Mexican Migration Flows to the United States: The Impact of Business Cycles on Unauthorized Immigration to the United States

Using Mexican consulate data on Mexican presence in US states, a panel data set is constructed between 2011 and 2014 to analyze the effects of different determinants of migration flows. The determinants of migration flows analyzed are the US and Mexican state business cycles, home and host state populations, Mexican state crime rates, the stock of Mexican immigrants by US state, remittances received by Mexican states, and the nominal exchange rate. Fixed effects regressions suggest that stronger US economic activity attracts immigrants to a given US state while an expanding economy in the home state tends to decrease emigration although the latter effect is quite small. Higher remittances also tends to decrease emigration out of Mexico. Two stage least squares are used to deal with endogeneity between the measures of economic activity, remittances, and immigration. These results also find evidence of a positive impact of US economic activity, but yield mixed results with regard to Mexican economic activity on outward migration.