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

Using Mexican consulate data on Mexican presence in US states, a panel data model is constructed from yearly data 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, 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. 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 and immigration. These results also find evidence of a positive impact of US economic activity, but do not yield significant results with regard to Mexican economic activity on outward migration