In 2003, 2.6% of the American military were non-citizens. There were over 37,000 non-citizen active duty members of the armed forces, out of a total of 1,414,000 on active duty. About 6,000 enroll each year. Until recently a non-citizen had to serve three years, have already permanent resident (green card) status, to become naturalized. That is today reduced to one year. Normal minimum wait time for green card holders for naturalization is five years. These rules for military members are laid out in section 328 of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Category: Demographics
10% of young working ago persons in U.S. are non-citizens
And half of them are undocumented. This I derived from 2000 year estimates of 18-24 year old non-citizens by Jeff Passell, now of at the Pew Hispanic Center. Passell estimated that there were 2.9 million non-citizens in this age range. These young adults were 16% of the 18.5 million non-citizen population – a markedly higher rate than for the entire population – 9.6% were in this age group in 2000. Passel estimated that 51.3% were undocumented; 35.4% had green card (legal permanent status), 5.3% were refugees, and 7.4% were non immigrants (temporary workers, students, etc. There are about 600,000 foreign students in America. It just seems more). Bottom line: we are depending on foreign workers for one tenth of our new entrants into the workforce.
Census Bureau reports on Hispanic growth rate
I have been searching for the best media report on these findings, and Jim Quiggle sent me a copy of CNN’s. Hispanics have been and will continue to account for over a third of the country’s population increase. “The Population Resource Center cites statistics showing the average Hispanic woman will have three children in her lifetime; it’s 1.8 for non-Hispanic whites.”
It mutes the illegal-versus-legal debate,” said Linda Jacobson, director of domestic programs for the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. “We need to be more focused on how we meet the needs of children in immigrant families who are citizens.
Just look at the age demographics: “Census statistics also show that 45 percent of children under age 5 are from a racial or ethnic minority. The median age for Hispanics — the point at which half are older and half are younger — was 27.2 years in 2005. It was 30.0 years for blacks and 40.3 years for white non-Hispanics.”
NPR report on social impact back home of Mexican work migration to U.S.
On May 9, NPR ran a first part of a series on the social impact in Mexico of the migration of large numbers of adults to the United States for work. This first part threads a story of a troubled 14 year old whose father, then mother, left for the United States. “When Mexicans migrate to the United States, many leave their children in the care of extended families. That’s causing problems back in their home communities, with children doing poorly in school, dropping out or turning to crime,” reports NPR.
[School headmistress] Antonia Figaroa Ibanez says that more and more parents are leaving their children behind to be cared for by relatives. “It’s affecting us hugely,” she says. “Out of 73 children in one class, 10 have neither of their parents here. That’s a big number.”
Teacher Carmen Sanchez says that when a child’s parents leave, there is a clear consequence. “When they don’t have their father or mother, they lack confidence … in the academic sphere,” she says. “It means that they will be more likely to miss school and to drop out. They are also less respectful of their grandmothers or uncles or their teachers.”
Because crossing the border illegally has become more difficult and costly, migrants don’t want to risk returning to see their families.
More Mexican children and mothers have been coming to the United States, it appears, because only that way can they be with their fathers/husbands.
Illegal Immigrants, Immigration Reform and the Catholic Church
Donald Kerwin, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, a key advocacy group, wrote on 5/1 about the church’s positive, perhaps even militant stand, in regarding undocumented workers rights. He write about recent events and gives a short history of the experience of Catholic immigrants in the early decades of the 20th Century, when they often suffered from discrimination. “Cardinal Roger Mahony electrified the US immigration reform debate by announcing on March 1, 2006 (Ash Wednesday), that he would instruct archdiocesan priests and lay Catholics to ignore provisions in a House-passed “enforcement only” bill (H.R. 4437) — were they to pass — that would make it a crime to assist unauthorized immigrants.”
In February 2003….bishops in the United States and Mexico released Strangers No Longer: Together on a Journey of Hope, a pastoral statement that called for a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. Strangers No Longer built on themes established in other pastoral statements by US bishops (One Family Under God in 1995 and Unity in Diversity in 2000), annual statements by the Holy Father on migration, and a long history of Catholic teaching documents. The US bishops have conducted extensive rollout of these documents through public gatherings, within the relevant church structures, and to lay Catholics, in response to what it sees as increasingly harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislation.
Kerwin provides an historical perspective: “….The church sees parallels between the last great wave of immigrants to the United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the current wave.”
Continue reading Illegal Immigrants, Immigration Reform and the Catholic Church
Strangers No Longer: Catholic Church’s statement on Hispanic illegal immigration
This February 2003, pastoral letter signed by Mexican and American bishops in the Catholic Church forms a foundation for the church’s strong support of immigration reform that gives undocumented immigrants legal protections. The letter addresses the broad social issues of all Hispanic immigration.
Selected numbered paragraphs:
102. We recognize the phenomenon of migration as an authentic sign of the times. We see it in both our countries through the suffering of those who have been forced to become migrants for many reasons. To such a sign we must respond in common and creative ways so that we may strengthen the faith, hope, and charity of migrants and all the People of God. Such a sign is a call to transform national and international social, economic, and political structures so that they may provide the conditions required for the development for all, without exclusion and discrimination against any person in any circumstance.
103. In effect, the Church is increasingly called to be “sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race” (Lumen Gentium, no. 1). The Catholic bishops of the United States and Mexico, in communion with the Holy Father in his 1995 World Migration Day message, affirm that
In the Church no one is a stranger, and the Church is not foreign to anyone, anywhere. As a sacrament of unity and thus a sign and a binding force for the whole human race, the Church is the place where illegal immigrants are also recognized and accepted as brothers and sisters. It is the task of the various Dioceses actively to ensure that these people, who are obliged to live outside the safety net of civil society, may find a sense of brotherhood in the Christian community. Solidarity means taking responsibility for those in trouble.
The Church must, therefore, welcome all persons regardless of race, culture, language, and nation with joy, charity, and hope. It must do so with special care for those who find themselves–regardless of motive–in situations of poverty, marginalization, and exclusion.
Continue reading Strangers No Longer: Catholic Church’s statement on Hispanic illegal immigration
Illegal immigrants want to stay, become U.S. citizens
In an earlier posting, I reported that the National Immigration Forum surveyed several hundred Spanish speaking undocumented workers in late 2005, and released the results at the end of March. That posting mainly addressed their use of documentation for work. This posting addresses preparation and desire to become American citizens. In short, the vast majority does wish to stay here and become citizens. A large minority of them is here with their spouses and/or children.
The results:
Continue reading Illegal immigrants want to stay, become U.S. citizens
Nursing shortages: foreign workers to fill them?
The United States employs about 2 million nurses, 60% of them in hospitals. We need more. A South Korean newspaper reports that 10,000 South Korean nurses are “likely be hired as nurses at U.S. hospitals over the next five years, a South Korean state firm said Friday. [It] said it plans to sign a contract with San Francisco-based worker dispatch company HRS Global and New York-based St. John’s Riverside Hospital…” In 2000 new nursing graduates totaled about 76,000, down from 95,000 in 1993. Based on current staffing requirements, there is today a shortage of about 125,000 nurses, as noted in this report. (A 300,000 shortage figure sometimes heard seems to be a substantial exaggeration.) Domestic graduations are not expected to increase. What would happen if nurses were paid 20% more?
Here’s the plan:
Continue reading Nursing shortages: foreign workers to fill them?
How illegal workers get and use documentation
The National Immigration Forum surveyed several hundred Spanish speaking undocumented workers in late 2005, and released the results at the end of March. Some of the more interesting items involve the obtaining and use of several sources of documentation. Only a minority are paid in part or all by check, and only 39% of those have taxes deducted from their paychecks. Here are some interesting points:
Survey information: Survey was conducted in Miami, Los Angeles and Chicago; Country of birth: 60% Mexican, the most divided evenly between Central and South America, with a small number of Dominicans; Duration in U.S. less than a year: 3%; 1 – 5 year, 42%; 6- 10 years, 34%; over 10 years, 21%; 74% never go back to home country. 75% work full time.
Identification used:
Home country driver’s license: 57%
Consular ID: 57%
Home country passport: 48%
Other kinds of documents: 45%
U.S. driver’s license: 13%
Other: 3%
What kind of documents did you need to show to your employer?
None: 67%
Facsimile of Social Security Card: 28%
Consular ID: 5%
Would you be able to prove that you have worked in the U.S?
Yes: 64%
No: 36%
How are you paid:
Cash only: 52%
Check: 21%
Check and cash: 28%
If you are paid in check, is money deducted from your pay check for taxes?
Yes: 39%
No: 61%
Another look at immigrant workers and declining labor force participation
The bumper sticker to this posting is that among several factors causing relatively fewer Americans to be employed or look for work, one of them is higher numbers of illegal workers. And one of the factors buried in the statistics of incremental decline in labor force rates is a positive one: not working in order to invest in education. Many young Americans continue to arrive at adulthood poorly educated, and they are vulnerable regardless of the presence of illegal workers. It is short-sighted to isolate the illegal workforce out of a more complex and more difficult set of conditions.
Continue reading Another look at immigrant workers and declining labor force participation