Mexico’s immigrant population is growing by leaps and bounds, according to statistics from the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM).
Between January 2013 and June of this year, the nation’s immigration agency issued permanent residency green cards to 116,000 foreign nationals.
The figures include 27,151 U.S. citizens, nearly a quarter of the total. In a distant second place slot were 8,730 Chinese, with more than 6,000 per country originating from Cuba, Columbia and Venezuela.
A report released last month by the Organization of American States and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development indicates that 60,700 foreigners obtained permanent resident permits in 2013, opposed to just 18,000 the previous year. Immigration to Mexico jumped 65 percent overall in that 12-month period.
Meanwhile, applications for temporary residence permits have slacked off, presumably due to the implementation of immigration laws that prompted many foreigners to switch from temporal to permanente status.