Why don’t “Dreamers” dream of Mexico?

Last updated on: February 21, 2017 at 1:51 pm by Jane the Actuary

Why don’t “Dreamers” dream of Mexico? 2017-02-21T13:51:33-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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That is, could Mexican-born American high school graduates return to Mexico for their university education?

I did a little bit of research on this question just now, though it is a difficult question to find the answer to.

In terms of the admissions process, the process doesn’t seem that onerous, from what I can tell. There is an admissions test, as is typical outside the U.S. How easy or difficult is it for an American-educated Spanish speaker to do well? A few comments on a discussion forum suggest that it’s not an issue, or, rather:

I got into a state school in Mexico. It’s not hard to get in, the test is SOOOOOO easy compared to the SAT. It only appears hard because the students are all on the same low level (not trying to offend them, it’s just true). It sounds insulting, but it’s true. It’s easy to get in if you did honors classes in the USA.

In terms of tuition, it is far cheaper to attend school in Mexico, at least at a public university. One university with an English site lists tuition as MXN 2,700 per semester — which at the current 20:1 exchange rate, is virtually free.

So why don’t the consulates, which are spending so much energy on helping Mexicans in the U.S. fight deportation, help Mexican-born American high school graduates study in Mexico?

I have a couple guesses. Perhaps the system in practice admits few of its applicants due to lack of capacity, and there’s no money, or no interest in building capacity. (Though there exist private universities, which seem to have very low tuition as well.) Perhaps the social inequality is strong enough that the government, and the university administrators, simply don’t want to welcome the children of the poor, regardless of their education level, and want to reserve higher education for the upper class. Perhaps, despite the frequency of claims that “Dreamers” are “the best and brightest,” too few of them have actually done well enough in high school to make it into a Mexican university (which you can bet isn’t going to be offering remedial classes), for transition assistance to be worth it. Or perhaps Mexico just doesn’t want to add to its population, wants to keep those who have left, out, under the premise that pretty much any body, even if (prospectively) educated, is a drain on the country — which, so far as I can tell, is its perspective, that jobs are created not by innovation and entrepreneurship but by a combination of natural resources and getting outsiders to come in and hire workers.

Readers, what do you know?

UPDATE: Here’s an article I found, while trying to find information on Mexico’s “demographic dividend,” “Mexico’s New Demographic Dividend.” This is old (2014), and pre-DACA, but it discusses returnees, including those who have gotten college educations and have sparked growth in call centers and other industries which use of their English-language skills.

As families have become smaller, the number of young dependents relative to the number of working adults has declined, producing what is known as a “demographic dividend.”

Typically, when this happens, economic development accelerates; but previously Mexico was not able to leverage this change because so much of its working-age population was migrating north. With waves of people coming home, the equation has changed.

Image: library at UNAM – National Autonomous University of Mexico. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABiblioteca_Central_UNAM_M%C3%A9xico.jpg; By Scanudas http://www.flickr.com/photos/scanudas/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/scanudas/4127627011/) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

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