As immigration hysteria is still raging in parts of America, the number of immigrants coming from Mexico has actually slowed considerably, and research suggests it’s due to the changes Mexico has been undergoing.

Over the last 30 years the U.S. saw a huge wave of Mexican immigrants come in, but as Mexico’s economy improves the number of people wanting to head north is dropping.

Co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton, Douglas S. Massey, says his long-term study in Mexican emigration hubs revealed that interest in heading to the U.S. fell to the lowest in at least 60 years.

“No one wants to hear it, but the flow has already stopped,” Massey told the New York Times, referring to illegal traffic. “For the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative.”

The Mexican census recently revealed that four million more people were in Mexico than had been estimated.

Census figures for the U.S. showed that while illegal immigration from Mexico accounted for roughly 6 of every 10 undocumented immigrants in the U.S., the illegal Mexican population in America has actually shrunk. Fewer than 100,000 people illegally crossed the border or violated their visas in 2010, which is down from around 525,000 annually from 2000 to 2004.

And while the U.S. economy has been rocky to say the least, Mexico has seen an improvement both economically and politically.

As the NY Times wrote, “Even far from the coasts or the manufacturing sector at the border, democracy is better established, incomes have generally risen and poverty has declined.”

Perhaps the most meaningful change has come to education, with the census shows that in Jalisco, the number of senior high schools or preparatory schools for students between 15 and 18 has increased from 360 in 2000 to 724 in 2009. With population growth not increasing at the same rate, the statistics show an increase in percentage of students staying in school rather than the number.