PHOENIX, June 3 (UPI) -- The number of undocumented immigrants caught entering the United States from Mexico is up this year, officials say, but doesn't portend a massive influx.
Border Patrol officials said 189,172 people were caught crossing the border in the first six months of 2013, a 13 percent increase, but that number is still near historical lows, The Arizona Republic reported Monday.
Immigration experts say those levels shouldn't change much because of demographic changes within Mexico.
"Fertility rates have dropped, there are fewer people of young age who are the likeliest to migrate, the economy is improving, educational attainment is improving," said Michelle Mittelstadt, communications director for the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C.
David Fitzgerald agrees. The sociologist at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California-San Diego said while improvements in the U.S. economy could make a border run attractive, there are other reasons it is "highly unlikely" the number would reach the levels of a decade ago, when border agents arrested nearly 1.7 million immigrants in 2000 alone.
A survey he conducted in January found the two biggest reasons people decided not to cross the border were the hazards of crossing the desert and the dangers of traveling through areas of northern Mexico controlled by drug cartels.
More of the migrants being apprehended now come from Central America, the U.S. Border Patrol says. Mittelstadt said that's another reason migration levels won't rebound to historical highs. The combined populations of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras equal less than 20 percent of Mexico's.
