Geographic distribution of undocumented immigrants: estimates of undocumented aliens counted in the 1980 census by state

"This article presents estimates of the number of undocumented aliens counted in the 1980 [U.S.] census for each state and the District of Columbia. The estimates, which indicate that 2.06 million undocumented aliens were counted in the 1980 census, are not based on individual records, but are aggregate estimates derived by a residual technique. The census count of aliens (modified somewhat to account for deficiencies in the data) is compared with estimates of the legally resident alien population based on data collected by the Immigration and Naturalization Service in January 1980." Estimates are provided "for each of the states for selected countries of birth and for age, sex, and period of entry categories.... The origins of the undocumented alien population [are described], as well as some of their demographic characteristics. Some of the implications of the numbers and distribution of undocumented aliens are also discussed." This paper was originally presented at the 1984 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (see Population Index, Vol. 50, No. 3, Fall 1984, p. 435).     

Change in the undocumented alien population in the United States, 1979-1983

"This article presents estimates of the number of undocumented aliens included in the April 1983 Current Population Survey (CPS) derived by subtracting an estimate of the legally resident foreign born population from the survey estimate of all foreign born residents.... Also presented are similar estimates for the November 1979 CPS.... Estimates are presented by period of entry for Mexico and other groups of countries. Comparison of the April 1983 estimate with the census-based estimate and the November 1979 survey-based estimate provide an indication of growth in the undocumented alien population for 1980-83."     

The U.S. legalization program: a preliminary final report

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 made 4 types of aliens eligible to receive legalization benefits: 1) those who resided "continuously" in the US since January 1, 1982; 2) those who had worked in the US perishable-crop agriculture for 90 "man-days" in specified time periods (Special Agricultural Workers [SAWS]); 3) those who were in the US since before January 1, 1972; and 4) those classified as Cuban/Haitian entrants and who had been in the US since January 1, 1982. Estimates of the number of aliens eligible for legalization, not including SAWS, ranges from 1.834 million to 2.56 million. Estimates of undercounts of undocumented aliens are 10% for those who entered before 1975 and 37.5% for those who arrived after 1975. Other refinements in the estimates of undocumented aliens include adjustments for 1) ethnic group and location, 2) the growth of the undocumented population between the census date and the legalization eligibility date under IRCA, and 3) emigration and deportation rates. Out of the 1,581,800 applicants entered into the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) computers (from a total of 2.15 million applicants) as of May 20, 1988, 73.7% were Mexican nationals. Only 5 other countries contributed more than 1%: El Salvador (6.5%), Haiti (2.3%), Guatemala (2.2%), the Philippines (1%), and Colombia (1%). The Mexican percentage was unexpectedly high, perhaps because the legalization had been much more successful in the Southwest than anywhere else in the country. Reasons that Mexicans have a higher legalization participation rate than other nationalities include 1) the distant eligibility date; 2) ethnic differences among non-Mexican nationalities; 3) particularly in the northeast, fears of exposing one's illegal status to INS; 4) the difficulty of information reaching ethnic communities, 5) the reluctance of those already undergoing the naturalization process to risk the legalization process; and 6) the reluctance of employees to admit employment of undocumented aliens. In the end, more than 90% of applicants are expected to be granted temporary resident alien status (and about 70% of agricultural workers), for a total of more than 2 million people. Researchers estimate that 2.5 - 3 million more persons remain in an undocumented status in the US.     

Drug use,prostitution and the prevalence of AIDS: An analysis using census tracts

This paper reports on preliminary efforts to study at the census tract level the reciprocal relationships between AIDS and street crime, particularly prostitution and drug offenses and the prevalence of AIDS. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health provided the number of reported AIDS cases by census tract. The data on reported crimes and arrests, organized by reporting districts, came primarily from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and the Los Angeles City Police Department. Although this strategy needs replication and extension, the present findings suggest that sexual orientation, drug use and prostitution are useful risk variables at the census track level.     

Undocumented residents in the United States in 1990: issues of uncertainty in quantification

"Uncertainties are abundant about the measurement of net undocumented migration [to the United States] and change over the past two decades. This analysis presents possible upper and lower boundaries on components for estimating legal migration in 1980-1989 and on the foreign-born population in 1990. Positing ranges for net undocumented immigration, between 2 million and 4 million undocumented residents may have been counted in the 1990 census. The total number of undocumented residents may have been as high as 6 million."     

Parenting Strain Among Mexican‐Origin Mothers: Differences by Parental Legal Status and Neighborhood

Despite increasing recognition of the critical importance of legal status for understanding the well‐being of immigrants and their families, there has been scant research on this topic. Using Wave 1 of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (2000–2002) and the 2000 decennial census, the authors investigated how parenting strain among Mexican‐origin mothers varies by legal status and neighborhood context. They found significant differences in parenting strain by nativity and legal status, with undocumented mothers reporting the lowest level. Results from multilevel models with cross‐level interactions reveal that the influence of neighborhood immigrant concentration differs by legal status. Percent foreign born in the neighborhood is associated with reduced parenting strain for documented Mexican‐origin mothers, whereas it is associated with heightened parenting strain for undocumented Mexican‐origin mothers. The findings provide empirical support for the need to recognize legal status distinctions in studies of the well‐being of immigrants and their families.     

The unauthorized Mexican immigrant population and welfare in Los Angeles County: a comparative statistical analysis

"Using a unique 1994 Los Angeles County Household Survey of foreign-born Mexicans and the March 1994 and 1995 Current Population Surveys, we estimate the number of unauthorized Mexican immigrants (UMIs) residing in Los Angeles County, and compare their use of seven welfare programs with that of other non-U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens. Non-U.S. citizens were found to be no more likely than U.S. citizens to have used welfare, and UMIs were 11% (14%) less likely than other non-citizens (U.S.-born citizens).... We demonstrate how results differ depending on the unit of analysis employed, and on which programs constitute ?welfare'."     

Illegal immigrants in Texas: impact on social services and related considerations

A 1982-1983 survey of 868 undocumented aliens and a number of providers of public services showed that the state of Texas receives more from taxes paid by undocumented persons than it costs the state to provide them with public services, such as education, health care, corrections, and welfare. The same survey showed that 6 cities in the state (Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Houston, McAllen, and San Antonio) together expended more to provide services to undocumented aliens than they received in taxes. The survey concentrated on undocumented persons not detained by the immigration authorities and found that this group constituted a distinct population from those in detention centers in that the former exhibited normal characteristics of settled families, while the latter were predominantly the familiar young, single, and peripatetic males. A related finding is that the households of the transient group consist predominantly of undocumented persons whereas the households of the settled group contain a greater mixture of legal residents and illegal aliens. Undocumented persons do indeed use public services, primarily education and health services. They are rarely recipients of welfare services or food stamps. Undocumented persons do indeed pay taxes and those taxes that go to or revert to the state of Texas clearly exceed the cost to the state to provide services to those people. On the other hand, local governmental units (below the state level) in Texas must expend more to provide public services to illegal aliens than those governmental levels receive from the taxes paid by these persons. This is an administrative issue relating to the recipients of tax dollars and the government level on which the burden falls to provide certain services, primarily health care and education. Finally, since only about half of the settled population is in the job market in Texas, a quick fix of deportation of these persons would not create an equivalent number of jobs.     

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.     

Transnational Twist: Pecuniary Remittances and the Socioeconomic Integration of Authorized and Unauthorized Mexican Immigrants in Los Angeles County1

Annual U.S.‐Mexico pecuniary remittances are estimated to have more than doubled recently to at least $10 billion ‐ augmenting interest among policymakers, financial institutions, and transnational migrant communities concerning how relatively poor expatriate Mexicans sustain such large transfers and the impact on immigrant integration in the United States. We employ the 2001 Los Angeles County Mexican Immigrant Residency Status Survey (LAC‐MIRSS) to investigate how individual characteristics and social capital traditionally associated with integration, neighborhood context, and various investments in the United States influenced remitting in 2000. Remitting is estimated to have been inversely related to conventional integration metrics and influenced by community context in both sending and receiving areas. Contrary to straight‐line assimilation theories and more consistent with a transnational or nonlinear perspective, however, remittances are also estimated to have been positively related to immigrant homeownership in Los Angeles County and negatively associated with having had public health insurance such as Medicaid.     

Mexican Migration Networks in the United States, 1980–20001

Between 1980 and 2000, about 1.2 million Mexican immigrants settled in 47 new settlement states. In the past, these immigrants would have settled in California, Texas, or Illinois, the three traditional states for Mexican settlement. Explaining this dispersion, the network saturation theory claims that high‐volume migration of Mexicans finally saturated the housing and job opportunities of Mexicans in traditional states and especially in Los Angeles. High rents and low wages then encouraged Mexican immigrants to select new states for settlement. This article subjects the network saturation theory to a rigorous reanalysis using new evidence. The empirical results tend to confirm the network saturation theory.     

The status and rights of undocumented aliens in the United States

At the most general constitutional level, American immigration law contains 3 structural features that directly affect the rights of aliens, including undocumented ones: 1) the plenary power of the national government over immigration and aliens, 2) the federal system per se, and 3) the separation of powers at the national level. 4 factors that affect the rights of undocumented aliens are 1) the possibility of formal relief from deportation, 2) the possibility of procedural challenges to deportation, 3) the possibility of delay and the resulting ineffectiveness of formal immigration enforcement, and 4) the informal system of enforcement to which the Immigration and Naturalization Service has been forced to resort. Undocumented aliens in the US have full acccess to state and federal courts, possess extensive procedural rights, and have acquired important substantive rights. Recent developments concerning the rights of undocumented aliens under domestic American law raise a number of questions that have not yet been squarely faced, much less resolved in satisfactory ways. These include: 1) the actual utilization by undocumented aliens of public benefits to which they are not legally entitled, 2) the appropriate criteria for determining which rights should be established, 3) the barriers that preve nt undocumented aliens from asserting those rights, and 4) the implications for an effective and fair US immigration policy of expanding undocumented aliens' rights.     

Point of engagement: reducing disproportionality and improving child and family outcomes

This paper describes an innovative service delivery model to reduce the number of children entering the child welfare system. Point of Engagement (POE) is a collaborative family- and community-centered approach initiated in Compton, a regional office in Los Angeles County that serves south Los Angeles, a predominantly African American and Hispanic/Latino area. Over the past two years, the POE has been implemented in the Compton area by providing more thorough investigations, engaging families, and delivering needed services to children and families within their homes and communities. POE has demonstrated a reduction in the number of children removed from their families, an increase in the number of children returned to their families within one year, and an increase in the number of children finding legal permanency.     

Why advocacy research?: Reflections on research and activism with immigrant women

This article discusses some of the common problems that arise in fomenting participatory research, and proposes that some form of advocacy research may be a more accessible alternative. The advocacy research alternative is distinguished from the pure model of participatory research by several factors: 1) the people being studied do not control the research; 2) advocacy research recognizes that it is not always possible to know in advance precisely what research findings will in fact be “useful” as a tool of social change; and 3) advocacy research is realized through political action, but not necessarily in the same community in which the research was conducted. I discuss advocacy research by relating some of my research experiences in a Mexican undocumented immigrant community in northern California, and how I utilized some of the research materials in an outreach program aimed at Latina immigrant domestic workers in Los Angeles.     

Long-term immigration to the United States: new approaches to measurement

"The United Nations has recommended the measurement of types of international migration using demographic criteria, including length of stay and purpose of travel. Information systems at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) have the potential to provide a basis for documenting these demographic characteristics, in particular, length of stay of temporary migrants to the United States. This article analyzes these characteristics of selected categories of nonimmigrant aliens. The results of the analysis are used to produce series of estimates of alien immigration that conform more closely to the U.N. recommended definitions and better represent demographic concepts of long-term immigration. A strategy for measuring emigration of aliens from the United States using INS information systems is also described."     

The political and socioeconomic context of legal and illegal Mexican migration to the United States (1942-1984)

The US manpower shortage in industry and agriculture during World War II, combined with Mexico's burden of an excess number of unemployed laborers, provided the basis for serious labor negotiations between the US and Mexico. The result was the Bracero Agreement of 1942, a bilateral agreement involving annual quotas for the temporary hiring of Mexican braceros. On the surface the program worked well. However, there were points of contention between the 2 countries: 1) in opposition to Mexico's policy of placing recruitment centers in the interior of the country, US policy called for placing the centers near the border, to reduce transportation costs; 2) Texas, which received no braceros because of racial discrimination, relied upon illegal aliens for manual labor; 3) Texas flagrantly violated a 1948 agreement when the Border Patrol welcomed aliens across the river despite Mexican officials' threats to close the border; 4) legal braceros were confronted with competition from illegals who were willing to work for a lower wage; 5) in 1954, the Border patrol physically helped aliens across the border, while Mexican policy were physically restraining them; 6) with the conclusion of a new Bracero agreement in March 1954, illegal aliens were no longer needed, so more than 1 million were apprehended and deported to Mexico's interior. The termination of the Bracero Program in 1964 gave new impetus to illegal trafficking and the number of illegals apprehended began to increase steadily in 1965. The migration flow after 1964 was influenced by the following socioeconomic conditions in Mexico: 1) unemployment, 2) very large disparities in income distribution, 3) a discrimination of the rural sector in favor of the urban in the allocation of government funds, and 4) a dependency on foreign capital and technology. Also, it was cheap labor for the US. Neither the US nor Mexico has adopted policies related to either economic development or immigration that would systematically curtail or regulate the flow of Mexican migrants to the US. However, conflicting pressures limit the policy-making process. President Carter was limited in his policy options by the needs of large-scale commercial agriculture. President Reagan's idea of a guest-worker program did not develop into legislation. Mexico's Lopez Portillo administration counted on migration to the US as a substitute for redistributive land reform in its handling of rural political pressures; the migratory flow functioned as an "escape valve" helping to dilute the effects of rapid demographic increase and preserving the status quo.     

The effect of maquiladora employment on the monthly flow of Mexican undocumented immigration to the U.S., 1978-1982

"Some controversy has surrounded the extent to which employment in maquiladoras (assembly plants located along the Mexican border) has stimulated undocumented immigration to the United States. This study uses monthly data of maquiladora employment and INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] apprehensions in a 'push-pull' migration framework to study the association between these two variables during the April 1978 to January 1982 period. The findings suggest that there is a significantly negative relationship between the one month lag of maquiladora employment and INS apprehensions. Employment growth in the maquiladora sector tends to be followed by a reduction of apprehensions one month later. The study also finds that male and female apprehensions appear to respond to relatively similar economic factors."     

The "amnesty" aftermath: current policy issues stemming from the legalization programs of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act

"The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) created two one-time only legalization programs affecting nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants. Legalization has produced important changes among immigrants and in immigration policy. These changes include new patterns of immigrant social and economic adaptation to the United States and new immigrant flows through family ties to IRCA-legalized aliens.... This article combines data from a longitudinal survey of the IRCA-legalized population with qualitative field data on current immigration issues from key informants in eight high-immigration metropolitan areas. It reviews the political evolution and early implementation of legalization, the current socioeconomic position of legalized aliens, and changes in the immigration ?policy space' resulting from legalization."     

Undocumented Migration to the United States and the Wages of Mexican Immigrants

Prior work has documented the remarkable decline in the real wages of Mexican immigrant workers in the U.S. over the past several decades. Although some of this trend might be attributable to the changing characteristics of the migrants themselves, we argue that a more important change was the circumstances under within Mexican immigrants competed for jobs in the U.S. After 1986 a growing share of Mexican immigrants was undocumented, discrimination against them was mandated by federal law, and enforcement efforts rose in intensity. We combined data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) with independent estimates of the percentage undocumented among Mexicans living in the U.S. to estimate a series of regression models to test this hypothesis. Controlling for individual characteristics helps to explain the decline in the wages of immigrants, but does not eliminate the trend, which is only explained fully when the percentage undocumented is added to the model. A key date is 1986, confirmed by a Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition analysis, when undocumented hiring was criminalized and undocumented migration revived after IRCA's legalization programs ended. As the percentage undocumented rose to new heights in the face of employer sanctions, immigrant wages fell below what we would have observed under the former policy regime. Using newly available data from Warren and Warren (2013), we examined how variation in the percentage undocumented by state and year from 1990 through 2009 affected immigrant wages and confirmed a strong negative effect, but the addition of an interaction term to the model indicated that the negative effect was confined largely to undocumented migrants, whose wage penalty rose from 8 to 18 percent as the percentage undocumented rose from its observed minimum to maximum.     

A Community's Perceptions of Pediatric Social Outcomes in a Downsized Urban Hospital System

This article describes parental perceptions of pediatric services at Los Angeles County King/Drew Hospital and Medical Center after the hospital and its community clinics were restructured in the 1990s. Qualitative and quantitative measures are used to capture parental perceptions of service utilization, service convenience, and quality of care. The results are compared to hospital institutional operational data from patient flow analysis reports, appointment delay reports, and improving organizational performance committee reports. A comparison of parental perceptions of pediatric care is also made with findings from other post-devolution studies on access and quality of care at the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. The implications of the findings for hospital quality assurance processes and health services outcomes research are discussed.