U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine agents patrol along the Rio Grande on the Texas-Mexico border. | AP Photo Pew study: More Mexican immigrants return home than come to U.S.

In a reversal of a long-standing historical trend, more Mexican immigrants have returned to their home country than have come to the United States in the past five years. That's according to the latest Pew Research Center report out Thursday analyzing data from 2009 to 2014.

According to data presented by Pew from the Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics and the U.S. Census, 1 million Mexican families left the U.S. during that time frame, beginning around the end of the Great Recession, while just 870,000 have left Mexico to come to the United States, a net loss of more than 130,000. From 2005 to 2010, the net loss was 20,000. By comparison, nearly 2.3 million more Mexicans came to the U.S. than left from 1995 to 2000.


About 6-in-10 (61 percent) of those who reported living in the U.S. but then returning to Mexico said that they had done so to reunite their families, while 14 percent said they were deported.

The Mexican-born population in the U.S. peaked in 2007 at 12.8 million, falling to 11.7 million last year, which the study credits to a decrease of approximately 1.3 million people in the country illegally.

A third of the adults in Mexico surveyed (33 percent) said those who emigrate to the U.S. have about the same quality of life as those in their own country. Still, about half (48 percent) of Mexicans residing in Mexico said they believed life to be better in the U.S.

The results come as Republican candidate Donald Trump has continued to lead nearly every state and national poll as he promises to build a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants and to make Mexico pay for it, a point that he has driven home in virtually every campaign appearance.