I'm writing from Ecuador, where I have lived for the last 13 years. I speak Spanish well, and know a lot of people here. Let me add some other risks that potential immigrants face, assuming they are successful in entering the US and working. There is at least a 50% chance, based on what I have seen, that their wife will divorce them, or at least find another man to live with. And even though wages in the US are much higher, so is the cost of living. $30,000 per year in wages probably won't leave enough to send back and support their family any better than when they lived there. Assuming that $1,000 in Mexico, or anywhere in Latin America, is equivalent to $1,000 in the US is simply a false assumption.
I will note that here in Ecuador, which uses the US$ as its official currency, making comparisons easy, it is common to find a family of four living comfortably on less than $1,000 per month. When people here read that in the US they could earn $15/hr, they think in terms of what that would buy them here. I try to explain that it is a false comparison.
I'm Central American, specifically I live in Guatemala. I confirm your conclusions with my anecdotal experience; What stops people the most is the lack of funding for illegal coyote travel. People usually think they love their country, in reality they just miss people when the leave.
That connects with another comment below that mention also the risks of family disintegration and the cost of living in the US; it's true. This causes the majority of migrants to form family networks to travel; That's to say, the people who decide to migrate usually already have a family member with a house in the US to share with the expenses of living; sometimes a dozen cousins live in a house. They're also usually encouraged to undertake the trip with a family member; sometimes it's the spouse, and they leave their children in the care of grandparents, or sometimes they take an older child with them (dangerous, but it happens a lot), and they work in the US to save enough to pay their relatives the trip with coyote to reunite the family in three years if success.
" My point is that relatively low levels of immigration do not show that the seemingly immense gains of border crossing are illusory. The gains are genuine. They’re just hard for people in desperate poverty to realize with only the black market to help them.
No, it's the "relatively low levels of immigration" & "desperate poverty" which is illusory; the "immense gains of [illegal] border crossing" are genuine however- for them, not for us. Ask Prof. Borjas.
I'm writing from Ecuador, where I have lived for the last 13 years. I speak Spanish well, and know a lot of people here. Let me add some other risks that potential immigrants face, assuming they are successful in entering the US and working. There is at least a 50% chance, based on what I have seen, that their wife will divorce them, or at least find another man to live with. And even though wages in the US are much higher, so is the cost of living. $30,000 per year in wages probably won't leave enough to send back and support their family any better than when they lived there. Assuming that $1,000 in Mexico, or anywhere in Latin America, is equivalent to $1,000 in the US is simply a false assumption.
I will note that here in Ecuador, which uses the US$ as its official currency, making comparisons easy, it is common to find a family of four living comfortably on less than $1,000 per month. When people here read that in the US they could earn $15/hr, they think in terms of what that would buy them here. I try to explain that it is a false comparison.
Simple comment: Not low enough!
> But neither the U.S. nor the Mexican government would tolerate major First World corporations financing illegal migration.
Immigration insurance sounds like an interesting use case for crypto and the DAO space!
I'm Central American, specifically I live in Guatemala. I confirm your conclusions with my anecdotal experience; What stops people the most is the lack of funding for illegal coyote travel. People usually think they love their country, in reality they just miss people when the leave.
That connects with another comment below that mention also the risks of family disintegration and the cost of living in the US; it's true. This causes the majority of migrants to form family networks to travel; That's to say, the people who decide to migrate usually already have a family member with a house in the US to share with the expenses of living; sometimes a dozen cousins live in a house. They're also usually encouraged to undertake the trip with a family member; sometimes it's the spouse, and they leave their children in the care of grandparents, or sometimes they take an older child with them (dangerous, but it happens a lot), and they work in the US to save enough to pay their relatives the trip with coyote to reunite the family in three years if success.
" My point is that relatively low levels of immigration do not show that the seemingly immense gains of border crossing are illusory. The gains are genuine. They’re just hard for people in desperate poverty to realize with only the black market to help them.
No, it's the "relatively low levels of immigration" & "desperate poverty" which is illusory; the "immense gains of [illegal] border crossing" are genuine however- for them, not for us. Ask Prof. Borjas.