The other migration: the silent increase of the American community in Mexico

The Spanish brothers They brought faith to this colonial city located in the highlands of central Mexico.

The eighteenth-century silver barons built their mansions.

Now comes the invasion of Pickeball.

It started with American retirees. Currently, two dozen players spend most of the morning on municipal sports fields, hitting plastic paddles. There are so many clubs in Mexico dedicated to American sports that a tournament is held here last year.

"It was an asylum"said Víctor Guzmán, a 67-year-old businessman from Charlotte, who helped organize the event.

President Trump regularly attacks the flow of migrants crossing the Mexican border in the United States. The wave of people going in the opposite direction was less visible.

The Mexican Institute of Statistics estimated this month that the US-born population in this country had reached 799,000 people, a four-fold increase since 1990. And that's probably a sub-figure: the US embbady in Mexico estimates the actual figure at 1.5 million more.

They are a mixed group. These are digital natives who can work as easily from Puerto Vallarta as from Palo Alto. These are children born in the United States, nearly 600,000 of whom came back with their Mexican parents. And they are retired, just like Guzmán, who settled in this city five years ago and who has now become the King of Pickleball in San Miguel.

If you take into account the thousands of Mexicans who move into their homes, The flow of migrants from the United States to Mexico is probably higher than that of Mexicans in the United States.

American immigrants they invest money in local economies, renovate historic homes and change the dynamics of Mexican clbadrooms.

"It's starting to become a very important cultural phenomenon"said Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico's foreign minister, in an interview. "Like the Mexican community in the United States."

However, he said, the Mexican authorities They know little about the size or needs of their large group of immigrants. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador entrusted him with the task of changing this situation.

While the United States is deeply divided about immigration, US immigrants have been welcome. In San Miguel -Where about 10% of the city's 100,000 inhabitants are US citizens- Mayor Luis Alberto Villarreal delivers his annual speech on the state of the municipality in English and Spanish.

Thanksgiving is celebrated a few weeks after the day of the dead in Mexico. Restaurants have adopted the "American calendar", in which dinner is served at the unholy hour of 18 hours, said the mayor.

"Even if Donald Trump daily insults my country, we welcome here the entire international community, starting with the Americans, with open arms and heart," Villarreal said.

Mexican authorities say that many Americans are probably undocumented. Generally, they stayed beyond their six-month visa. But the government has shown little concern.

"We never pressured them to have their documents in order," said Ebrard.

Usually offenders pay a small fine.

Villarreal shrugged.

"We love people who come to work and help the city's economy, like Mexicans in the United States."

San Miguel de Allende is about 170 miles northwest of Mexico City, on a plateau a mile high where the sun induces bougainvillea burst with bright colors and spread on the walls. The American veterans started moving here after the World War II to study at the local art institute of the army reorganization bill. Over the past 30 years, expats have come enchanted by the cobbled streets of the city, the Gothic church and the houses painted in sunset colors: dark pink, peach, yellow, orange.

The landscape is not the only attraction. Given the strength of the dollar compared to the Mexican peso, even an American who manages social security and a modest pension can rent a high ceiling apartment, hire a maid and go out to eat every night.

"Here you can live with $ 2,000 or $ 3,000 a month and live well"Guzmán said.

Technology has reduced the distance between countries. In the 1980s, expatriate writer Tony Cohan contacted his daughter in New York on foot to the "long distance" office., where an operator made a call, as he related in his popular memoir "On Mexican Time".

Today, Bill Slusser, 66, of Los Angeles, does part-time marketing for US customers without leaving their home: "Internet allows this."

Since The NAFTA came into effect, Mexico managed department stores such as Walmart and Office Depot.

"For things you can not find"Slusser said: "Just buy them from Amazon."

There are so many Americans living here that it is not necessary to speak Spanish. There is a dazzling variety of activities for English speakers: The Rotary Club, The Quilt Circle, The Dance Clubs, The Alcoholics Anonymous. Expats run dozens of charities, advise Mexican students, help provide clean drinking water and serve meals to poor grannies.

"Because it's a relatively small town, it's very easy to meet people and do what you want"said Slusser on a recent Friday in a small cafe. It was a karaoke party.

"Please, tortilla chips!"shouted a New York lawyer.

The American population in Mexico is still much smaller than the Mexican immigrant population north of the border, whichwhich is estimated at around 11 million. But in a low voice, Americans impose themselves in Mexican cities.

About 35,000 Americans live in the seaside resort of Puerto Vallarta (the destination of Barco del Amor in the old television series). About 20,000 Americans reside near Lake Chapala in central Mexico, according to the US Embbady.

Americans are renovating homes in the historic center of Mérida, the capital of Yucatan. They enjoy the view of the Pacific Ocean from their home located at Gringo Hill in Sayulita. There are so many Americans in the neighborhood of Condesa in Mexico City that guitarists who come out of cafes ask for advice in English.

Despite all the images of exhausted Central Americans crossing Mexico in caravans, the vast majority of immigrants arriving in this country, about 75 percent, They come from the United States.

While crossing San Miguel, one can see the influence of foreigners: Million dollar homes with chef kitchens and built-in baths not far from the area's raw and unpainted brick houses.

But there seems to be little resentment from the Americans.

At this month's construction workers' day, about 20 workers gathered around folding tables installed in the yard of a half-finished house in a gated community in San Miguel.. Following the Mexican tradition, the owners of the house invited them to a party, with a lunch consisting of pork, chicken, tinga, beans, tortillas and beer and a northern band.

"Eighty percent of our customers are foreignerssaid Luis Camarena, a Mexican architect who works in the house. "Of these 80%, 90% are American.

"For them"Camerena says about the workers, "it means work".

Trump is not wrong about the increasing numbers of migrants arriving at the southern border of the United States. But they are more likely to be central Americans than Mexicans.

Since 2015, according to census data, more Mexicans have returned home each year than those who went to the United States. Data for 2017, the most recent year for which figures are available, show a net decrease of 300,000 Mexican immigrants in the USA.

Some Mexicans heading south They were deported or felt more and more badly received in the United States. Others have been drawn to improving opportunities. The growth of the Mexican population has slowed with the increase of education levels, which has reduced local competition for jobs.

Many Mexicans who They brought back little Americans with them.

They are children like 3-year-old Sedona Barron and her 6-year-old brother, Adero. The brothers arrived in San Miguel two years ago after their father, Jesus, was deported. He was also a foreigner in this country. he had moved illegally to the United States with his family while he was only 5 years old. He had married an American, but a conviction for drunken driving prevented him from legalizing his status.

The move from Arizona was particularly difficult for Adero.

"He started kindergarten in Mexico without speaking Spanish", his mother said, Katerina. "He was terrified to speak Spanish, he felt very lost at first."

She also barely spoke the language.

In some cities that have traditionally sent In the United States, the children of returnees born in the United States now represent between 10 and 15% of the student population, according to Andrew Selee, director of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

"It's like the east of L.A."he said.

In the old days, when the waves of Mexicans returning from the United States were usually men, as guest workers known as "braceros", who worked on American farms from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Now, many of those who come back are families.

"One of the biggest challenges is that Mexican schools are not ready to welcome children who have started their education in the United States in English."said Silvia Giorguli, demographer and president of the Colegio de México in the capital.

Unlike the United States, Mexico has not always had many immigrants. Less than 1% of the population was born abroad. After a wave of decades of Mexican migration that has transformed the United States, he said, it is now Mexico that faces a dilemma.

"How are Americans integrated?".