Black/immigrant competition re-assessed: new evidence from Los Angeles

Findings are presented from a survey of employers conducted to assess the impact of immigration and employer practices upon the chances of Blacks finding employment in Los Angeles. The highest ranking person involved in the hiring process at each of 44 restaurants, 46 printers, 41 hotels, and 39 furniture manufacturers was interviewed. The hiring of new employees drawn from the network of current employees seems to have the dual function of bringing immigrant communities into the workplace, while detaching vacancies from the open market, thereby reducing the number of employment opportunities for Blacks. Employers also perceived immigrants to be far more desirable employees than Blacks, partly because they believe that immigrants will work more productively. Immigrants are also seen as the more tractable laborers. Any managerial propensity to favor immigrants over Blacks will probably be reinforced by the attitudes of the mainly Latino work force, for placing a Black worker in a mainly Latino work crew may frustrate productivity given the animosity between the two ethnic groups. Blacks also appear to opt out of the low-level labor market in response to rising expectations, on the one hand, and the anticipation of encountering employment difficulties on the other.     

Exploring the Contextual Determinants of Individual Attitudes toward Immigrants and Criminal Activity and their Spillover Policy Implications

Immigrants are routinely tied to a range of social problems in the policy making process in the US political system. Little is known however about the extent to which citizens hold attitudes that connect immigrants to particular social problems and whether these attitudes spill over to influence citizens’ preferences toward specific public policy alternatives that might appear to be largely independent of immigrants and immigration. Investigating the nexus between immigration and crime, we ask how Anglo whites’ contextual environments influence their propensity to link immigrants to a salient social pathology like crime. Results show that whites living in states where immigrant populations have increased most dramatically and in states with lower socioeconomic characteristics are more likely to associate immigration with increased criminal activity. Whites’ attitudes toward immigration‐induced crime has important spillover implications to the larger public policy making process as whites who view immigrants as a cause of criminal activity are more likely to support tougher criminal sentencing and the death penalty.     

Black heterosexuals’ attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in the United States

Although the direction and intensity of Black heterosexuals’ attitudes toward homosexuality have been topics for considerable speculation, empirical data from representative samples previously have not been available. In the current article we report findings from a two‐wave telephone survey with a national probability sample of 391 Black heterosexual adults. Results indicated that negative attitudes toward homosexuality are widespread but do not appear to be more prevalent among Blacks than among Whites. Gender differences in Black heterosexuals’ attitudes (men's attitudes toward gay men were more negative than their attitudes toward lesbians or women's attitudes toward gay men) appeared to result primarily from men's greater tendency to regard male homosexuality as unnatural. The single most important predictor of attitudes was the attribution of choice to sexual orientation: Respondents who believed that homosexuality is beyond an individual's control expressed significantly more favorable attitudes toward gay men and lesbians than did respondents who regarded homosexuality as a choice. Consistent with previous research in predominantly White samples, respondents were more likely to express favorable attitudes if they were highly educated, unmarried, politically liberal, registered to vote and not religious, and if they included Blacks in their concept of gay men. In addition, respondents reported more favorable attitudes if they had experienced personal contact with gay men or lesbians, but this was not a significant predictor of attitudes when other variables were statistically controlled. Possible differences between Blacks’ and Whites’ social constructions of sexual orientation are discussed.     

Race and school enrollment among the children of African immigrants in the United States

This study examines whether previous findings of an immigrant schooling advantage among Blacks in the United States reflect a declining significance of race in the enrollment patterns of immigrants’ children. Using data from the 2000 US census, the study finds that, despite their advantage within the Black population, the children of Black Africans are collectively disadvantaged relative to the children of White Africans. Disparate enrollment trajectories are found among children in Black and White African families. Specifically, between the first and second generations, enrollment outcomes improved among the children of White Africans but declined among Black Africans’ children. The results also suggest that among immigrants from African multi-racial societies, pre-migration racial schooling disparities do not necessarily disappear after immigration to the United States. Additionally, the children of Black Africans from these contexts have worse outcomes than the children of other Black African immigrants and their relative disadvantage persists even after other factors are controlled.     

Migrants and asylum seekers: policy responses in the United States to immigrants and refugees from Central America and the Caribbean

This article analyzes the complex political environment of US immigration and refugee policies in which tensions exist, especially with regard to Central America and the Caribbean. Recommendations for managing it more effectively in the future are discussed. Several western countries, including the US, have implemented stricter restriction policies as a result of the perceived threats to their economies and cultural homogeneity. In general, US immigration policy has addressed both economic concerns and domestic pressures, whereas US refugee policy has reflected foreign policy concerns. As a result of these policies, there has been an increasing number of immigrants from Mexico, as well as huge numbers of refugees from Cuba and Nicaragua. Yet, there has been limited acceptance of asylum seekers from Haiti, El Salvador and Guatemala. Among the policies passed by the US Congress to reduce illegal immigration and limit assistance to legal immigrants were the Welfare Reform Act, Illegal Immigration Reform, Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996, and the Proposition 187 movement. Revisions in the procedures of the Immigration and Naturalization Service were also made.     

American Attitudes toward Guest Worker Policies

In this study we use data from a 2004 New York Times/CBS News national survey to analyze public opinion toward a guest worker program and to compare predictors of support for guest worker and general immigration policies. In general, Americans tend to be divided in their attitudes toward a guest worker program, although support for temporary worker policies is stronger when legalization for unauthorized immigrants is conditioned on certain requirements, and when the program is coupled with enhanced border security. The results of the bivariate probit analysis indicate that individuals who favor reducing the immigration level also tend to oppose instituting a guest worker program. Perceptions of the “costs” of immigration emerged as the most important determinant of individuals’ attitudes toward immigration policies; such beliefs contributed to opposition to a guest worker policy and support for reducing the immigration level. We also found that residents of high‐immigration states and Latinos were more likely to support a temporary worker program. However, these characteristics do not appear to influence individuals’ judgments about the number of immigrants who should be admitted to the United States. Findings regarding the impact of political partisanship and ideology on attitudes toward the two policies were more ambiguous.     

Explaining Attitudes toward Immigrants and Immigration Policy: A Review of the Theoretical Literature

In the research literature on immigration attitudes, there are a number of theories that explain why individuals hold positive or negative opinions of certain immigrant groups and immigration policies. In this review of the literature, the theories are summarized into five categories: personal and social identity, self and group interest, cultural values and beliefs, social interaction, and multilevel theories. The majority of the theories offer explanations that favor one causal direction, focus on social psychology or the social structural environment, and assume that effects are additive rather than interactive. It is argued in this review that scholars would benefit by using multilevel theories, such as group position theory and intersectionality, in order to extend their explanatory reach past the theoretical standards and, in doing so, be able to better examine some understudied but important questions, such as why individuals often hold pro‐ and anti‐immigrant opinions simultaneously. Multilevel theories have the potential to offer a nuanced understanding of immigration attitudes.     

Interracial and Intraracial Patterns of Mate Selection Among America’s Diverse Black Populations

Despite recent immigration from Africa and the Caribbean, Blacks in America are still viewed as a monolith in many previous studies. In this paper, we use newly released 2000 census data to estimate log‐linear models that highlight patterns of interracial and intraracial marriage and cohabitation among African Americans, West Indians, Africans, and Puerto Rican non‐Whites, and their interracial marriage and cohabitation with Whites. Based on data from several metropolitan areas, our results show that, despite lower socioeconomic status, native‐born African Americans are more likely than other Blacks to marry Whites; they also are more likely to marry other Black ethnics. West Indians, Africans, and Puerto Rican non‐Whites are more likely to marry African Americans than to marry Whites. Interracial relationships represent a greater share of cohabiting unions than marital unions. The majority of interracial unions, including native and immigrant Blacks, consist of a Black man and White woman. The implications for marital assimilation are discussed.     

Earning Gaps for Chinese Immigrants in Canada and the United States

This study compares the US and Canada on the gap in earnings between Chinese immigrants and native‐born whites. Canada and the US are arguably more alike than most possible country pairings, yet they differ in significant ways in their approaches to immigration and integration. The primary difference between Canada and the US regarding immigration policy is that Canada selects a larger proportion of economic immigrants – that is, those admitted based on their ability to contribute to the economy – than the US's focus on family reunification. Canadian immigration and multicultural integration policy does not appear to improve Chinese immigrant earnings in the way that might be predicted from Canada's skilled‐based immigrant selection policy and welcoming social context. In spite of a more laissez‐faire approach to immigrant integration and a less skill‐selective immigration policy, we show that Chinese immigrants are earning relatively more in the US than in Canada.     

Attitudes of Mexican Americans toward irregular immigration

This inquiry focuses on the attitudes of 314 Mexican Americans toward issues relating to current US immigration policy. Telephone and personal interviews were conducted in Hidalgo and Travis counties, Texas, with Mexican-Americans. Virtually all respondent groups oppose an increased rate of immigration, consider illegal immigration to be an important problem, support stricter enforcement of immigration laws, and believe that undocumented workers take jobs no one else wants. Half of the respondents identify illegal immigration as a regional rather than a personal problem. At the same time, the data suggest significant differences in both direction and intensity of attitudes between Mexican Americans of different generations, income, occupational levels, and region. There is general opposition to the requirement of a national identity card, but widespread support for penalizing employers of undocumented workers and for granting amnesty to undocumented workers. These findings allow an examination of the extent to which the Mexican American leadership, which has been overwhelmingly opposed to the Simpson-Mazzoli bill, accurately reflects the views of the Mexican American people. The leadership and the population at large agree on 2 of the 3 issues, amnesty and the national identity card, but disagree on employer sanctions. 1st, it may be that the leadership holds the kinds of jobs for which undocumented workers are unlikely to compete, so they may not feel threatened. 2nd, they may feel that instituting employer sanctions will create incentives for employers to discriminate in their hiring practices against all Latino-looking job applicants. Non-elite Mexican Americans who support employer sanctions may believe that the only way they can compete for jobs is to make it impossible for elites to be hired. Both groups appear to fear that, regardless of the specifics of immigration reform, Mexican Americans are likely to encounter increased discrimination in the job market.     

The Effect of Family Immigration History on Blacks in Higher Education

Social science research has a strong tradition of explicating the link between race and educational attainment. This review explores racial differences in achievement in higher education with the added dimension of family immigration history. In particular, this article focuses on Black students and compares African-Americans or native Blacks with those Black students whose families immigrated to the United States within the past two generations. Theories which aid in this comparison are: socioeconomic explanations, segmented assimilation theory, theories of social capital, the theory of oppositional culture, and stereotype threat. Empirical evidence for each theoretical explanation is provided. This article concludes with a call for further research in differences in educational attainment by race and immigrant generation, focusing on early education, emerging multi-racial groups, and gender.     

Interests Aren’t Everything: An Exploration of Economic Explanations of Immigration Policy in a New Destination

Current debates around US immigration policy are playing out against a backdrop that has changed significantly in the past 20 years: immigrants have increasingly gravitated towards “new destinations”; a large and growing portion of immigrants are undocumented; and the federal vacuum in responding to the promise and problems of these new immigration trends has devolved policy to the states. As a result, we have seen innovation on the state level as policymakers seek to accommodate, welcome or resist immigration, with varying degrees of success. In this paper, we explore the case of Utah as a new immigration destination, seeking to understand its transformation from a state with very inclusive immigrant policies as late as 1999 to one currently adopting highly restrictive immigrant policies. To explain this trajectory, we test three prominent materialist theories of public policy: instrumentalism, structuralism and strategic-relational approaches. We draw on a decade’s worth of primary data – including data on state-level legislation, key economic indicators, public statements concerning immigration from the private business sector and the LDS Church, and the editorial content of the state’s two major newspapers regarding immigration – to examine the policy explanations that grow out of interest-based theories of the state. Whereas these theories provide robust explanations for a large and diverse array of public policies, we find that they fall short in explaining immigration policy. While conventional wisdom – and extensive scholarly research – suggests that economic interests drive policy, we find that the policies around immigrants challenge this economic reductionism, suggesting the need for more complex and ideational accounts of this important phenomenon.     

Immigration: an international economic perspective

The creation of an effective US immigration policy has been complicated by the diversity of political interests and the absence of reliable statistics to determine the magnitude of the impact on the American economy. Estimates of the number of illegal aliens in the US range from 1 to 12 million. While political biases and complexities and data inadequacies complicate this analysis, some generalizations seem to be confirmed by worldwide experience. There are 2 mutually-supportive, short-run ways to reduce the flow of undocumented workers: 1) to better police US borders and shorelines and 2) to remove the motive for entry by making it illegal for employers to hire workers who are not authorized to work in the US. To give employers an easy defense and to facilitate their compliance with immigration laws, an effective worker identification system should be developed. To avoid the civil liberties, international relations, and human problems associated with mass deportations, illegal immigrants who entered the US before January 1, 1981 and who have been in continuous residence for at least 1 year, should be permitted to remain in the US as permanent resident aliens. The US should not adopt a new guest worker program. The proper sequence of changes in immigration policy is very important. Dealing with illegal immigration is essential; all these measures should be in place before an amnesty is granted. Because it is important to have friendly relations with neighboring countries and because the ultimate solution to illegal immigration is to reduce the wide disparities in employment opportunities between countries, the US should work with other countries to control illegal immigration, but should not link control to energy, trade, or other policies. It is particularly important to discuss immigration control plans with other countries, especially Mexico, and to do everything consistent with US interests to minimize the adverse impact of our immigration policies on our neighbors.     

Implicit Nativist Attitudes,Social Desirability,and Immigration Policy Preferences

While previous research on immigration attitudes among the American public has focused on factors such as economic threat, social context, and racial prejudice, fewer studies have examined the psychological determinants of immigration policy preferences. This study analyzes the results of an implicit association test (IAT) procedure that measures automatic nativist preferences for a traditional American culture versus a Latino‐American culture (i.e., implicit nativist attitudes). In brief, this study demonstrates that implicit nativist attitudes are fairly common, that they are an independent predictor of immigration policy attitudes, and that they affect those who are not explicitly nativist but who still hold restrictionist policy views.     

How Watershed Immigration Policies Affect American Public Opinion Over a Lifetime

Important political events are known to influence political socialization and development (Green, Palmquist, and Schickler 2002 ). It is also possible that such events impact political socialization within particular age cohorts, and also across important social groups who may be impacted differently by landmark events. This paper examines whether landmark immigration events can leave a permanent mark on an individual's views toward immigrants and immigration, and whether that impact varies across different ethnic/racial groups in the United States Specifically, we examine the cohort of individuals who were in their formative years during the passage of major US immigration bills that were proposed or enacted from 1965 to 2010. Altogether, we focus on four pieces of landmark immigration legislation. The findings reveal variations on the effect of these events depending on the group in question; a relationship also emerges between these landmark legislative events and attitudes on immigration policies. The analysis contributes to an ongoing debate regarding the ways in which political elites influence attitudes, and we discuss how the findings may apply to other contexts outside the US.     

On Impacts of Comparative Policy Analysis. Immigration to Israel:What other Countries can Learn

Israel is a country of immigrants. Between 1948 and 1997 more than three-quarters of its population entered the country from abroad. Particularly marked within this period was an increase of 20 per cent between 1989 and 1996 following the great wave of immigration from former USSR.
Israel's current absorption problems are a stark example of what is increasingly to be faced, for instance, by countries in South East Asia, North America, and Europe as cross-border migration becomes easier or a matter of survival.
Israel's experience with immigration waves during the last fifty years and its policies of immigration absorption, as well as the components of this policy agenda, should be relevant for other countries.
This article argues that comparative policy studies based on individualnational cases should be regarded as naturally occurring experiments fromwhich broader cross-national generalizations can be made. Their importancelies in their scope and in their ability to provide useful information that hastransnational impacts on policy problems and on policy solutions.     

Unauthorized Mexican workers in the 1990 Los Angeles County labour force

By analysing how unauthorized Mexicans compare with seven other ethno'racial groups in Los Angeles County, separately and collectively, by educational attainment and time spent in the US, we find that unauthorized Mexicans had relatively fewer years of formal education (either in the US or in Mexico) and had been in the US a relatively fewer number of years than in-migrants of other ethno-racial backgrounds in 1990. These findings are then used as proxies to compare the human capital endowments of different ethno-racial groups. We next estimate the number of unauthorized Mexicans by occupation, industry and class of workers, and compare these distributions with the total labour force and with the other ethno-racial groups in Los Angeles County. To the extent that unauthorized Mexicans are found to be substitutes (complements) in the labour market, they can be expected to be a valid (invalid) empirical source of social tension and hence contemporary restrictionist immigration policy sentiment. Results show that amounts of human capital are positively related to the kinds of occupations filled. Analysis of the percentage of discordant pairs shows that unauthorized Mexicans are found to be most dissimilar (potential complements) to non-Latino (1) Anglos; (2) Blacks; (3) American Indians, Aleuts, and Eskimos; and (4) Asians and Pacific Islanders. Results also show that those ethno-racial groups most similar to (potential substitutes for) unauthorized Mexicans are (1) legal Mexican in-migrants and (2) other Latino foreign-born persons (both authorized and unauthorized). The ethno-racial group which falls into the intermediate realm of (dis)similarity is US-born Mexican. Consequently, for most persons residing in Los Angeles County the rise of restrictionist immigrant sentiment is not consistent with their labour market experiences, and restrictionist immigration policy, to the extent it is based on a labour market competition assumptions, may not be justified.     

Family reunification and Philippine migration to the United States: the immigrants' perspective

This article focuses on the impact of the family reunification provisions in the US immigration policy for legal immigration from the Philippines. Immigration and Naturalization Service data on the changing pattern of Philippine immigration to the US between 1971 and 1984 show an increase of nearly 2 1/2 times in the number of immediate family members exempt from numerical limitations, a doubling in the number of immigrants entering under family preference categories, but a marked decline in the number of occupational preference immigrants. Immigration-related plans, behavior, and characteristics from the immigrants' perspective are also analyzed. A family unification policy-based typology has been constructed to categorize intended and actual immigrants to the US. Using this typology, systematic differences are reported for out-migration plans, family contacts, the immigration process, and the characteristics of intended and actual immigrants. While political and economic system competition and inequality are contextual factors for international migration, from the immigrants' perspective, joining family members by means of the family reunification provisions of the US immigration policy is the dominant explanation for legal immigration to the US in a sample of 1340 adults in Philippine households in 1982.     

State Immigration Policies: The Role of State Compacts and Interest Groups on Immigration Legislation

US states are active in enacting immigration policies, which vary widely and have substantial impact on the lives of immigrants. Our understanding of what produces these divergent state laws remains limited. Qualitative research demonstrates the importance of a 2010 immigration compact, supported by a powerful religious organization, in shaping immigration policies in Utah, and the Utah Compact was held up as a model for other states. But is the experience of Utah applicable across other states? We test the effects of compacts and interest groups on immigration policy adoption across all 50 states between 2005 and 2013. Our findings suggest that compacts are actually associated with more restrictive immigration policy. Although states with compacts are more likely to pass inclusive immigration laws, these are counterbalanced by higher numbers of exclusive laws. Both religious and non‐religious interests groups are associated with policy, but they do not explain the effects of compacts.     

Las Migraciones en el Proceso de Integracion de las Americas: Seminario Internacional (Migration in the Integration Process in the Americas: International Seminar). Conference report

This conference report of the Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos and the Center for Migration Studies pertains to meetings held in August 1992. Summary information on migration movements in Latin America is presented by region and subject. The topic of integration in the Americas was presented by Mr. Lelio Marmora. Other topics and presenters include the new Colombian Migration Policy (Mr. Carlos Adolfo Arenas), the integration policies in Central America (Mr. Pilar Norza of Costa Rica, Raimundo Alvarado of El Salvador, and Luis Armando Gusman of Nicaragua), the Andean Pact agreements (representatives of each country), US immigration policy (Charles B. Keely), the Mexican integration with Latin America and immigration to the US (Jorge Bustamante), migration to Bolivia and Argentina and Chile, and transnationalism in the Caribbean (Professor Andre Corten). Migration policy needs to be tailored specifically to the situation in Latin America, and greater attention needs to be devoted to labor migrants' rights and working conditions. There are still fundamental differences among countries in policies regarding the free circulation of persons across borders. There is a division among those who support migration and those who are realists. National sovereignty issues are solvable because of a common national past and a relatively homogenous population. Another opinion is that Latin America is more diverse than commonly recognized. Capital is protected more in international agreements than is migrant labor. Regional integration for the US does mean immigration from Mexico. The US sees Mexican migration as a policy problem, and Mexico sees migration as a labor opportunity.