Complete Thesis_double spaced abstract.pdf

Lifetime migrants are defined as “people whose place of birth differs from the place of residents
at some later date” (Micklin, 1990, 164). Recent migrants are defined as people who’s “current
place of residence differs from that five years earlier” (Micklin, 1990, 164). And intermediate
migrants are defined as people who “show a difference between place of birth and place of
residence five years preceding the census” (Micklin, 1990, 164). The categories in the census do
not clearly show migration movements from year to year, or carefully track seasonal migration.
Using census data from states within the region (United States, Mexico, Belize,
Honduras, Canada, and Costa Rica) to analyze inter-state migratory patterns can also prove to be
problematic. Mexico and the United States are the two largest recipients of Guatemalan migrants,
yet in each of their national censuses they aggregated the data for all Central American migrants
until the 1980s. After the 1980s when the data is disaggregated in the censuses there is still the
underlying issue of significant undernumeration of undocumented Guatemalan migrants in states
throughout the region.
Border Control and Immigration Offices in Receiving States
The benefit of data collected from border control and immigration agencies in receiving
states is that the information is almost always reported on an annual basis. However there are
several issues to consider when using this data: (1) border control and immigration agencies do
not capture or process all migrants crossing the territorial boundaries into receiving states, (2)
until recently, certain agencies, including the United States immigration and border control
agencies aggregated their data for Central American migrants, (3) at times when apprehended,
migrants will not state their true country of origin to immigration officers, instead offering a
closer state as an alternative to be deported, and (4) not all states consistently publish or report
statistics on the number of apprehensions at border crossing areas. The product of the
aforementioned issues is that migration data is often unavailable or unreliable from the various
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