Immigration to Mexico has been important in shaping the country's demographics. Since the early 16th century, with the arrival of the Spanish, Mexico has received immigrants from Europe, Africa, the Americas (particularly the United States and Central America), and Asia. Today, millions of their Indigenous mixed descendants still live in Mexico and can be found working in different professions and industries.
In the 20th century, Mexico also became a country of refuge, in particular by accepting individuals fleeing World War II in Europe, the Spanish Civil War, the Guatemalan Civil War and most recent repression in Nicaragua under the Daniel Ortega regime.
The Mexican Constitution states: "Every man has the right to enter the Republic, leave it, travel through its territory and change residence, without the need for a security letter, passport, safe-conduct or other similar requirements. The exercise of this right will be subordinate to the powers of the judicial authority, in cases of criminal or civil liability, and those of the administrative authority, as regards the limitations imposed by the laws on emigration, immigration, and general health of the Republic, or on pernicious foreigners residing in the country." Both Articles 33 and 9 of the Constitution limit foreigners' meddling in the country's political affairs.
Article 33 empowers the executive to make someone leave the national territory immediately without the need for a prior trial of any foreigner whose presence it deems inconvenient. However, it grants foreigners the same guarantees as nationals and so they are protected by the provisions of Article 4; the equality of men and women. Also, Article 1 prohibits any discrimination based on ethnic or national origin, gender, age, disabilities, social status, health conditions, religion, opinions, preferences, civil status, or any other status that violates human dignity and aims to nullify or impair the rights and freedoms of people.
It is important to include that Article 133 indicates that international treaties signed by the president and ratified by the Senate will be the supreme law of the entire union. For this reason, it should be remembered that Mexico is part of various international treaties that protect different protective rights of migrants, such as the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights, which in its Article 22 establishes the rights of movement and residence and stipulates, among others, the right to freely leave any country, including one's own, may be restricted by-laws only to protect national security, public order, or security, public morals or health, or the rights and freedoms of others. Mexico is part of the United Nations Convention on Migrant Workers, which broadly stipulates their rights and the corpus juris for the protection of the rights of women and girls.
Immigration in Mexico has not had an overwhelming impact on the total population, compared to that of other countries, but there has been a considerable increase in the foreign population since Mexico was consolidated as an independent nation. Its geographical position and for social, economic, climatological, cultural, and transit reasons, foreigners have stayed throughout the territory. Historically, the country has not sought mass immigration, but it has been the focus of attraction for more selective immigration to which is added an old tradition of political asylum for religious or ideological persecution. That makes intellectuals, scientists, and artists who reside in Mexico come from other nations and contribute in various scientific and artistic fields.
According to the 2020 National Census, there are 1,212,252 foreign-born people registered with the government as living in Mexico. Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020 Around 70% of foreigners living in Mexico come from neighboring countries (the United States and Guatemala), other important communities come mainly from Spanish-speaking nations, of which the Venezuelan, Colombian, Honduran, Cuban, Spanish, Salvadorian, and Argentinian communities stand out. The rest of immigration comes from other non-Hispanic nations.
History Colonial era, 1521–1821 Mesoamerica—a region encompassing central and southern Mexico in addition to Guatemala—already had a large indigenous population at European contact in the early sixteenth century, which shaped migration patterns to the colony of New Spain. The Spanish crown restricted immigration to its overseas possessions to Catholics with "pure" ancestry (limpieza de sangre), that is, without the taint of Jewish or Muslim ancestors. Prospective immigrants had to obtain a license from the House of Trade in Seville, Spain, attesting to their religious status and ancestry. So-called New Christians, that is Jewish converts to Catholicism, were forbidden from immigrating for fear they had falsely claimed conversion and were in fact crypto-Jews passing as Christians.Fisher, John R. "Casa de Contratación" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 1, pp. 589–90. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996. During the period when Spain and Portugal had the same monarch (1580–1640), many Portuguese merchants immigrated to Mexico. Religious authorities suspected they were crypto-Jews. The Mexican Inquisition was established in 1571 and arrested, tried, and then turned those convicted over to civil authorities for corporal, sometimes capital, punishment in autos de fe.
Early Spanish immigrants to Mexico included men who became crown or ecclesiastical officials, those with connections to the privileged group of conquerors who had access to indigenous labor and tribute via the encomienda, but also Spaniards who saw economic opportunity in Mexico. Not all Spaniards were of noble heritage (hidalgos); many were merchants and miners, as well as artisans of various types. Very few Spanish women immigrated from the conquest era onward, most usually because they joined family members who had already immigrated. Their presence helped consolidate the Spanish colony. Spaniards founded cities, sometimes on the sites of indigenous cities, the most prominent being Mexico City founded on the ruins of Aztec Tenochtitlan. Spaniards preferred living in cities and with immigrant artisans present from an early period, Spanish material culture was replicated in Mexico by tailors, leatherworkers, bakers, makers of weapons, construction workers, booksellers, and medical specialists (barber-surgeons). In 1550, of the 8,000 Spanish immigrants in Mexico City, around ten percent were artisans.Altman, Ida. "Spanish Society in Mexico City After the Conquest." Hispanic American Historical Review (1991)71(3):413-45.Altman, Ida et al. The Early History of Greater Mexico. Prentice Hall 2003, pp. 67-68. Some large-scale overseas traders based in Spain also had family members in charge of a business in Mexico itself.Hoberman, Louisa Schell. Mexico's Merchant Elite, 1590-1660. Durham: Duke University Press 1991. A few particular towns in Spain sent immigrants to particular towns in Mexico, a notable example being Brihuega, Spain and Puebla, New Spain's second-largest town, both of which were textile-producing towns.Altman, Ida. Transatlantic Ties in the Spanish Empire: Brihuega, Spain, and Puebla, Mexico, 1560-1620. Stanford University Press, 2000.
African slaves were brought as auxiliaries to Spanish conquerors and settlers from the Spanish conquest onward, but as enslaved persons, they were different from European voluntary immigration.Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo, La población negra de México, 1519–1810: Estudio etnohistórico. Mexico 1946Vinson, Ben III. Before Mestizaje: The Frontiers of Race and Caste in Colonial Mexico. New York: Cambridge University Press 2018. Because Mexico had such a dense indigenous population, Spaniards imported fewer African slaves than they did to the Caribbean, where sugar cultivation necessitated a large labor force and indigenous laborers were absent.
Although most European immigrants were from various regions of Spain, there were Europeans with other origins including Italians, Flemish (most prominently Pedro de Gante), Greeks, French, and a few Irish (including William Lamport). Except for the Portuguese, many of these other Europeans assimilated into the larger Hispanic society.Altman, The Early History of Greater Mexico, p. 263. Seventeenth-century English Dominican friar Thomas Gage spent a few years in central Mexico and Guatemala and wrote a colorful memoir of his time there, but returned to England and renounced Catholicism.Thomas Gage's Travels in the New World, J.E.S. Thompson (ed.), University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1958. Asians arrived in Mexico via the Manila Galleon and the Pacific coast port of Acapulco. Filipinos, Chinese, and Japanese were part of this first wave, many of them enslaved.Seijas, Tatiana. Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: From Chinos to Indians. New York: Cambridge University Press 2014.Schurz, William. The Manila Galleon. New York: E.P. Dutton 1939, 1959 The most famous of them was Catarina de San Juan, "la china poblana" (an Asian woman of Puebla), a slave woman who might have been of Mughal origin.Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. "A Mughal Princess in Baroque New Spain: Catarina de San Juan (1606–1688), The China Poblana." Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 71 (1997) 37-73.
Post-independence, 1821–1920
Even after Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, it continued to exclude non-Catholics from immigrating until the liberal Reform. After the fall of the monarchy of Agustín de Iturbide in 1823, the newly established federal republic promulgated a new law regarding immigration, the General Colonization Law. The Spanish Crown's controls over foreigners doing business in Mexico were no longer in place, and some British businessmen took an interest in silver mining in northern Mexico.Villalobos Velásquez, Rosario. Inmigrantes Británicos en el Distrito Minero del Real del Monte y Pachuca, 1824-1947. Mexico City: The British Council/Archivo Histórico y Museo Minería 2004. The Mexican government sought to populate areas of the north as a buffer against indigenous attacks. The Mexican government gave a license to Stephen F. Austin to colonize areas in Texas, with the proviso that they be or become Catholics and learn Spanish, largely honored in the breach as more and more settlers arrived. Most settlers were from the slave-holding areas of the southern U.S. and brought their slaves with them to cultivate the rich soil of east Texas. The experiment in colonization in Texas went disastrously wrong for Mexico, with Anglo-Texans and some Mexican Texians rebelling against Mexico's central government and gaining de facto independence in 1836. However, Mexicans of various ideological stripes called for attracting immigrants to Mexico in the nineteenth century.
In the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War (1861–1865), a number of Southerners from the failed Confederate States of America moved to Mexico.Wahlstrom, Todd W. The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration Across the Borderlands After the American Civil War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015. Another group migrating to Mexico were Mormons, who sought religious freedom to practice polygamy, and founded colonies in northern Mexico.Hardy, B. Carmon. "The trek south: How the Mormons went to Mexico." The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73.1 (1969): 1-16.Dormady, Jason H., and Jared M. Tamez, eds. Just South of Zion: The Mormons in Mexico and Its Borderlands. University of New Mexico Press, 2015. Many Mormons left Mexico at the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution.Hardy, B. Carmon. "Cultural" Encystment" as a Cause of the Mormon Exodus from Mexico in 1912." Pacific Historical Review 34.4 (1965): 439-454.