For years, I've been pointing out that immigration from Mexico to the U.S. has bad effects on Mexico. See Does Emigration Really Help Mexico? and Deadbeat Dads Don't Stop at the Rio Grande.

Recently, a Mexican researcher said the same thing at a conference in San Antonio, Texas. According to an article on the My San Antonio website entitled
"Mexico Suffers as its Citizens Leave for U.S." (Jason Burch, March 4th, 2011):

The mass migration of Mexicans to the U.S. is not good for that country, said Agust?­n Escobar of Mexico's Center for Investigation and Higher Study in Social Anthropology Friday at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The country has to deal with large numbers of its citizens being removed from the U.S. and returned to Mexico, the rate of immigrants dying as they try to enter the U.S. is increasing and Mexico's households are hurt when breadwinners head to another country, Escobar said at the Bilateral Perspectives on Mexican Migration Conference at UTSA's Mexico Center.

And while many Mexicans working in the U.S. do send money back to their families, known as remittances, other Latin American workers send back more, Escobar said. ”When you look at what Mexican migrants send (home), you see that that amount is much lower than the Mexican (gross domestic product) per capita,” he said. ”In terms of remittances, Mexico benefits very little by sending people abroad.”