It’s another surge across the U.s.-mexico border: Americans heading south

Spanish friars brought the faith to this colonial city in Mexico’s central highlands.

The silver barons of the 18th century built its mansions.

Now comes the pickleball invasion.

It started with just a few American retirees. These days, two dozen players fill the courts at the municipal sports center most mornings, swinging paddles at plastic balls. There are so many clubs in Mexico dedicated to the U.S. sport that a tournament was held here last year.

“It was a madhouse,” said Victor Guzmán, a 67-yearold entrepreneur from Charlotte, N.C., who helped pull the event together.

President Donald Trump regularly assails the flow of migrants crossing the U.s.-mexico border into the United States. Less noticed has been the surge of people heading in the opposite direction.

Mexico’s statistics institute estimated this month that the U.s.-born population in Mexico has reached 799,000 — a whopping fourfold increase since 1990. And that is probably an undercount. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City estimates the real number at 1.5 million or more. They’re a mixed group. They are digital natives who can work just as easily from Puerto Vallarta as from Palo Alto. They are U.s.-born kids — nearly 600,000 of them — who have returned with their Mexican-born parents. And they are retirees such as Guzmán, who settled in this city five years ago and is now basically the pickleball king of San Miguel.

If the thousands of Mexicans moving home are taken into account, the flow of migrants from the United States to Mexico is probably larger than the flow of Mexicans to the United States.

The American immigrants are pouring money into local economies, renovating historic homes and changing the dynamics of Mexican classrooms.

“It’s beginning to become a very important cultural phenomenon,” Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s foreign minister, said in an interview. “Like the Mexican community in the United States.”

And yet, he said, Mexican authorities know little about the size or needs of their largest immigrant group. He has been tasked by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador with changing that.

While the United States is deeply divided over immigration, American immigrants here have largely been welcomed.

In San Miguel — where about 10 percent of the city’s 100,000 residents are U.S. citizens — Mayor Luis Alberto Villareal delivers his annual State of the Municipality address in English and Spanish.

Thanksgiving is celebrated a few weeks after Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

Also, restaurants have adopted “American timing” — serving dinner at the ungodly hour of 6 p.m. — the mayor reports.

“Despite the fact that Donald Trump insults my country every day, here we receive the entire international community, beginning with Americans, with open arms and hearts,” Villareal said.

Mexican authorities say many of the Americans are probably undocumented — typically, they have overstayed their six-month visas. But the government has shown little concern.

“We have never pressured them to have their documents in order,” Ebrard said.

Typically, violators pay a small fine. Villereal shrugged. “We like people who come to work and help the economy of the city — like Mexicans do in the United States,” he said.

San Miguel de Allende is about 170 miles northwest of Mexico City, on a milehigh plateau where the sunshine coaxes bougainvillea to erupt in blazing colors and spill over walls. U.S. veterans began moving here after World War II to study at the local art institute on the GI Bill.

Over the past 30 years, expatriates flooded in, enchanted by the city’s hilly cobblestone streets, soaring Gothic church, and houses painted in sunset colors: dusky rose, peach, yellow and orange.

The scenery isn’t the only draw. Given the dollar’s strength against the Mexican peso, even an American getting by on Social Security and a modest pension can rent a high-ceilinged apartment, hire a maid and eat out most nights.

“You can live here on $2,000 or $3,000 a month — and live well,” Guzmán said.