by Aurelio Rojas

About the author: Aurelio Rojas is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.

The nation’s first long-term study to examine how long immigrants from Mexico remain in the United States has concluded that, contrary to public perception, most return home.

Most Undocumented Immigrants Return Home

Findings released in 1997 by the Public Policy Institute of California show that about half of the immigrants studied during a 10-year period returned to Mexico within two years. Far more, almost 70 percent, returned within 10 years.

In addition to interviews with more than 43,000 people from six Mexican states, researchers analyzed data previously collected by a group called the Mexican Migration Project. That data showed that return rates are even higher for undocumented immigrants—only about 27 percent of the roughly...