Following up on my posting earlier today, I found the link to all the articles in the series on immigrant labor in New Bedford and surrounding Southeastern Massachusetts. Here it is.
This is possibly the best depiction of the lives of recent low income immigrants published by an American newspaper.
The New Bedford, MA, Standard-Times should get an award for its series on immigrant labor (legal and illegal) starting this week. Go here for the series (the website is called “South Coast today”). New Bedford was the site of one of the early ICE raids on March 6, 2007. Thanks to Shuya Ohno of the Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy Coalition for alerting me to the series.
Following are what the reporters learned in preparing the series:
THE NEW IMMIGRANTS
What we learned in our investigation
A nearly two-year-long Standard-Times investigation of legal and illegal immigration from Central America found that:
— Violent crime, low wages and a lack of jobs have driven as many as 8,000 Central Americans to migrate to New Bedford.
— U.S. wages sent home to Guatemala are lifting families out of poverty, but also contributing to drug use and gang activity on the island.
— Many Central American immigrants, documented or not, obtain jobs through temporary agencies on the New Bedford waterfront and the conditions they work under don’t match what most American workers enjoy.
— The everyday lives of New Bedford’s illegal immigrants are dominated by a constant fear of being caught by immigration officials.
— Illegal immigrants who are deported back home to Guatemala are at high risk for depression and alcoholism.
— Temporary agencies have taken over much of the hiring for New Bedford fish houses and light manufacturing, often employing illegal immigrants in an off-the-books, cash economy in the recent past.
— A Taunton employment agency defrauded the federal and state governments, as well as worker’s compensation insurance companies, of millions of dollars in taxes, unemployment insurance contributions and worker’s compensation insurance compensation related to business in New Bedford, particularly on the waterfront.
— Some immigrant workers say they are forced to work overtime without being paid time-and-half. In two cases, a well-respected seafood processing plant agreed as part of a court settlement to pay Central American immigrants thousands in overtime claims.
— Guatemalan Mayans and some Latino immigrants claim they have been singled out for discrimination by employers. They claim they have been given the worst jobs within their seafood houses and factories, the least benefits and working conditions, and laid off before they can accrue better wages or vacations.
— Contrary to popular belief, most immigrants who came to New Bedford in the early 20th century faced no restrictions on legal immigration. Many Portuguese immigrants came to the U.S. on tourist visas and simply stayed to work afterwards.
— Religion — both Catholic and evangelical — plays a strong role in the lives of many of today’s immigrants, just as it did for past immigrant groups.
— A backlash among Americans — many of them immigrants or their children or grandchildren believe that new immigrants are undermining American wages and working conditions, and new immigrants are not obeying the law.
— The challenge of educating immigrant children, always a factor in the cities of the SouthCoast, becomes even greater in an age of mandatory testing and the ever-increasing expectations of No Child Left Behind.
— New Bedford’s new immigrants remain vulnerable to crime, raising concerns that Central American gangs will gain a toehold in the city.
— Some Central American immigrants are living out the American Dream in New Bedford.
— Central American entrepreneurs could revitalize local neighborhoods by opening restaurants, markets and other businesses that cater to new immigrants.
The New York Times reported on 6/19/08 that “ European Union lawmakers voted Wednesday to allow undocumented migrants to be held in detention centers for up to 18 months and banned from European Union territory for five years.
Criticized by groups like Amnesty International as “severely flawed” and an erosion of human rights standards, the so-called return directive was passed in the European Parliament here by a 369-to-197 vote, with 106 legislators abstaining.
Amnesty International said it was “deeply disappointed” by the outcome of the vote, and appealed to member states currently applying higher standards not to use the directive as a pretext for lowering them.
The Europe Union has freedom of movement among 25 of its 27 member states but no overarching policy on immigration. Supporters see the new measure as a means to unify a patchwork of systems governing treatment of migrants who overstay their visas or who, in far lesser numbers, slip clandestinely across borders.”
Previously, the EU did not have a uniform set of laws to govern how illegal immigrants are to be treated.
The article in full:
Continue reading "EU toughens stance on illegal immigrants" »
When the Swift beef processing plant in tiny Cactus, TX, was raided in late 2006 (I have posted on this) hundreds of illegal Hispanic workers were carted off. For months the plant was barely operational. No workers in its rural surroundings. Then it started to bus workers in from Amarillo, 60 miles away. It recruited two Burmese workers from Amarillo. Then Swift tapped into the Burmese community in Houston, relocating them to Cactus. State officials leaned on Swift to provide adequate housing. 100 Burmese kids started school.
This story occurred because Swift like other meat processors located large plants in rural towns to lower wage scales – and to draw in immigrant labor, legal or illegal.
The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported today on how the Burmese got to Cactus.
The article in full:
Continue reading "Burmese workers replace illegal meat processing workers" »
Mexican workers who work in the U.S.
I was asked the other day about the source of the estimate that a large share of Mexico’s labor force works in the U.S. The source in the Migration Policy Institute, in a publication dated November 2006. “MPI estimates that 9.4 percent of all persons born in Mexico lived in the United States in 2005. In the same year, 14 percent of Mexican workers were engaged in the US labor force compared to 2.5 percent of Canadian workers.”
The report goes on: “According to Inter-American Development Bank estimates, remittances sent in 2001 by Mexicans working abroad totaled $8.9 billion. By 2005, this amount more than doubled and reached more than $20 billion, a lion’s share of which came from the United States. Mexico remains the largest recipient of remittances among all Latin American countries, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the total $53.6 billion sent to Latin America. In 2005, remittances equaled to 2.8 percent of Mexico’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).”
Also go to my post, “Why poorer educated Mexican men come work in the United States.”
Recently I posted about the Migration Policy Institute's large database on immigration in the U.S. On the right column you can find this posting listed as "a mass of...". I am excerpting here the MPI's summary for the country as a whole. At the website, you can drill down to find data for each state.
* Immigrants were one in six US workers employed in the civilian labor force (age 16 and older) in 2006, one in eight in 2000, and less than one in 10 in 1990. In California, immigrants comprised more than a third of the state's employed workforce in 2006 compared to less than 2 percent in Montana.
* More than one-fifth of the 22 million immigrant workers in the United States are recent arrivals (i.e., those who arrived between 2000 and 2006);
* More than half of all immigrant workers in the US civilian labor force in 2006 were born in Latin America and slightly more than a quarter were from Asia. The rest originated in Europe (11.8 percent), Africa (3.8 percent), Northern America (2.0 percent), and Oceania/other (0.4 percent).
* In 2006, 45.7 percent of US total civilian employed workers (native and immigrant) were limited English proficient (LEP). The share of the labor force that was LEP was higher in Nebraska (56.7 percent) and Arkansas (54.7 percent) and much lower in Maine (19.9 percent) and Montana (17.6 percent).
This is the message from a study about New York City chidren of immigrants, as reported in the NY Times. The study shows how assimilation into the education system and labor market varies by country of origin. “A decade-long study of adult children of immigrants to the New York region has concluded that they are rapidly entering the mainstream and doing better than their parents in terms of education and earnings — even outperforming native-born Americans in many cases.”
The study was published as “Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age,” by Harvard University Press.
The data are old – based on survey work done and followed up on between 1999 and 2003. The following groups were studied: Dominicans, Chinese, Russian Jews, South Americans (consisting of Colombians, Ecuadoreans and Peruvians) and West Indians. The Chinese children are doing best and the Dominican children from the West Indies are doing worse.
The article in full:
Continue reading "Second generation immigrants doing well – study in New York City" »
It is more than interesting – it is engrossing – to compare the policies of the U.S. and Canada with respect to Hispanic immigrant worker policy. I have posted on this before. This article describes how Canada is coping with labor shortages arising out of a booming economy.
It reports that “A Canada-Mexico working group on labour mobility was announced by Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier and his Mexican counterpart, Patricia Espinosa, after the North American Leaders' Summit in Montebello, Que., last August. As the visiting workers program is expanded, the group will deal with developing a certification process that provides Canadian employers with the assurance that a bricklayer or welder will meet their specifications, as well as defining the length of temporary stays.
Currently, more than 100 National Employment Service offices throughout Mexico recruit workers and maintain a data bank, vetting applicants for appropriate work experience. They then match their data with requests from employers across Canada, funnelled through the Human Resources and Social Development ministry. The number of potential job placements in Canada can be as high as 800,000, said Jorge Rodriguez, Chief of International Affairs at Mexico's Labour Secretariat.”
The article in full:
Canada is one of several countries, such as Australia, with an aggressive strategy to woo immigrants in order to grow jobs and the economy. A Canadian news service reports that “Canada is heading for a problem seems unavoidable. In the last 50 years, Canada's workforce grew by 200 per cent. That growth was responsible for raising standards of living and creating the public and private wealth the country now enjoys. But government forecasters say that, without some radical changes, the workforce will only grow by 11 per cent in the next 50 years - and that figure includes the effects of current levels of immigration.
'Our demographics are working against us,' Human Resources Minister Monte Solberg said in a speech Monday to the Canadian Building and Construction Trades' Legislative Conference. 'Baby boomers are set to retire and our low birth rate means demand for workers will soon outstrip supply.”
* British Columbia will be short 350,000 workers over the next 12 years.
* Alberta will require 100,000 workers over the next 10 years.
* Ontario will need 560,000 more workers by 2030.
* Quebec will have 1.3 million job openings by 2016.
The article in full:
Canada's top problem is filling labour shortage
By David Akin
The Canwest News Service (Canada), May 5, 2008
Ottawa -- When Prime Minister Stephen Harper gathered the country's premiers at 24 Sussex Drive last fall, he wanted them to focus on what he saw as the country's No. 1 economic problem: within a decade or two, there simply will not be enough workers in the country.
Although recent headlines about thousands of layoffs in Canada's struggling manufacturing sector may suggest otherwise, Harper and his cabinet are struggling to find ways to boost training programs and increase immigration to find more workers to avoid what some Conservative strategists say is an 'economic time bomb.'
the Migration Information Institute issued this FAQ document last year, in October 2007. It is extensive. Go through all of it to find what you are looking for. It covers demographics, workforce and geographic distribution, countries of origin, unionization,
immigration status, deportations, naturalization, etc.
Its website has a motherlode of studies about immigration.
By Aaron Terrazas, Jeanne Batalova, Velma Fan, of the Migration Policy Institute
Continue reading "A mass of data about immigrants in the U.S." »
Go here to read a very active blog run by Dee Perez-Scott, a Mexican-American married to an Irish American for twenty years, and a long term employee of a major corporation. She became active after witnessing the anti-immigration surge in the last few years. Her current posting is about the 66 ICE detainees who have died while in custody, as reported in the NY Times.
Last week CBS Evening News ran a four part series on illegal immigration. Here is a synopsis of each episode, as provided by CBS News, and without comment by me: children of illegal immigrants; building a fence on the Mexican border; how farming is impacted by the crackdown, and the Arizona crackdown on employers. Much of the content comes from Texas or Arizona. Go the hyperlinks for the complete transcripts.
PART ONE 4/7 - Born in America
We profile and witness an Mexican woman giving birth in America, after crossing the border into Texas to guarantee her son American citizenship with its privileges, including health care and education. One of 300,000 children of illegal immigrants born in America every year. Costing taxpayers an estimated $1.1 billion in healthcare alone. Frustrated by the Congress' failure to pass immigration reform, we'll meet a congressman part of a movement to challenge the 14th amendment guaranteeing US citizenship for any child born in America. Forty percent of the children born at McAllen Texas Medical Center, near the border, nearly 2,400 last year, were the babies of illegal immigrants. Byron Pitts reports.
PART TWO 4/8 - The Border
The only immigration reform Congress managed to pass was funding to build a fence along the Mexican border. It's been a frustrating and expensive experiment. Plans call for only 670 miles of the 2000 mile border to be fenced, and even that limited construction could cost $50 billion when you consider a lifetime of maintenance. Yes, apprehensions are down, meaning fewer illegals are trying to cross into America. But Whitaker will show us how many ways people are getting around the fence...how vast are the gaps. The Administration just announced it will bypass state laws impeding the completion of this fence by the end of the year. But the fact is, if you build it, people will find a way around it. Bill Whitaker reports.
PART THREE 4/9 - The Farmer
After years of luring immigrant workers north with farm jobs, there's now movement across the border the other way. We'll meet an American farmer who so far has had to relocate 25 percent of his operation in Mexico because he can't find workers. The Western Growers Association says they need 30 percent more workers than they're able to hire. But a bill to let more farm workers in legally died in Congress last year. And so, we'll see our American farmer harvesting his lettuce crop south of the border, in Mexico. John Blackstone reports.
PART FOUR 4/10 - The Arizona Crackdown
Last year many states and communities took it upon themselves to do what Congress failed to do. And the toughest laws in the nation took effect in January in Arizona. If a business owner knowingly hires an illegal immigrant, they won't simply be fined...they'll be shut down. And so we see bus loads of immigrants leaving Phoenix. Schools report fewer students. Businesses are closing down. The owner of a burger chain tells Tracy he's had to hire two people and spend $500,000 just to comply with new requirements and he's scrapped plans to open 40 new stores, because it's just too much work. 15 other states are considering laws like Arizona's.
The Migration Policy Institute has analyzed the growth of the foreign born population and estimated the number of foreign born among projected 2008 voters. Here are data from three states:
California – foreign born grew as percentage of total population from 26.2% in 2000 to 27.2% in 2006. Hispanic voters (foreign and domestic born) are expected to be 16.8% of the vote. Since Hispanics comprise 55% of foreign born, the total foreign born voter block will certainly be much higher.
Texas - percentage of total population foreign born grew form 13.9% in 2000 to 15.9% in 2006. Hispanics are expected to be 18% of projected voters. Hispanics or Latinos make up 74% of the foreign born.
Ohio, foreign born share of total population grew from 3.0% in 2000 to 3.6% in 2006. Foreign born voters are projected to be 1.6% of all voters.
The Pew Research Center issued a report this week which projects the nation’s population to 2050. Our country will become increasingly immigrant-based and Hispanics will approach 30% of the population. “If current trends continue, the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050, from 296 million in 2005, and 82% of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their U.S.-born descendants. Of the 117 million people added to the population during this period due to the effect of new immigration, 67 million will be the immigrants themselves and 50 million will be their U.S.-born children or grandchildren.”
Other key projections:
* Nearly one in five Americans (19%) will be an immigrant in 2050, compared with one in eight (12%) in 2005. By 2025, the immigrant, or foreign-born, share of the population will surpass the peak during the last great wave of immigration a century ago.
* The major role of immigration in national growth builds on the pattern of recent decades, during which immigrants and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren accounted for most population increase. Immigration's importance increased as the average number of births to U.S.-born women dropped sharply before leveling off.
* The Latino population, already the nation's largest minority group, will triple in size and will account for most of the nation's population growth from 2005 through 2050. Hispanics will make up 29% of the U.S. population in 2050, compared with 14% in 2005.
* Births in the United States will play a growing role in Hispanic and Asian population growth; as a result, a smaller proportion of both groups will be foreign-born in 2050 than is the case now.
* The non-Hispanic white population will increase more slowly than other racial and ethnic groups; whites will become a minority (47%) by 2050.
* The nation's elderly population will more than double in size from 2005 through 2050, as the baby boom generation enters the traditional retirement years. The number of working-age Americans and children will grow more slowly than the elderly population, and will shrink as a share of the total population.
The Center's report includes an analysis of the nation's future "dependency ratio"--the number of children and elderly compared with the number of working-age Americans. There were 59 children and elderly people per 100 adults of working age in 2005. That will rise to 72 dependents per 100 adults of working age in 2050.
The report also offers two alternative population projections, one based on lower immigration assumptions and one based on higher immigration assumptions.
The NY Times reported today on the combined effects of economic slowdown and anti- illegal immigrant legislation in Arizona. Whatever the cause, a lot of people are leaving the state. "In the fourth quarter of 2007 the apartment-vacancy rate in metropolitan Phoenix rose to 11.2 percent from 9 percent in the same quarter of 2006, with much higher rates of 15 percent or more in heavily Latino neighborhoods."
The article in full:
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
Published: February 12, 2008
PHOENIX — The signs of flight among Latino immigrants here are multiple: Families moving out of apartment complexes, schools reporting enrollment drops, business owners complaining about fewer clients.
While it is too early to know for certain, a consensus is developing among economists, business people and immigration groups that the weakening economy coupled with recent curbs on illegal immigration are steering Hispanic immigrants out of the state.
The Arizona economy, heavily dependent on growth and a Latino work force, has been slowing for months. Meanwhile, the state has enacted one of the country’s toughest laws to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants, and the county sheriff here in Phoenix has been enforcing federal immigration laws by rounding up people living here illegally.
“It is very difficult to separate the economic reality in Arizona from the effects of the laws because the economy is tanking and construction is drying up,” said Frank Pierson, lead organizer of the Arizona Interfaith Network, which advocates for immigrants’ rights and other causes. But the combination of factors creates “ a disincentive to stay in the state.”
Here is a fact sheet from the Pew Hispanic Center: Hispanics in the 2008 Election-- The Hispanics in the 2008 Election fact sheets contain data on the size and social and economic characteristics of the Hispanic and non-Hispanic eligible voter populations. These fact sheets are based on the Center's tabulations of the Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey. The eight fact sheets include those states that will be holding primaries or caucuses on "Super Tuesday" and that have a relatively high concentration of Latino voters: Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York.
Arizona
Arizona's Hispanic population is the sixth-largest in the nation. Nearly 1.8 million Hispanics reside in Arizona, 4% of all Hispanics in the United States. There are 673,000 eligible Hispanic voters in Arizona, 4% of all U.S. Hispanic eligible voters.
California
California's Hispanic population is the largest of any state in the nation. More than 13 million Hispanics reside in California, 30% of all Hispanics in the United States. There are over 5 million eligible Hispanic voters in California, 28% of all U.S. Hispanic eligible voters.
Colorado
Colorado's Hispanic population is eighth-largest in the nation. More than 927,000 Hispanics reside in Colorado, 2% of all Hispanics in the United States. There are over 404,000 eligible Hispanic voters in Colorado, 2% of all U.S. Hispanic eligible voters.
Illinois
Illinois's Hispanic population is the fifth-largest in the nation. Nearly 1.9 million Hispanics reside in Illinois, 4% of all Hispanics in the United States. There are over 708,000 eligible Hispanic voters in Illinois, 4% of all U.S. Hispanic eligible voters.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts's Hispanic population is the fifteenth-largest in the nation. More than 509,000 Hispanics reside in Massachusetts, 1% of all Hispanics in the United States. There are 246,000 eligible Hispanic voters in Massachusetts, 1% of all U.S. Hispanic eligible voters.
New Jersey
New Jersey's Hispanic population is the seventh-largest in the nation. More than 1.4 million Hispanics reside in New Jersey, 3% of all Hispanics in the United States. There are 588,000 eligible Hispanic voters in New Jersey, 3% of all U.S. Hispanic eligible voters.
New Mexico
New Mexico's Hispanic population is the ninth-largest in the nation. More than 874,000 Hispanics reside in New Mexico, 2% of all Hispanics in the United States. There are 501,000 eligible Hispanic voters in New Mexico, 3% of all U.S. Hispanic eligible voters.
New York
New York's Hispanic population is the fourth-largest in the nation. More than 3 million Hispanics reside in New York, 7% of all Hispanics in the United States. There are 1.5 million eligible Hispanic voters in New York, 8% of all U.S. Hispanic eligible voters.
The Migration Policy Institute issued a correction a few minutes ago. Here is the correct information:
Foreign-born adults of working age (18 to 54) accounted for nearly 17 percent of all working-age adults at the national level, but they represented 36 percent of working-age adults in California, about 26 percent in New Jersey and Nevada, and less than 2 percent in West Virginia.
Also another correction: Foreign-born children under age 18 accounted for more than 4 percent of all children in the United States. This share was higher in California (7 percent) but much lower in Mississippi (0.6 percent).
The Migration Policy Institute has put out a fact sheet on immigrants. One item: “Foreign-born adults of working age (18 to 54) accounted for 30% of all working-age adults at the national level.” They make up 62% in California.
More….
* One in eight persons residing in the United States in 2006 was foreign born. At the state level, the share of the foreign born in the state population ranged from a high of one in four in California to a low of one in 83 in West Virginia in 2006.
* Of the 37.5 million foreign born, a quarter arrived in 2000 or later.
* Individuals born in Latin America accounted for 54 percent of all foreign born compared to 44 percent in 1990. The share of European born dropped from 23 percent in 1990 to 13 percent in 2006 while the share of Asian born remained the same (26 percent).
* Foreign-born children under age 17 accounted for nearly 7 percent of all children in the United States. This share was higher in California (11 percent) but much lower in Mississippi (0.9 percent).
* Foreign-born adults of working age (18 to 54) accounted for 30 percent of all working-age adults at the national level, but they represented 62 percent of working-age adults in California, 48 percent in Nevada and New York, and less than 5 percent in Montana and West Virginia.
* In the United States, 48 percent of the foreign born reported Hispanic or Latino origin, compared to 10 percent of the native born.
The Center for Immigration Studies has summarized some key immigration trends in a release made today. Among the findings, “Since 2000, 10.3 million immigrants have arrived — the highest seven-year period of immigration in U.S. history. More than half of post-2000 arrivals (5.6 million) are estimated to be illegal aliens.” Consistent with CIS’s approach to immigration, this report tends of focus on the negative: low educational status, use of welfare, etc. But is it worth reviewing.
The release:
The report, “Immigrants in the United States, 2007: A Profile of America’s Foreign-Born Population,” is online at http://www.cis.org/articles/2007/back1007.html
Among the report’s findings:
# The immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007.
# Immigrants account for one in eight U.S. residents, the highest level in 80 years.
# Overall, nearly one in three immigrants is an illegal alien. Half of Mexican and Central American immigrants and one-third of South American immigrants are illegal.
# Since 2000, 10.3 million immigrants have arrived — the highest seven-year period of immigration in U.S. history. More than half of post-2000 arrivals (5.6 million) are estimated to be illegal aliens.
# Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, compared to 8 percent of natives. The share of immigrants and natives with a college degree is about the same.
# 33 percent of immigrant-headed households use at least one welfare program, compared to 19 percent for native households. Among households headed by immigrants from Mexico, the largest single group, 51 percent use at least one welfare program.
# The poverty rate for immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) is 17 percent, nearly 50 percent higher than the rate for natives and their children.
# 34 percent of immigrants lack health insurance, compared to 13 percent of natives. Immigrants and their U.S.-born children account for 71 percent of the increase in the uninsured since 1989.
# The primary reason for the high rates of immigrant poverty, lack of health insurance, and welfare use is their low education levels, not their legal status or an unwillingness to work.
# Of immigrant households, 82 percent have at least one worker, compared to 73 percent of native households.
# Immigrants make significant progress over time. But even those who have been here for 20 years are more likely to be in poverty, lack insurance, or use welfare than are natives.
# There is a worker present in 78 percent of immigrant households using at least one welfare program.
# Immigration accounts for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the last two decades. In 2007, there were 10.8 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States.
# Immigrants and natives have similar rates of entrepreneurship — 13 percent of natives and 11 percent of immigrants are self-employed.
# Recent immigration has had no significant impact on the nation’s age structure. Without the 10.3 million post-2000 immigrants, the average age in America would be virtually unchanged at 36.5 years.
# Detailed information is provided for Texas, California, Arizona, Massachusetts, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina, Washington, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland.
Data Source: The Current Population Survey provides the data for the study. It was collected by the Census Bureau in March 2007 and has not been fully analyzed until now. There is agreement among policy experts, including the Department of Homeland Security, that roughly 90 percent of illegal immigrants respond to Census Bureau surveys of this kind. This allows for separate estimates of the size and characteristics of the illegal immigrant population.
For more information, contact the author of the report, Steven Camarota, the Director of Research at the Center for Immigration Studies, at (202) 466-8185 or sac@cis.org .
Drawn from the archives on www.workingimmigrants.com....
First, the 30,000 foot overview. The U.S. is premier among major countries in scale of immigrant activity. Some 37.5 million residents, or 12%, were born outside the country. World wide there are 3% of the world population living in a country other than their birth country. Almost one in five residents speak a language other than English at home. The number of cities in world with at least one million foreign born residents is 20. Eight of these are in the United States: Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC. In contrast number of these cities in India and China is zero.
Second, the demand for immigrant labor in the United States. Let’s look at manual jobs.
MIT professor David Autor projects that mental and manual jobs involving a level of irregularity in decision making and face to face servicing are growing. This concept explains why some manual jobs are expected to grow in the future along with the growth of high end mental jobs. Low skilled immigrant labor fills many of these manual jobs. About a quarter of residential construction workers and landscaping workers are undocumented workers alone; on top of that one needs to add documented immigrant workers.
Let’s look at skilled jobs. Fully one half of computer systems engineering jobs in America are filled by foreign born workers. Indians alone own 50% of all economy hotels in the U.S. Ten percent of doctors are foreign born, of these close to half are from India. There are 40,000 Indian physicians in the U.S, or about 4% of all doctors. The nursing profession is 11% foreign born.
Some other economies export a huge share of their workforce overseas and to the U.S. and this reflects major development in the American economy resulting in massive demand for low skilled labor. Sixteen percent of the Mexican workforce is working in the U.S. In the 1980s, Hispanic work immigration (documented and undocumented) was concentrated in the agricultural sector. In the 1990s, the concentration was in meat processing, as American firms located often large plants in rural areas (Kansas, hogs, North Carolina, chickens, etc). During this decade labor demand turned urban including residential construction.
We turn to how foreign workers get into the U.S. The number of persons (adults, children, retirees) formally admitted into the U.S. each year for permanent residence (which can lead to citizenship) is roughly about 1 million. Perhaps 400,000 of these new resident are working age adults.
There are in addition temporary work permits. The number of new H-1B temporary professional workers formally admitted each year (i.e. Bill Gate's programmers) is about 95,000 officially but due to Byzantine rules probably is more. The number of new H-2A temporary agricultural workers (special agricultural workers) admitted each year is about 200,000. And about 50,000 workers are admitted each year only a plethora of other work permit programs, ranging from university professors to star athletes. All told, these documented new workers each year are perhaps 750,000.
Undocumented worker growth is about 350,000 a year, mostly from Latin America but also from eastern Europe and elsewhere. Compare this with the roughly 750,000 undocumented workers which arrive. Now, many of these people may and do return permanently or temporarily to their homeland – some are on temporary visas -- but probably the lion’s share stay here. Of the 35 million foreign born, roughly 15 million may be in the workforce. The Pew Hispanic Center estimated in 2005 that the number of undocumented workers is 7.2 million. Thus, close to half of foreign born workers are undocumented.
Undocumented workers fills about half the jobs in America that meet these criteria: 1. Less than a high school education is required, and 2. the jobs are not in industries which enforce worker documentation requirements aggressively (such as healthcare, banking, and local government).
Per the Pew Hispanic Center, 55-60% of these undocumented workers are in formal employment and are paying social security taxes. About 3 million of the 7.2 million illegal workers are in occupations in which undocumented workers account for at least 15% of total employment in that occupation. These include construction labor (25%), cooks (20%). Maids and housecleaners (22%), and grounds maintenance (25%). among roofers, 29% of the total workforce is estimated to be undocumented workers.
What is the economic impact of illegal population in U.S.? A Texas study says that illegal household payments of consumer and property taxes (via rent or home ownership) exceeds by about 30% the taxpayer burden for education, healthcare, and incarceration.
Do illegal workers displace American workers? Some say yes, others say no. It appears that undocumented worker compensation is about 30% below what it would be with 100% worker protections afforded to Americans.
As reported 9/12 in the Washington Post, Nearly one in five people living in the United States speaks a language at home other than English, according to new Census data that illustrate the wide-ranging effects of immigration. California led the nation in immigrants, at 27 percent of the state's population, and in people who spoke a foreign language at home, at 43 percent. In this 2006 census version called the annual American Community Survey, there were 37.5 million foreign born in the U.S.
The full article:
Washington (AP) -- Nearly one in five people living in the United States speaks a language at home other than English, according to new Census data that illustrate the wide-ranging effects of immigration.
The number of immigrants nationwide reached an all-time high of 37.5 million in 2006, affecting incomes and education levels in many cities across the country. But the effects have not been uniform.
In most states, immigrants have added to the number of those lacking a high-school diploma, with almost half of those from Latin America falling into that category.
However, at the other end of the education spectrum, Asian immigrants are raising average education levels in many states, with nearly half of them holding at least a bachelor's degree.
'There is no one-size-fits-all policy that you could apply for all immigrant groups,' said Mark Mather of the Population Reference Bureau. 'I think most of the attention has been on low-skilled workers coming from Mexico. But we have 10 million immigrants from Asia, a number that's growing.'
Continue reading "Immigrant nation – new census data from 2006" »
I have already posted on how one quarter of technology start-ups in the United States involved foreign born entrepreneurs.
BusinessWeek.com ran a story in the current issue about the son of illegal migrant workers from northern Mexico who eventually secured green cards as sponsored agricultural workers. Diago Borrego founded Networkcar in 1999 and currently serves as the firm's director of engineering.
Networkcar designs and markets software that provides wireless vehicle management to fleet managers. The installed software monitors vehicles' locations and diagnostics wirelessly, reporting up-to-the-minute status via the Internet.
The article traces his life from birth in an El Paso indigent clinic up to the present. Thanks to Valerie Chereskin for alerting me to this article.
The Atlantic Monthly (subscription required) has an article in its April 2007 edition called “The Mexican Connection.” I have posted on this before (search for “remittance”). The main contribution of this article is to pinpoint the regional sources of many of U.S. based workers -- states immediately northwest of Mexico City: “ Five predominantly rural Mexican states—Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, San Luis Potosí, and Zacatecas—send a disproportionately large number of emigrants to the United States. Their links to the U.S. date back a century, to when American mining and railroad companies recruited workers from these regions to offset reductions in Chinese and Japanese immigration. Home to less than a third of Mexico’s population, they receive 44 percent of Mexico’s remittances.”
The Mexican Connection
by Matthew Quirk
Among the crumbling adobe shacks of rural Mexico, two-story California- style housing developments are rising. In the tiny city of Tlacolula, plots of land that sold for about $10,000 in 1994 now cost $60,000. Like the towns where they are going up, the new developments are partly empty. The home owners are among the many Mexican workers—nearly one in seven overall, and half the adult population of some communities, such as La Purísima and San Juan Mixtepec—who are in the United States. Typically working low-wage jobs, they send home much of their pay (41 percent on average, or $300 a month) to support families left behind and build a better life for their return.
Remittances to Mexico exceed $20 billion a year.[Actually $25B – PFR] By 2003, they had become the nation’s second-largest source of external finance, ahead of tourism and foreign investment and just behind oil exports. That same year, then-President Vicente Fox noted that the roughly 20 million Mexican-origin workers in America create a larger gross product than Mexico itself. [This cannot be a correct figures – it is too large. There may be 20 million total Mexican-born people in the U.S. including children. – PFR]
Worldwide, remittances have surpassed direct aid in volume, and international development institutions (along with the governments of many less- developed countries) have recently seized upon them as a key to economic growth in the global South. The United States is the largest source of remittances—Saudi Arabia, with its armies of serflike guest workers, is No. 2—and Mexico the largest recipient of U.S. funds.
Continue reading "Regional sources of Mexican workers in U.S." »
The Pew Hispanic Center released a factsheet that examines recent trends in the employment of Latino workers in the U.S. labor market and focuses specifically on the construction industry.
Hispanic workers landed two out of every three new construction jobs in 2006, according to the analysis. They benefited from strong employment growth in the industry even as the housing market endured a year-long slump. Indeed, the construction industry continues to be a key source of jobs for Hispanics and especially for those who are foreign born and recently arrived.
Hispanic employment increased by almost 1 million from 2005 to 2006. Even though Latinos account for only 13.6% of total employment, they accounted for 36.7% of the increase in employment. The comparatively high share of employment reflects demographic changes in the U.S. About 40% of the total increase in the working-age population (16 and older) in 2006 was Hispanic and of these three-fourths are foreign born Latino workers.
Foreign-born Latinos who arrived since 2000 were responsible for about 24% of the total increase in employment in the U.S. labor market last year. Estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center suggest that in recent years about two-thirds of the increase in the employment of recently-arrived Hispanic workers has been due to unauthorized migration.
The estimates in the fact sheet are derived from data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. Most of the data is from the Current Population Survey, a monthly Census Bureau survey of approximately 60,000 households. Monthly data are combined to create larger sample sizes and to conduct the analysis on either an annual or quarterly basis. The analysis is for 2004-2006.
This is a quick guide to postings I have made in the past. These and other postings are listed in the right hand column segment called “popular posts.” You will find even more information if you go to the hyperlinks in each of these postings.
Go here to find estimates of the number of illegal workers by state and their share of the state’s workforce. Data drawn in part from the Pew Hispanic Center.
Go here to find federal government estimates of illegal immigrants, by country of origin and by when they arrived in the U.S.
Go here to find recent research findings on the impact of all immigrant as well as illegal immigrant labor on native born American wages.
And here for types of work performed by illegal immigrants and other data on these workers, from the Pew Hispanic Center.
Technology advances proceed apace while America is outsourcing jobs to developing countries. These two forces combine to increase the level of migration in the world. Much of this migration is into the U.S. by far the biggest in-migration country in the world. The net effect of this cycle is to improve middle class lives in the U.S. but worsen work prospects for poorly educated Americans.
Robert Feenstra of U.C. at Davis, who has long been a student of economic productivity, made a presentation on “Globalization and its Impact on Labor.” He goes a long way to describing the overwhelming power of forces behind the growth of low wage immigrant labor (including illegal labor) in the United States.
The essence of Feenstra’s story, leavened with information he does not include, is this:
Manufacturing labor in both the U.S. and Mexico have not benefited in the past 10-15 years even while the service workforce has benefited, by capturing the lion’s share of increases in the compensation pie.
This is in part because manufacturing growth in Mexico, expected due to NAFTA, failed to take place except in isolated areas like along the American border (Manquiladora). Thus good manufacturing jobs were not available at anywhere near the numbers needed for the ocuntry's work population. In part, a disproportionate share of economic gains went to service, not manufacturing jobs. The manufacturing sector was also hurt by American and Chinese competition.
Relatively disadvantaged workers in both countries have been making hard decisions on where or if to work. With economic distances expanding between workforce segments, making catch-up less probable, choices narrow down to if and where to migrate.
Mexicans, especially those at the lower end of that country’s education scale, have little prospects of rewards in Mexico and have come to the U.S. to, in effect, make middle class life more comfortable for Americans. Poorly educated American workers have been withdrawing at increasing rates from the workforce, either into part time work, idleness or disability pensions.
Here in the style of Powerpoint bullets, is the story:
One, technology is concentrating economic rewards in the service sector workforce and leaving production (i.e. manufacturing) stagnant. This is happening in developed as well as developing countries – The U.S. as well as Mexico. In the U.S. service workforce relative wages compared to manufacturing wages grew strongly since the mid 1980s.
Two, production jobs in the U.S. are being off-shored and an increasing number of service jobs as well. The next effect is the increase the average compensation of better educated services workers – in both the U.S. AND in the countries providing the off-shored labor.
Three, this offshoring has been responsible for about 1% of the 2.5% – 4% annual productivity growth in the U.S. economy. This is a big deal.
Fourth, in Mexico manufacturing worker wages have not grown appreciatively with NAFTA, which was supposed to set off an economic boom. Feenstra does not discuss farm workers in Mexico, but one gets the impression that both farm and manufacturing wages in Mexico have lagged.
Fifth, there has been a huge transborder shift of workers at the lower end of the wage and education scale.
Mexican labor has moved into the U.S. just as the most vulnerable American workers have been withdrawing from the American workforce. Not addressed by Feenstra, the labor force participation of poorly educated blacks is very low.
Some 70% of the American workforce with less than 8 years of education are foreign born, and 22% of the workforce with 8 to 11 year’ education.
And American workers are heading out the door. The SSDI (disabled worker insurance program) of the U.S. has been growing – very sharply in the past few years. Those exiting the labor market for federal disability pensions are largely manufacturing workers with limited education. In 1995, there were 1.1 million SSDI awards made. In 2004, there were 2.2 million made.
The European Union has sought from the beginning to stem migration from poorer new members by systmatically suppprting infrastructure and manaufacturing growth in the new members.
See Feenstra here.
Now waves of immigrants are mostly not skilled workers. But foreign born workers have a huge share of some skilled job categories.
Thanks to Immigrant Voice for bringing to my attention these figures.
Skilled workers are a small minority of U.S. legal immigrants. Of the 940,000 legal immigrants recorded in 2004, only 16% were skilled employment-based immigrants. This means that 150,000 of the almost one million new legal immigrants (permanent or temporary) came on a skilled based authorization. About 40% of these skilled immigrants had advanced degrees, or 5 or more years of experience after a baccalaureate degree.
Per Immigrant Voice, the impact of these workers’ contributions to American competitiveness belies their small number, because they make up a large share of all workers in certain professions.
In 1996 17% of all scientists and engineers were foreign born. That rose to 24% in 2002. Among scientists and engineers with PhDs or professional degrees, 38% were foreign born in 1996 and 43% in 2002.
Go to Chpter 2, page 57 of the 2006 Economic Report of the President for more information.
From the abstract of recent study by the Austin TX based research firm of Econone: In this paper we use data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) to estimate the number of years a Mexican born foreign worker could reasonably be expected to be employed or seeking employment in the U.S. labor market. We find, consistent with other studies of Mexican migrant workers, that the typical Mexican born worker who migrates to the U.S. to work does not spend their entire working life in the U.S. Our analysis shows the typical Mexican migrant can be expected to be active in the U.S. workforce between 6.1 and 11.1 years on average.
In passing into the second year of workingimmigrants.com, I have compiled some notable entries from the first year -- Peter Rousmaniere
Relative role of U.S. in transborder migration
Number of cities in world with at least one million foreign born residents: 20
Number of these cities in the United States: 8
Number of these cities in India or China: zero
Size of foreign born population in the world today: 200 million out of 6.5 billion (3%)
Size of foreign born population in U.S. Today: 35 million out of 300 million (12%)
Relative role of China in intraborder migration
Number of internal migrants from rural to urban areas in China: 150 million out of total population of 1.2 billion.
Off-shoring of work and the polarization of the American workforce
MIT professor David Autor argues that highly routine mental and manual jobs are being outsourced overseas or eliminated by automation, but that mental and manual jobs involving a level of irregularity in decision making and face to face servicing are growing. This concept explains why some manual jobs are expected to grow in the future along with the growth of high end mental jobs.
Impact of all immigrant workers on American workforce
Share of new jobs 2002 – 2012 to be filled by an immigrant: one out of eight
Size of illegal workforce
Illegal workers in U.S. as of early 2006: about 7.3 million
Illegal workers as % of total U.S. workforce: 4.9%
Illegal workers as % of total U.S. workforce in jobs requiring less than high school degree and without strict documentation requirements: 9/7%
Where do illegal workers work?
Per the Pew Hispanic Center:
Some 55-60% of these undocumented workers are in formal employment and are paying social security taxes
About 3 million of the 7.2 million illegal workers are in occupations in which undocumented workers account for at least 15% of total employment in that occupation. These include construction labor (25%), cooks (20%). Maids and housecleaners (22%), and grounds maintenance (25%). among roofers, 29% of the total workforce is estimated to be undocumented workers.
One half of undocumented working men here are single. But a phenomenal 94% of undocumented men work compared to 83% for native Americans.
Economic impact of illegal population in U.S.
A Texas study says that illegal household payments of consumer and property taxes (via rent or home ownership) exceeds by about 30% the taxpayer burden for education, healthcare, and incarceration.
Do illegal workers displace American workers?
Some say yes, others say no.
It appears that illegal worker compensation is about 30% below what it would be with 100% worker protections afforded to Americans. Go here for a case study.
Waves of Hispanic work immigration since 1980s
1980s: agricultural workers, mostly on farms
1990s: meat processing workers, mostly in rural; towns
2000s: urban work including residential construction: in cities and suburbs
Employment of Indians in the U.S.
They own 20,000 hotels, or 50% of all economy hotels in the U.S.
There are 40,000 Indian physicians in the U.S, or about 4% of all doctors
Role of foreign born entrepreneurs in the U.S.
They are involved in one quarter of all technology start-ups.
Yes.
Percentage of Philippine nurses working outside the Philippines
75%
Foreign nurses in the U.S.
300,000, or about 11% of all nurses. Mexican population in U.S. Percentage of Mexican workforce that is working in the U.S. 16% Remittances from Mexicans in U.S. to Mexico $25 billion in 2006 Total remittances from all parts of world to Latin America $54 billion in 2005 Number of community-based immigrant worker centers upwards of 200 Estimated number on any particular day: 117,600 at 500 sites in the U.S. Percentage who speak English very well: 3%
Foreign day laborers in the U.S.
I am just now getting around to posting this guide, here in English translation, and available in original comic book format here.
Guide for the Mexican Migrant
Distributed by the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Relations
INTRODUCTION
Esteemed Countryman:
The purpose of this guide is to provide you with practical advice that may prove useful to you in case you have made the difficult decision to search for employment opportunities outside of your country.
The sure way to enter another country is by getting your passport from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the visa, which you may apply for at the embassy or consulate of the country you wish to travel to.
However, in practice we see many Mexicans who try to cross the Northern Border without the necessary documents, through high risk zones that involve grave dangers, particularly in desert areas or rivers with strong, and not always obvious, currents.
Reading this guide will make you aware of some basic questions about the legal consequences of your stay in the United States of America without the appropriate migratory documents, as well as about the rights you have in that country, once you are there, independent of your migratory status.
Keep in mind always that there exist legal mechanisms to enter the United States of America legally.
In any case, if you encounter problems or run into difficulties, remember that Mexico has 45 consulates in that country whose locations you can find listed in this publication.
Familiarize yourself with the closest consulate and make use of it.
DANGERS IN CROSSING HIGH RISK ZONES
Continue reading "Mexican Government guide for illegally entering the U.S." »
The Houston Chronicle reports, "More cash flows home, remittances from Mexicans working abroad reach $25 billion."
Mexico City -- Mexicans working abroad sent home a record $25 billion last year, most of it from the United States, according to a study released Friday. The estimated figure represents a 25 percent increase over 2005 and a nearly 80 percent surge since 2003, the Inter-American Development Bank, or IDB, said in its report. Remittances have surpassed tourism as Mexico's second-largest source of foreign revenue, helping support more than 4 million Mexican families, said the Washington-based bank, which lends to 26 member countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Oil is Mexico's largest foreign revenue producer.
The country's reliance on remittances from abroad is not necessarily a good thing, the bank said. 'No one should celebrate that Mexico is the largest remittances market in the world,' it said. 'It means the domestic economy is simply not generating enough jobs.'
Indeed, more than half of the Mexican emigrants surveyed in another recent study by the bank said they were unemployed before leaving for the U.S. Those who held jobs in Mexico earned an average of about $150 a month. By contrast, more than half found jobs within a month of arriving in the U.S., where they earned an average monthly salary of $900.
The bank made no distinction between Mexicans who were in the U.S. legally or illegally.
(More follows on the hyperlink.)
The Washington Post ran this article quoting the president of Swift as saying the raids were for show.
Meatpacker: Immigration Raids Were Show
The Associated Press, February 2, 2007
Greeley, CO (AP) -- The head of meatpacker Swift & Co. said federal officials wanted a high-profile example of an immigration crackdown when they staged raids at its plants in six states in an identity theft investigation late last year.
President and CEO Sam Rovit said the government rejected the company's offer to help in the investigation months before the Dec. 12 raids.
'They were looking for a marquee to show the administration it was tough on immigration,' he told the Greeley Tribune for a story published Friday.
Rovit denied knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and told the newspaper his company complied with federal hiring practices to check applicants' immigration status.
Rovit and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman did not immediately return phone and e-mail messages from The Associated Press Friday.
ICE arrested 1,282 workers during raids in Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Iowa and Minnesota. Of those, 246 now face state or federal identity theft charges and the rest face immigration charges.
Greeley-based Swift says it is the world's second-largest processor of fresh beef and pork, and employs about 20,000 people, including about 15,000 in the U.S.
From 1994 until NAFTA (The American Free Trade Agreement) took effect in 2001, “total trade with Mexico had increased by a factor of 2.3, the number of intracompany transferees crossing the border had risen by a factor of 5.6, the number of temporary workers by a factor of 4.8 and the number of tourists by a factor of 2.9.” This from an article by Douglas Massey, the Princeton professor about whom I have posted before. I read this week an article he wrote, as part of a WESAW course I am taking in my town.
Go here to find the article on migration.
Massey takes a global perspective on immigration: International migrant flows “are intimately connected to broader processes of economic integration that for the past half century have been shrinking the globe.”
Flows of commodities, services and information are matched by flows of people. The industrialized countries are caught in a “contradiction”: they want to globalize everything except the flow of people. America is dead center in this contradiction. As I posted before, we have the largest number of cities with at least one million in foreign born residents, but our politicians are largely fearful of immigration.
“Immigrants arrive because the same processes of globalization that create mobile populations in developing regions and a demand for their services in global cities also create links of transportation, communication politics and cultures to make international migration easier and cheaper.”
-- from Great Decisions, 2007 edition, the Foreign Policy Association
Go here, A U.N. website, to find past figures from 1950 and projections through 2050. It shows that Japan and Italy will begin to experience population declines in 2010-2015 and France after 2035. Canada and Australia will have very strong immigration rates (over 5% of population in many years). The U.S. follows. The immigration rates of Western European countries are much less. Mexico will export people at a substantial rate.
Thanks to Immigration News Blog for picking up the NY Times story on Shenzhen, the vast fulcrum of China’s mammoth internal worker migration movement. There are 150 million internal migrants within China. This number compares to the 200 million estimated transborder migrants currently in the work. Assuming a labor force participation rate of 80%, this means there are 30 million more internal migrant workers in China than the entire American workforce. Internal migration provides almost all the workers for the manufacturing centers along the coast, including Shenzhen, which is near Hong Kong.
From this article:
Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing village in the Pearl River delta, next to Hong Kong, when it was decreed a special economic zone in 1980 by the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Since then, the city has grown at an annual rate of 28 percent, though it slowed to 15 percent in 2005.
And…
Yu Di, a 19-year-old from Hubei Province with a junior high school education, said he worked in a grimy watch-casing factory, loading and unloading heavy boxes from a truck 11 hours a day, six days a week. With a salary of about $80 a month — and no benefits — Mr. Yu has to borrow money from his parents just to cover his living expenses. He lives in a dim and filthy dorm room, crammed with 12 bunk beds and mattresses made of bare springs covered with cardboard. “The only thing I regret is not working hard in school,” he said.
In the room next door, Zhou Hailin, 20, who grew up in Guang’an, the hometown of Deng Xiaoping, seems better off. Mr. Zhou, who came to the city four years ago, earns about $120 a month as a machinist in the same watch factory.
To do so, though, he must work eight-hour shifts, plus three or four hours of mandatory overtime, six days a week. A typical workday, he said, ends at 10:30 p.m., when he often goes to visit a sister who works in another factory nearby.
The complete article follows….
Continue reading "150 million internal migrants in China today" »
There are twenty metropolises in the world with at least one million non transient foreign born residents. The United States has more cities with foreign born populations of at least one million than any other country: eight. Asia has only two! This according to a study on migration available on the website of the Migration Policy Institute.
The study pinpoints the cities serving as magnets and ports of entry for huge waves of migration in the past several decades. Old magnets, such as Latin American cities, have become exporters of populations. And the study locates “hyper-diverse” cities, where a large share of the population is foreign born without dominance from one or two countries.
The authors did not address cities with large internally generated in-migration, such as cities in China.
The one million plus foreign born cities are:
Asia: Hong Kong, Singapore
Australia: Melbourne, Sydney
Europe: London, Paris, Moscow
Middle East: Dubai, Medina, Mecca, Riyadh
North America: Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Washington DC.
The United States has 14 cities with between 100,000 and 249,000 foreign born, and 15 cities with between 250,000 and 999,000 foreign born. They are scattered all across the United States.
The authors of this study write that “….answering the question "What are the world's top urban immigrant destinations?" required drilling down into existing census data from countries on every continent — data that never before had been gathered. Ultimately, data on the foreign born in 150 cities was compiled.
“The data are from a range of years, as country censuses are conducted in different years. Most of the data, however, are from the years 2000 to 2005…The cities mapped in this report are metropolitan areas of 1 million or more people with at least 100,000 foreign-born residents. Data were constructed by examining information on the foreign born for 150 cities in 52 countries.”
The authors explain why there are no Latin American or African cities in this list of twenty:
Latin American and African cities are absent from Figure 1, although they are destinations for internal and international migrants. This reflects the fact that most countries in these regions have a negative rate of net migration, meaning more emigrants leaving then immigrants arriving. Buenos Aires, a long-established immigrant destination, had fewer than 1 million foreign-born residents according to the 2001 Argentine census (approximately 920,000 foreign born), a decrease from earlier censuses. Other megacities in Latin America, such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City, attract far fewer foreign-born residents. If anything, these localities tend to be sources for immigrants to other regions of the world, including North America, Europe, and Japan. For many African countries, the data are simply not available at the urban scale. Even if the data were available, there is little evidence that African cities are attracting large numbers of foreign-born residents, with the exception of some cities in South Africa.
The one million plus cities in the middle east are there because of very large foreign worker populations. The population of Dubai is 80% foreign born.
There are “hyper-diverse cities” where one country is not dominant in the supply of foreign born residents. “Cities that meet this definition include established gateways such as New York, London, and Toronto, which together have approximately 9 million foreign-born residents. Other hyper-diverse cities include Sydney; Amsterdam; Copenhagen; Washington, DC; Hamburg; Munich; San Francisco; and Seattle. Such cities are a product of the globalization of labor that has both economic and cultural implications…..With over two million foreign-born residents, no one group dominates Toronto's immigrant stock. Nine countries account for half of the foreign-born population, while the rest of the foreign born come from nearly every country in the world.
A columnist in the NY Times says that Mexican men coming to work in the U.S, are relatively poorly educated. “Sixteen percent of the Mexican labor force is working in the United States at any point in time, and, of course, earning higher average wages than laborers in Mexico, so the impact of American policy on Mexico is significant.” Those will more education can get better jobs back home. They are also largely unmarried. Granting legal status to these workers, per the authors, will encourage more Mexican women to come, marry, and create stable, more productive households. The author make me think more carefully about the imbalances in the Mexican and U.S. labor market and the impact on immigration policy.
A better immigration policy would tighten the border, while allowing in more legal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin countries, and require higher levels of education. Young Mexicans would see greater reason to invest in education, to the benefit of all Mexican society, not just those who cross the border. The less educated Mexicans could be some of the biggest winners from immigration reform.
In the United States, employers have a greater incentive to train legal Mexican workers and combine their labors more effectively with capital investment; when the workers are illegal, employers create only the most makeshift of circumstances. The legality and thus physical ease of immigration would also encourage the arrival of more Mexican women, thereby remedying the gender imbalance and encouraging assimilation. In the short run, the greater number of immigrant children would raise costs in the United States for education and health care, but in the longer run those children would produce goods and services and pay taxes.
The column: Economic Scene. "The Immigration Answer? It’s in Mexico’s Classrooms"
Continue reading "Why poorer educated Mexican men come work in the U.S." »
My thanks to Joe Paduda for alerting me to Health Affair's articles on the nursing shortage. the shortage is real, will get worse, and is global. So any major new recruitment from abroad takes nurses from other countries. That is the message from a Linda Aiken, a professor of sociology, and director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Aiken wrote in the Health Affairs blog this month, “Currently, the United States is short an estimated 150,000 nurses. Yet over the next decade, more than 650,000 new jobs in nursing will be created. At the same time, an estimated 450,000 nurses will have retired. By 2020, the nurse shortage is expected to increase to 800,000……The nurse shortage isn’t confined to the U.S. — it’s global. Extracting nurses from other countries would simply bankrupt the international supply of nurses, affecting global health.”
In her 2004 article in Health Affairs, she wrote:
The world’s nurse supply appears insufficient to meet global needs now and in the future. Countries that use the most nurses should make the biggest investments in nursing education in both their own and the developing countries from which they recruit nurses. It is not common for developed countries to invest their international aid in nursing education, and this should change to help build sustainable nursing education infrastructures in developing countries.
Ethical recruitment guidelines provide a strategy for responsibly managing international nurse recruitment, although to date the first test case—the U.K. Department of Health guidelines—has been disappointing. Since 1999, when those guidelines were established, the outflow of nurses from sub-Saharan Africa to the United Kingdom has greatly increased, and emigration from South Africa has quadrupled. The challenge is in enforcement of the guidelines, especially considering the private, entrepreneurial character of international recruitment.
The most promising strategy for achieving international balance in health workforce resources is for each country to have an adequate and sustainable source of health professionals. A two-prong strategy is required for this to happen. First, developed countries must be more diligent in exploring actions to stabilize and increase their domestic supply of nurses and moderate demand through strategic investments. Second, even without the exodus of so many qualified health professionals to work in developed countries, most less developed countries do not have the health care workforce capacity to respond to the health problems of their citizens that also can threaten global health. Making health, especially nursing, a legitimate focus of international aid and democracy building is needed.
She addressed the limited supply of nurses trained overseas:
Continue reading "The nursing shortage: real, getting worse, and global" »
Here is some summary data on Indians who work in the United States, which I found at this website. There are roughly 2 million persons of Indian origin in the U. S. today.
About the Asian American Hotel Owners Association
Representing over 8,300 members, AAHOA is one of the leading forces in the hospitality industry and one of the most powerful Asian American advocacy groups. Together, the members own more than 20,000 hotels, which have over one million rooms, representing over 50 percent of the economy lodging properties and nearly 37 percent of all hotel properties in the United States.
Of the hotels owned by AAHOA members, approximately 11,700 are franchised while 6,300 are independent. The market value of the properties owned by AAHOA members is estimated to be $29.9 billion in franchised properties and $8.1 billion in independent properties.
About the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin
With a constituency of over 41,000 doctors and 10,000 medical students and residents, AAPI is the largest ethnic medical association in the United States and is the largest Indian American professional association in the United States.
It’s worth pausing to think about the November Congressional elections, the Hispanic vote, and the next few years of working immigrant policy. Will the elections results improve chances of a guest worker program being enacted?
There are about 200 million eligible voters in the U.S. About 8.6% of them are Hispanic. The Hispanic population is booming, though more of it is underage compared to white and black populations. Between 2002 and 2005, The Pew Hispanic Center reports that the Hispanic population grew by 21.5% compared to 1.6% among whites, 7.4% among blacks, and 24.6% among Asians.
In 2005, Hispanic comprised at least 5% of eligible votes in 15 states: AZ, CA, CO, FL, HI, IL, MA, NV, NJ, NM, NY, RI, TX, UT and WY.
Democratic takeover of Senate and/or the House will shift power to those who agree with Bush’s guest worker program ideas. Would the prospect of a guest worker program improve if the Hispanic vote on November 7 was more dominant than in the past? I say yes, especially if Hispanic turnout suggests a pattern of increasing participation trending towards white levels of participation.
A recent Pew Hispanic Center study on the 2006 elections reports that Hispanics increased as a share of eligible voters from 7.4% in 2000 to 8.6% in 2006. There are now 17 million Hispanic citizens over the age of 18.
The big question is if the historically low rate of Hispanic registration among eligible voters will improve. According to the Center, in 2004 the registration rates among eligible voters were 58% for “Latinos”, 69% for blacks, and 75% for whites.
This November, if Latinos register according to 2004 patterns, there will be 10 million registered Latino voters. If they register at the 2004 white rate, there will be 12.3 million registered Latino voters.
The Migration Information Service published this week a study of education, language speaking, and income patterns among Latin American and Asian second generation immigrants in southern California (San Diego) and southern Florida (Miami/ fort Lauderdale). I plucked out of the study some interesting figures on relative educational attainment and income of the family in which the second generation immigrant – usually at their mi 20s – is living.
At the low end of educational attainment and family income are Cambodian and Laotians in southern California and Haitians in southern Florida. In contrast, “At the other end, the combination of high parental human capital, a high proportion of intact families, and a neutral context of reception (as defined above), led second-generation Chinese and other Asians to extraordinary levels of educational achievement, only matched in South Florida by the offspring of upper-middle-class Cuban exiles who attended private schools. Vietnamese youths also did quite well despite low average levels of parental education.”
The schedule below lists the region, the nationality, the percentage of high school students who did not go onto higher education, and the average family income. The educational attainment percentage is the share who did NOT go onto higher ed.
These education figures don’t jibe well with national average. Nationally, ab