The Mexico-U.S. migration flow is one of the world’s largest, but is also among the more
difficult to quantify and capture in survey sources. In this context, the Survey of
Migration at the North Border of Mexico (EMIF) offers a unique source of information
on both regulated and unauthorized components of flows of Mexican-born migrants to
and from the U.S., from 1993 to the present. The survey is conducted using probabilistic
sampling methods at transit points of the eight main border-crossing cities of Mexico.
The EMIF has been used very little in the international scholarly literature, possibly in
part because its statistical properties are not well established. We evaluate the EMIF here
by comparison to alternative estimates of emigration and return migration from national
household surveys and censuses in Mexico and the U.S. We find the EMIF’s primary
strength is in capturing returning male migrants of working ages. A secondary strength is
in its capturing male emigrants at all but the younger working ages. Its estimates of male
emigrants are double those of U.S. data sources (in which they appear as immigrants).
We attribute this to better capture of unauthorized and circular migrants in the EMIF. Its
coverage of female emigrants and return migrants is less reliable, but appears to have
improved in the early 2000s. The EMIF represents reasonably well the geographic
origins and educational attainment of Mexico’s migrants to and from the U.S., but
captures less educated migrants better than more educated migrants.