JALPA (Mexico): Forty years ago, Ramiro Viramontes slept on palm frond mats on a crowded floor with his six brothers and sisters. Unable to find jobs when they grew up, most left Mexico for the United States.

Mexican families sent millions of illegal workers to the United States in the late 20th century as the country’s population grew faster than its ability to create jobs.

But now, Mexicans are having many fewer children due to government birth-control campaigns and changing lifestyles.

That is causing a deep demographic shift that could turn back the immigration tide.

The average Mexican family went from having seven children in 1960 to two in 2008. Families in Mexico are now slightly smaller than Hispanic families in the United States.

Viramontes, 48, an electrician, is a father of just two.

“We didn’t want our kids to go through what we went through. We didn’t want them to be tempted to leave,” said Viramontes, whose siblings are scattered from California to Massachusetts.

Some 11.4 million people left Mexico between 1970 and 2006, Mexican government demographers say. Almost all went north, in probably the largest wave of immigrants ever from one country to the United States.

The number of people leaving each year appears to have peaked at around 600,000 in 2001, according to researchers at the government’s National Population Council, or Conapo.

Fewer have left each year since then, with about 440,000 Mexicans emigrating in 2006. Researchers say the number should keep falling as Mexican population growth slows.

“We have already seen the peak,” said Paula Leite, head of demographic research for migration studies at Conapo.

Some experts say the US economic downturn and tighter policing have further stemmed the flow of illegal migrants in the last two years, and also persuaded some Mexicans already in the United States to return home.

Desert treks

Many Mexicans crossed deserts on foot or swam across the Rio Grande to seek jobs in hotels and restaurants, on farms, and in construction. The influx profoundly changed America.

Hispanics are the largest US minority group with growing influence in politics and business. Nearly one in 10 people in the United States claim Mexican heritage.

US authorities are building a 1,070-km fence along the border to stop more coming but some researchers say that kind of measure might be overkill.

“It’s like building a dike for a flood that might not be there,” said Dowell Myers, a professor of urban planning and demography at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Viramontes and his wife decided to have a small family to provide more for fewer mouths. Indeed, their son went to college and then opened an Internet cafe in town.

They were guided by a government birth control program launched in the 1970s that told families that having lots of children would keep them poor. Millions heeded the campaign, despite opposition from the influential Roman Catholic Church.

In Jalpa, a ranching town in central Mexico that has lost much of its population to the United States, public health clinics distributed contraceptives and birth control pills. Doctors also suggested women use intrauterine devices, or IUDs.

“As soon as a child was born, the doctors wanted to put the device in my wife,” said Viramontes.

Jalpa town councilman Jesus Guerrero, 65, remembers his grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary party where nearly

100 grandchildren gathered. Guerrero himself has only three.

“Small families live better,” Guerrero said.

Across the developing world, birth rates fell during the late 20th century as economies grew, health care improved and women gained better access to jobs and birth control.

Mexican families shrank faster than most. Annual population growth fell from 3.35 per cent in 1960 to less than one per cent in 2008. Smaller numbers are entering the workforce every year.

Still, no matter how small Mexican families get, some workers will still cross the border to seek higher US salaries. Mexico’s minimum wage is less than $4 a day compared to the US federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour.

“The demographic change will mean less pressure on people to leave but they’re still going to need good jobs in Mexico,” said Philip Martin, a professor specialising in immigration, farm labour and economic development at the University of California, Davis.—Reuters