Attention Donald Trump: More Mexican immigrants have left the U.S. than entered it in the past 5 years

A group of immigrants deported from the U.S. walk into Tijuana, Mexico.

(Image credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

last updated 19 November 2015

Contrary to what Donald Trump's proposal to erect a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border may suggest, the number of Mexican immigrants entering the U.S. actually isn't increasing. A new Pew Research Center study out Thursday reveals that, in the last five years, more Mexican immigrants have returned home to Mexico than have come to the U.S., marking the end of what The New York Times calls "the largest wave of immigration from a single country in American history."

Between 2009 and 2014, Pew found that more than one million Mexicans and their families left the United States to return to their home country. In contrast, just 870,000 Mexicans came to live in the U.S., resulting in a net loss of about 140,000 Mexican immigrants. "We think Mexican immigration is definitely in a new phase, and it will not return to the levels it once had," Pew research associate and report author Ana Gonzalez-Barrera said.