Potential Labor Force Supply, Replacement, and Migration of Mexican-American and Other Males in the Texas-Mexico Border Region

Abstract

During 1973 at the United States ports of entry on the Mexican border about 160,922,000 persons entered the United States, some of them coming into this country daily.1 Presumably a like number crossed from this country into Mexico, making a total of around 322 million crossings. This huge number of crossings back and forth across the border is indicative of the intimate daily economic and social contact between the countries. Besides these officially counted crossings there are many surreptitious crossings, at least from Mexico into the United States. In 1973 the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service located some 576,800 illegal Mexican aliens, all but 34,000 of whom had entered without inspection.2 Thousands more undoubtedly avoided detection. The border region, on both the Mexican and United States sides, as these numbers suggest, is an area of intense interaction between the cultural, social, and economic systems of the two countries, and the region is thus distinctive with respect to the rest of both countries.3 On the United States side, the border region has been the traditional residence of