CHAPTER 9 TRANSNATIONALISM AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MESOAMERICA 371ferent among politically motivated migrants, such as the Salvadorans and
Guatemalans who tended to migrate as entire families in order to seek refuge in
Mexico and the United States from highly repressive conditions in their home coun-
tries. Recent studies show a larger proportion of female migrants coming from Mex-
ico who are younger and more educated than in earlier years, whereas other studies
report no changes in the composition of the migrant population.
With respect to the origin of migrants, in the early 1980s, migrants tended to
depart mostly from Mexico, but most recent waves include Latino immigrants from
El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. This trend is reported for many U.S. cities
and rural areas of the states of Washington, Texas, Florida, and New York, and of the
Midwest. Unlike migrants who originated in the communist world, many of the mi-
grants from Guatemala and El Salvador remained in the United States without doc-
uments after having been denied political asylum or recognition as refugees by the
U.S. government.
Because much of the movement into the United States is clandestine in nature,
it has been difficult for students of this phenomenon to estimate migration rates.
Mexico alone is the source of the largest percentage of all undocumented migrants
in the United States. It is important to note, however, that much of the migration has
been induced by the United States rather than by the sending countries. Southwest
growers in the United States have provided incentives to Mexican agricultural work-
ers throughout the nineteenth century and early twentieth century in order to ob-
tain cheap, reliable labor. In this case, migration was not initiated solely by individuals
in search of a better life, as often depicted, but also by North Americans trying to ob-
tain hard labor at low wages and under conditions that few North Americans were
and are willing to accept.
Migrant labor outflows were revived in 1942 when the Bracero Program was in-
stituted by the United States. This was a temporary worker program that provided mi-
grants with temporary documents to cross the border and work during limited
periods. The program ended in 1964, but several other agreements have been insti-
tuted to allow temporary migration since then. Currently (2006), the administration
of George W. Bush is proposing a new temporary permit program that would allow
migrants to remain in the United States for three years. If enacted, this temporary
arrangement could have lasting consequences for workers and their families, af-
fecting the stability and education of children and possibly causing more dangerous
and clandestine migration movements. In our opinion, the notion held by some that
the United States does not want migrants because there is no work for them is falla-
cious, since U.S. growers, and not just in the South, lobby for immigration measures
that will facilitate the availability of migrants who are willing to take temporary jobs.
The educational background of migrants from the Mesoamerican region is
mixed. Approximately 25 percent of all migrants are professionals who expect to
have a better life in the United States. Mexico sends a large number of profession-
als, although fewer than other countries around the world. Most of the migrants
from Mexico and Central America are manual laborers. Millions of Central Ameri-
cans and Mexicans have migrated to the United States, with and without documents.