During the most recent Republican debate, Donald Trump declared “people are pouring across the southern border.”



Trump is right that the United States has been a major immigrant destination since the 1960s, but if he is referring to Mexican flows today, he is wrong.

According to sociologists Frank Bean and Gillian Stevens, Mexican migration to the United States is “the largest sustained flow of migrant workers in the contemporary world,” and Mexico is the single largest contributor of migrants to the United States since 1965.

But here’s what Trump ignores: A recent Pew Report shows that more Mexicans are leaving than coming to the United States—reversing a decades-long trend.

The main reason for the trend is family reunification, but this migration back to Mexico is not driven by nostalgia for kin. The reasons behind it are much more complex.