Because There Was No Line: How Return Migration in Later Life Impacts Unauthorized Immigrants and Separates their Families

Immigrant integration is intuitively understood as a function of time: the longer someone is in the U.S., the more “American” they feel and the more they participate in civic life. However, undocumented immigrants in today’s era of restricted immigration find diminishing opportunities for integration. Regardless of how long they have spent in the United States, they increasingly find that the roots they put down are at risk of being dug up and discarded by the deportation regime, or that it is difficult to put down roots at all because their rights are so curtailed (Bean, Brown, and Bachmeier 2015, Leyro 2018). These hardships do not only impact unauthorized immigrants themselves but extend to their families (see, e.g., Dreby 2015).

Because immigration reform with a path to legalization has failed to pass for nearly four decades, a significant share of the unauthorized population is experiencing a demographic transition: people who migrated after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 are aging out of work without a path to citizenship. More than a quarter of unauthorized immigrants are estimated to be 45 years or older (Ro, Van Hook, Walsemann 2022, López et al. 2021, Migration Policy Institute 2019). This is especially the case for unauthorized immigrants from Mexico. Among Mexican immigrants without authorization –– who make up about half of the undocumented population –– nearly 85 percent have been living in the U.S. for over a decade (López et al. 2021). They are also overrepresented in the “Entry Without Inspection” category, which has been more penalized and prevented from adjusting legal status (López 2021).

Unable to adjust their immigration status, unauthorized immigrants may choose –– or be forced –– to return to their communities of origin. In this paper, I draw on fieldwork and in-depth interviews with older return migrants in Puebla and Tlaxcala, Mexico as well as with their family members who remain in New York City in order to understand how return migration in later life impacts older immigrants and their families. I find that return migration in later life due to undocumented status happens in a variety of ways, ranging from hasty, unplanned returns due to deportation to well-resourced, planned returns as a retirement strategy. Regardless of the reason for their return, the departure of older migrants disrupts their lives as well as the lives of their families, reducing their ability to give and receive care. Return migration also transforms familial roles, especially for U.S. citizen grandchildren who often begin to travel alone to visit their grandparents because they are the only members of their families who can cross the U.S.–Mexico border legally. Taken together, this research illustrates the power that U.S. immigration policies exert over family formation –– fundamentally restructuring families that would otherwise live together and provide valuable support to each other.