Getting the Most Out of U.S. Border Crossing Records for Mexican Genealogy

If you have Mexican ancestors or relatives who immigrated to or temporarily lived and worked in the United States in the 20th century, U.S. border crossing records for arrivals from Mexico are an essential source for researching twentieth Mexican and Mexican-American individuals and families. These records can provide high genealogical value for building out biographical details and piecing together family groups and extended kinship networks. Make sure you are getting the most out of these records for your Mexican genealogy.

You might be quite familiar with these records, but are you certain you are gleaning every possible clue from them? Particularly references to additional types of immigration-related records?

I wrote an in-depth article about these records for NGS Magazine by the National Genealogical Society, for the March 2022 issue. NGS allows its magazine authors to freely republish their articles after six months. So even if you are not an NGS member, you can now read my article for free. To access and download a copy of the article (for FREE), visit the CSU (the California State University system) ScholarWorks. ScholarWorks is an institutional repository for the CSU system, and I am faculty with two CSU campuses. So I decided to upload and host the article from there instead of just on this website. It is important to me to showcase genealogy as a legitimate academic discipline.

If you are brand new or still new-ish to working with these records, reading my article will help you avoid the many mistakes and missed opportunities I made before I learned to really dig into these valuable records.