The Washington Post reports on an interesting survey of Mexican illegal immigrants:

Most Mexican illegal immigrants want to remain in the United States indefinitely, but a majority would be willing to return to Mexico within five years under a temporary guest worker program being considered by the Bush administration, according to a survey released yesterday.

The survey by the Pew Hispanic Center showed that nearly three-quarters of undocumented workers would accept a temporary worker status that required them to return to Mexico. That included 68 percent who said they wanted to live in the United States “as long as I can” or for “the rest of my life.”

The survey of nearly 5,000 Mexican nationals was called the first of its kind by Roberto Suro, the center’s director. It was conducted at Mexican consulates in Los Angeles; New York; Chicago; Atlanta; Dallas; Fresno, Calif.; and Raleigh, N.C., over six months as immigrants applied for a Mexican identity document….

Several observations:

- As several people quoted in the article point out, the survey findings call into question whether, under Bush’s amnesty plan, so-called guest workers would really go back home after their period of “temporary” employment ends.

-The “Mexican security document” referred to above is the Matricula Consular card. You may recall that last fall congressman David Drier stated that Matricula Consular cards “are not available to illegal immigrants.” As I pointed out at the time, this is hooey. The Pew Hispanic Center knows this. Presumably, that’s why they surveyed Matricular Consular card applicants–because anyone who applies for the card is almost certain to be here illegally.

- The article cites Census data on the number of Mexican illegal aliens living in the U.S. Unfortunately, Census data seriously undercount the number of illegal aliens (see here).