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rizona needs to leave the Land of Old Ideas about illegal immigration, Mexico and Central America.

Congress should take a hike to reality, too.

Old battle lines continue to define — and doom — efforts to reform outdated immigration policies. They also hurt Arizona’s economic competitiveness.

But things are changing. You can glimpse a shifting landscape in a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project. It tracks remittances to Spanish-speaking Latin American countries since 2000.

After steadily moving upward, the amount of money sent home by immigrants working in the United States began dropping in 2007 when the Great Recession hit.

The link between migrants and the economy was reinforced by figures showing how those remittances to our Latin American neighbors have recovered — except for Mexico.

via Mexico isn’t our top immigration problem.