Zacatecans interviewed by the Deseret Morning News believe that the United States invites their labor. The salary they earn in the United States allows them to provide for their families by sending money back to their hometowns to support a parent, a spouse, a child.

Interdependent economies

Data from the 2000 Census and the Zacatecas development report suggest that the income in Zacatecas is only about one-third of what a Mexican can earn in Utah.

As people leave, the economy is becoming increasingly reliant on the money they send back, called remittances.

The state of Zacatecas has Mexico's highest per capita rate of remittances. The average remittance per person was $340 each month in 2003, according to the Zacatecas report. Nationally, the average was $127 each month.

But the remittance flow to Mexico is slowing. The Central Bank of Mexico reports that expatriates will send some $23.4 billion back to Mexico this year, only a 1 percent increase over last year.

A recent survey by the Inter-American Development Bank's Multilateral Investment Fund found that the 6.6 million Mexican immigrants in the United States who send remittances funnel an average of $3,550 each per year back to Mexico. The same survey found that the percentage of Mexican immigrants who regularly send money has dropped to 64 percent in the first half of this year. That's down from 71 percent last year.

In Utah and other states that have only recently become major immigration destinations, the drop was more severe, going from 80 percent last year to 56 percent this year. The nationwide survey of 900 immigrants from Mexico and Central America was conducted in June and has a margin of error of 3 percent.

"Over the past year, 2 million people in Mexico have lost a vital lifeline," says Donald F. Terry, manager of the bank's Multilateral Investment Fund.

The slowdown is a reversal of an upward trend in recent years. Remittances flowing to Mexico from the United States and other nations nearly tripled between 2000 and 2005 to $21.8 billion, according to the World Bank. Meanwhile, the amount of money Mexico received in foreign direct investments rose by just 6 percent to $18.8 billion during the same time-frame.

The Inter-American Development Bank survey found that more than 80 percent of Mexican and Central American immigrants reported it's harder now to get a job in the United States that pays well than it was a year ago. Some 45 percent cited documentation requirements as the reason for their difficulty, and 21 percent said there aren't enough jobs.

Reasons to leave