Coverage of Free Trade With Mexico and Immigration:

The proposed free trade agreement with Mexico will not slow immigration and may even increase it for more than a decade, according to a report released this week.

Eventually, an agreement to end trade barriers is likely to improve the Mexican economy and eliminate many of the reasons for migration to the United States, but that may take 10 to 15 years, concludes a report produced by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based research organization.

One of the principal selling points of the agreement, which has been strongly promoted by the Bush administration, has been that increased industrial development in Mexico will make immigration to the United States less tempting.

Today, it is conservatively estimated that 200,000 Mexicans illegally move to the United States each year, primarily for economic reasons. Another 60,000 to 70,000 enter legally.

The forces that have caused this mass migration -- rapid population, unemployment and low wages -- will not be changed much by freer commerce, at least during the 1990s, according to the center report.

''The demographic and economic momentum for immigration is too strong and will continue for quite a while,'' said David Simcox, author of the report and a former director of the State Department's Office of Mexican Affairs in the Carter administration.

High birth rates in the 1960s and 1970s created a youth explosion in Mexico that is now causing the nation's workforce to expand roughly twice as fast as new jobs are created. It is likely to take decades of new industrial and business development to correct this imbalance, according to the report.

In addition, Simcox said that free trade may create new forces that will cause even more Mexicans to look for a better life in the United States.

For example, the elimination of trade protections will hit hard at Mexico's small, inefficient grain-producing farms and at state-owned businesses where ''featherbedding'' and overstaffing are common.

Furthermore, studies of other developing nations have shown that improving economies are accompanied by an upswing in emmigration as people's expectations rise and their personal economic condition improves enough to allow them to finance a major international move.

The free trade agreement has been favored by California's Governor Wilson because it is expected to open major new markets in Mexico. Wilson is in Mexico now on a trade mission.

Democratic liberals and unions have opposed the agreement, saying that it would hurt American workers as U.S. businesses move to Mexico to take advantage of low labor costs.

WASHINGTON -- Immigration from Mexico into the United States will increase for the first 15 years following any free-trade agreement between the countries, an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies shows.

But, according to the study, the increased political and economic stability resulting from such an accord would eventually decrease pressures propelling Mexicans northward, a position long held by the Bush administration and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari.

In the short term, increased unemployment in those sectors of the Mexican economy unable to compete in a free-trade arena, such as grain farms, will fuel migration to the United States, said David Simcox, center director and author of the study.

Other Mexicans displaced by their government's privatization efforts also will ''opt for immigration,'' said Simcox, who was director of the State Department's Office of Mexican Affairs from 1979 to 1981.

It's a widely held theory that free trade would give some Mexicans who had hoped to immigrate the economic wherewithal to make the trip.

''Nobody knows what is going to happen,'' said George Borjas, economist with the University of California at San Diego.

If anything, free trade will send U.S. manufacturing firms to Mexico in search of low-wage labor, Borjas said. The people they will hire will be those who would have come to the United States looking for work - and that will cut back immigration, he said.

But Peter Smith, professor of political science at the same university, believes those businesses won't create enough jobs to stop the immigration flow.

And, at least in the first five years of any trade pact, Smith said, the 10-to-1 wage difference between the countries will mean Mexicans will continue to try to find work in the United States.

In the long term, as the Mexican economy continues to grow and the wage differences decrease, Smith sees immigration decreasing.

And once free trade increases Mexico's stability, Simcox said, Mexicans will be encouraged not only to remain there but to repatriate.