Texas to Mexico and the Rest of the US: 'You're Welcome'

Michael Barone takes a look at evidence that illegal immigration has dropped off to near zero:

It’s been apparent for some time that immigration from Mexico and Latin America fell off sharply during the 2007-09 recession and has not rebounded since. Illegals from Mexico are apparently continuing to self-deport (to use Mitt Romney’s term) and their numbers are not being replenished by illegals from that country. As I have frequently argued that we are probably at a turning point, and will never again see immigration from Mexico at the huge rates that prevailed from 1983 to 2007. Among the reasons: Mexico has been growing more prosperous, its birth rates declined sharply two decades ago and it now has a middle class majority (as former Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda argues in his 2011 book Mañana Forever?). For some years I feared that Mexico could not achieve higher economic growth than the United States since our economies have been tied so tightly together by NAFTA since 1993. But in the past two years Mexico’s growth rate has been on the order of 5% to 7%. It’s looking like Mexico’s growth rate is tied not to that of the United States but to that of Texas, which has been a growth leader because of its intelligent public policies which have prevented public employee unions from plundering the private sector economy.

Emphasis added. Texas isn’t perfect, but it does an awful lot of things right because it elects leaders who mostly have their heads on right. It’s a pity that even most Republicans haven’t figured that out yet.

Now, let’s go watch for the next Tom Friedman column pining for America to become more like China.