Mexican families come looking for work and economic opportunities. New industries in the US Southwest, especially mining and agriculture, attracted Mexican migrant laborers.
Immigration into the United States increased after the Mexican Revolution. War refugees and political exiles fled to the United States to escape the violence.
Mexico was exempted from the quotas in the immigration act of 1924 which imposed a total ban on Japanese immigration. The Mexico exemption was due in part to the agricultural lobby by farmers arguing that without Mexican migrants, they would be unable to find the laborers needed. Also, at the time, migration from Mexico made up less than 1/3 of the immigrants coming to America.
The Immigration Act of 1965 set off a chain reaction of migration that continues today. The Act changed all the rules. Now the United States had a race-neutral system of quotas and preferences, dependent on such things as occupational skills and ties to foreign nationals. The old system had been based on national origin, race, and ancestry ory info here
The US immigration policy has continually changed and adapted to meet the needs of both the US social landscape as well as potential immigrants into the United States. For example, in the early 1980’s Congress started a period of reforms to the 1965 Immigration Act focusing on penalizing employers who hired undocumented aliens rather that deporting the aliens themselves.
From the 1980 to the mid 2000’s illegal immigration had steadily increased from approximately 2 million people to 6.9 million undocumented aliens.
In 2007 was the highest point of illegal immigration to the United States, however, the numbers have dropped by approximately 1 million. Mexicans, however, still account for at least half of the 11.1 million undocumented aliens that have illegally immigrated to the United States.
In 2014, 78% of undocumented Mexican immigrants have lived within the United States for more than 10 years, while only 7% of them had been in the country for less than five years. In terms of numbers, that is approximately 5.3 million illegal aliens residing in the United States for more than 10 years.
Pathways to legal citizenship is limited in the Mexican community because of the presence of the large number of ineligible Mexican population. Those that become lawful permanent residents do so either as relatives of US Citizens or held family sponsored preference visas. Mexicans were less likely to gain green cards through employment sponsorships due to the need of highly technical needs of industry. Mexicans, however, are the largest beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which provides temporary deportation relief and work authorization.
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