The earnings of Asian male immigrants in the Canadian labor market

"The earnings of Asian-born immigrants in the Canadian labor market declined relative to the earnings of native-born workers between 1981 and 1986. Analysis of the labor market performance of immigrants from four regions of Asia--Southern Asia, South East Asia, Eastern Asia and Western Asia--shows that Asian immigrants are a heterogeneous group. However, changes in the birthplace composition of Asian immigrants cannot explain the fall in the relative earnings of the Asian aggregate. Attention is drawn to the switch in the distribution of immigrants across the admission classes as a possible explanation of this phenomenon."     

Israeli immigrants in the United States: The question of community

Despite their possession of many social advantages such as high levels of education, familiarity with Western, urban culture, Caucasian appearance, relative economic security and ties to an established, co-ethnic community, much literature on Israeli immigrants in the U.S. depicts them as plagued by social and psychological alienation to the extent that they are incapable of creating viable ethnic communities. This paper uses field work and photography collected within the Israeli immigrant population of Los Angeles to critically examine the assertion that Israeli immigrants in the U.S. are much less organized than would be predicted by recent theories on immigrant adaptation and community formation. Based on this research, we argue that while Israelis are ambivalent about their presence in the U.S., they have created a variety of communal activities involving entrepreneurship, religion, culture, politics and leisure.     

Palestinian and Jewish Israeli-born immigrants in the United States

"This article considers both Arab and Jewish emigration from Israel to the United States, relying on the 5 percent Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the 1980 U.S. census. Using the ancestry and language questions to identify Jews and Arabs, we found that over 30 percent of Israeli-born Americans are Palestinian-Arab natives of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. While the Jews are of higher educational levels, hold better jobs and enjoy higher incomes than their Arab counterparts, both groups have relatively high socioeconomic characteristics. Both have high rates of self-employment, particularly the Palestinian-Arabs, who appear to serve as middlemen minority in the grocery store business in the cities where they reside. The fact that nearly a third of Israeli-born immigrants are Arabs accounts for the occupational diversity previously observed of Israelis in America but does not account for their income diversity as much as does differences between early and recent immigrants."     

Recent trends in Hispanic immigration to the United States

Recent patterns of Hispanic immigration to the United States are examined using data from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. "From 1960 to 1978 Hispanic immigration increased significantly, reflecting the general acceleration in total immigration to the United States. Demographic trends reveal that Hispanic immigrants are increasingly working-age women. Their occupation composition is primarily blue collar, with operatives emerging as the predominant job category during the 1970s." The authors note that these immigrants settle primarily in a small number of urban centers of Hispanic population and culture in the United States, and thus the effects of immigration will be concentrated on the low-skill segment of particular urban labor markets that already contain large numbers of Hispanic workers.     

Within inequality characteristics and adaptation of immigrants in the United States

Until recently, in works of literature, the assimilation of immigrants had been viewed as an individualistic rather than a community-based process. However, Hatton and Leigh (2011) showed that immigrants integrate to their host country as communities, not as individuals; hence, group characteristics play as much of a role as individual characteristics in terms of adaptation. This paper introduces another dimension to the immigrant adaptation proxies that reflect community-based characteristics. The fundamental assertion of this paper is that inequality can be used as a proxy of adaptation within immigrant groups. Immigrant groups that exhibit income and education distributions similar to those of the natives can be regarded as well-adapted groups, while those who exhibit vastly different distributions should be considered to be groups with limited adaptation. Using the American Community Survey (ACS) 2010 cohort, this paper presents the initial findings of the within-group inequality of immigrants. Then, a cross-sectional regression analysis is employed to analyze the determinants of inequality across these immigrant groups. The results suggest that immigrant community-based characteristics, such as average income, education, and number of years that the immigrants have spent in the US, can indeed explain most of the variation in inequality.     

Socioeconomic dualism: the case of Israeli-born immigrants in the United States

Relying on the 1980 US Census of Foreign-Born Population and the 1979 Immigration and Naturalization Service Public Use File, this article compares Israeli-born Americans (including Arabs) to both the US and Israeli populations with respect to age, marital status, unemployment, education, industry, occupation, and income as of 1979-1980. Some of the results, mainly those pertaining to the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of Israeli immigrants as compared to their society of origin, corroborate previous research. Thus, Israeli-born immigrants in the US held top white-collar jobs and were less likely to be unemployed than the rest of the Israeli labor force. Once in America, however, it seems that not all Israeli-born Americans are as successful as portrayed by past research. In fact, the Census data reveal occupational and economic dualism among the population of Israeli-born Americans. The reasons for this dualism are discussed.     

The Mexico of "the other side": Mexican immigrants in the United States

"The purpose of this work is to explore the advantages and disadvantages of... Mexican immigrant workers for the economy and the political and cultural status quo of the United States. The Mexican immigrant workers pose a dilemma for the United States. On the one hand, the United States needs them for a better functioning of its economy. On the other, the Mexican immigrant workers represent a racial, cultural and political challenge to the American 'establishment'.... Given the magnitude of the problem which the Mexican immigrants represent and the intense debate surrounding it, the cheap labour they represent for the economy of the United States and the unsolved conflicts this provokes, are fertile ground for the analysis of the economic, political and cultural interests competing for the degree of flexibility or the amount of policing the Mexican border should have." (SUMMARY IN ENG AND FRE)     

Foreign retirement income among new older immigrants in the United States

Older adults make up an increasing share of new legal immigrants to the United States. These immigrants are often financially dependent on family since they are often barred from receiving several US support programmes and are less likely to receive US retirement benefits than natives. However, little information exists as to whether they receive retirement income from abroad. Using the New Immigrant Survey (N=2,150), we find that only 8.1 per cent of older recent immigrants report receiving foreign retirement income. In logistic modelling, older immigrants from Asia and Latin America were less likely to receive retirement income from abroad than those from Europe (Odds ratio = 0.50, p<0.05; Odds ratio = 0.22, p<0.001, respectively). Results suggest that newly admitted older immigrants from Asia and Latin America face an additional economic disadvantage compared with older Europeans that cannot be attributed to their demographic and migration characteristics.     

Migration from Latin American countries to the United States: the economic,social and reproductive lives of Hispanic female immigrants, 1980

The authors describe the socioeconomic characteristics and fertility patterns of female immigrants from Latin America to the United States, with a focus on reasons for fertility differentials. "Using the one per cent public use sample from the 1970 and 1980 United States census, we first compare changes in socio economic characteristics from 1970 to 1980, and then examine the determinants of fertility of female immigrants to the United States, aged 16-49, from four Latin American areas or countries of birth.... The findings...suggest that there are direct effects of demographic, assimilation, and socioeconomic variables beyond those mediated by the variables in each of these sets. Further, regardless of the model, the effect of the clusters of demographic characteristics is most apparent. Age categories and marital status are the strongest indexed determinants of immigrant fertility.... The effect of education and employment is strong. Among assimilation variables, duration of residence and language ability are significant determinants of Hispanic immigrant fertility." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Dietary assimilation and health among hispanic immigrants to the United States

Three important findings emerge from this study using New Immigrant Survey data to examine dietary change and health among Hispanic immigrants. First, individuals who have been in the United States longer report a greater degree of dietary change. Second, after controlling for behavioral characteristics and preexisting diet-related conditions (diagnoses of high blood pressure and diabetes prior to coming to the United States), more dramatic levels of change in diet are associated with higher measures of body mass index. Based on respondents' comparisons of their current health to their health just prior to their most recent trip to the United States, change in diet as a result of immigrating to the United States is positively correlated with both better health and worse health. Among individuals reporting greater levels of dietary change, those with worse health have been in the United States for longer and are more likely to report the use of English at work than those reporting better health, factors that indicate acculturation and exposure to broader U.S. society.     

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.     

The effect of geographic mobility on male labor-force participants in the United States

We use both fixed-effects and random-effects regression models to measure the effect of geographic mobility on earnings of labor-force participants in the United States. The results support the humancapital hypothesis: six years after moving, real earnings of male labor-force participants are about 20 percent higher than they would have been had the move not occurred. Men younger than 40, and men with family-unit incomes no more than five times the poverty line, experience even larger benefits from moving. The geographic mobility that is characteristic of the United States’ flexible labor market, in general, is beneficial to the movers. Support for this research was provided by the United States Department of Agriculture, a research grant from the Faculty of Commerce, University of Wollongong, and a grant from the Labor Market and Regional Studies Center, University of Wollongong.     

Modelling the language shift process of Hispanic immigrants

Using data from the 1976 Survey of Income and Education, this article examines the language shift process of 3455 persons of Spanish mother tongue who were not born in the US. Findings show that 1) nearly 1/3 of the Spanish language immigrants arrive in the US in their middle teens to their early 20s, over 20% arrive before age 10, and less than 20% arrive after age 35; 2) the longer the length of stay, the more extensive the adoption of the English language; 3) the process of anglicization begins soon after arrival (within 18 months, 6.6% had made English their usual personal language); 4) some who had arrived before 1970 had become English monolinguals; 5) 20% of each immigrant group will remain essentially monolingual in Spanish, even after prolonged US residence; 6) the language shift process is more or less completed within about 15 years; 7) the younger the person at the time of arrival, the more extensive the shift to English; and 8) no additional language shift occurs after some 15 years of residence in the US. Approximately 80% of those aged 15-24 at time of arrival, 70% of those aged 25-34, 50% of those aged 35-44, and 30% of those aged 45 or more will come to speak English on a regular basis. Except for the oldest group, about 20% of those in each cohort will have been anglicized. Mexican and Puerto Rican immigrants have somewhat lower rates of language shift of all types to English than do Cuban, Central American, and other Hispanic immigrants. Spanish language immigrants are resisting neither the learning of English nor its adoption as a preferred usual language. However, the full impact of the anglicization occurring at any given time will not be felt until the next generation.     

Duration of residence in the United States and the fertility of U.S. immigrants

"This paper analyzes census data on the fertility of U.S. immigrants to study trends in fertility after migration. The results showed that immigrant fertility may rise after arrival in the new country perhaps because immigrants are making up for births or marriages that may have been postponed due to the move. After a period of time, the fertility of immigrants may fall and as immigrants become more assimilated to the new country their fertility may come to be similar to cohorts of longer duration. These relationships were examined in a multivariate context so that variations between groups in socioeconomic status, fertility in the country of origin, age and marital status could be controlled. Relationships were studied for all U.S. immigrants as well as for subgroups defined by country or region of origin. The results indicate that simple measures of immigrant fertility that do not consider duration of residence are likely to be misleading if used to draw conclusions about the fertility impacts of immigration and advisable policy interventions."     

Migrant selectivity and returns to skills: the case of Taiwanese immigrants in the United States

"This article examines the selection of international migration from Taiwan to the United States in terms of the skills and abilities of emigrants. Micro data from Taiwan and the U.S. are used to test Borjas' self-selection model (1987).... Based on the assumption that emigrants choose to move to the destination that can maximize their expected lifetime earnings and provide higher returns to their human capital, Heckman (1979) developed a two-stage method that allows one to correct the problem of selectivity bias and to estimate directions of the selection on the basis of observed characteristics (the levels of skills or education) and unobserved characteristics (innate ability or motivation) for both emigrants and non-emigrants." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)