Immigration to the U.S.: the unfinished story

Annual totals of new immigrants and refugees in the US may now be up to the record highs of over a million immigrants counted in 6 years between 1905 and 1914. Since 1979, legal immigrants have averaged 566,000 a year (570,009 in 1985), newly arrived refugees and asylees approved have averaged 135,000, and the "settled" illegal immigrant population is growing by up to 1/2 million a year, according to some estimates. 1/2 of illegal immigrants are persons who entered the US legally but then overstayed the terms of temporary visas. Immigration and Naturalization Service apprehensions of illegal aliens, projected at a record 1.8 million for fiscal year 1986, indicate a sharp increase in illegal border crossers, driven by Mexico's and Central America's mounting population and economic pressures and lured by the prospect of jobs with employers who through a loophole in US immigration law can hire illegal aliens without penalty. The Census Bureau estimates that net immigration now accounts for 28% of US population growth and will account for all growth by the 2030's if fertility stays at the current low 1.8 births per woman. Public opinion strongly favors crubs on illegal immigration and legalization of illegal aliens long resident in the US, and in 1986 Congress enacted legislation to reduce illegal immigration to the US. Asians and Latin Americans now make up over 80% of legal immigrants and Latin Americans comprised 77% of illegal immigrants counted in the 1980 census. Asians far outstrip Latin American immigrants in education, occupational status, and income and might be expected to assimilate in the same manner as earlier immigrant group did. Hispanic immigrants so far appear to favor cultural pluralism, maintaining their own culture and the Spanish language. Research in California indicates that recent Hispanic immigrants (legal and illegal) have helped preserve low-wage industries and agriculture. Illegal immigrants appear to draw more on public health and education services than they pay back in taxes. With or without immigration reform, population and economic pressures in Mexico and the Caribbean Basin ensure that the numbers of people seeking to enter the US are only likely to increase.     

On Integrating Immigrants in Germany

Immigration to Germany in the decades following World War II made the Federal Republic the host of the largest number of immigrants in Europe. The size of the population with an immigration background is on the order of 15 million, nearly one‐fifth of the total population. (Many of these are ethnic German returnees.) Although restrictive policies and a less dynamic economy in recent years slowed the annual number of immigrants and asylum seekers, the interrelated demographic influences of very low fertility, negative natural population increase, and population aging make continuing future immigration likely and, judged by influential domestic interests, desirable. Anxieties about inadequate integration of immigrants in German society are, however, apparently strongly felt by large segments of the native population. The “Grand Coalition” government that took office in November 2005 considers the formation of an effective policy of integration a high priority. On 14 July 2006 an “Integration Summit” was convened in the Chancellery with the active participation of representatives of immigrant groups. Chancellor Angela Merkel called the Summit “an almost historical event.” Reproduced below in full is a non‐official English translation of a government statement (entitled “Good coexistence—Clear rules”) presented to the participants at the opening of the meeting. Intended as a “start of the development of a national integration plan,” the statement highlights existing deficiencies of integration, especially problems with second‐ and third‐generation immigrants: lack of mastery of the German language, weaknesses in education and training, high unemployment, lack of acceptance of the basic rules of coexistence, and violation of the law. The importance of these issues is underlined by a demographic fact noted in the statement: by 2010 it is expected that in Germany's large cities 50 percent of the population under age 40 will have an immigrant background. The statement recognizes the government's responsibility to help immigrants learn German and become better informed about the country's laws, culture, history, and political system. In turn, it demands reciprocal efforts from migrants living permanently and lawfully in Germany. The original German text of the statement is available at the Bundeskanzleramt home page: « http://www.bundesregierung.d »     

Horace Greeley on Immigrant Quality

Immigration to the United States increased steeply through the middle decades of the nineteenth century: on a population of 17 million in 1840, immigrant numbers totaled 1.7 million in the 1840s, 2.6 million in the 1850s, and, notwithstanding civil war, 2.3 million in the 1860s. Coinciding with this mass inflow was a rise in anti‐immigrant sentiment, manifested in a nativist political movement (the Know Nothing party). Migrants of particular national origins were singled out for denigration, such as Germans and Irish and later (on the West coast) Chinese. In an 1870 essay simply titled “Immigration,” Horace Greeley, an ardent protectionist, broadly welcomed migrants of any nationality. “That population is a main element of national strength… can scarcely need demonstration,” he begins, and ends, in high rhetorical flight: “our immigration in the future [will] wholly eclipse and belittle the grandest realizations of the past.” But beyond sheer numbers he points to the significance of migrant quality. There are those whose “coming would add largely to our numbers, but nothing at all to our strength, our worth, or our happiness.” At a minimum, settlers must show willingness to work; artisans and mechanics are better acquisitions. Most valuable of all are those rare persons displaying high entrepreneurial skill and inventiveness. Horace Greeley (1811–1872) was the founder (in 1841) and for 30 years the editor of the New York Tribune, the first nationally distributed newspaper in the United States. His editorials, written in a clear and vigorous style, brought wide attention to his views on the causes he espoused—anti‐slavery, labor unions, tariff protection, women's rights, and many others. His generally reformist positions on social and economic policy are expounded in a late work, Essays Designed to Elucidate the Science of Political Economy (Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1870), in which the piece on immigration appeared. The excerpt below is from pp. 317–320.     

Frank Fetter on Population Versus Prosperity

How population change affects human welfare was a central concern of economists during the decades that followed publication of Malthus's Essay. But from the middle of the nineteenth century, continuing for some one hundred years, population issues played a marginal role in economics, with leading figures of that discipline, particularly in the New World, turning their attention to the topic only episodically. The presidential address delivered by Frank Fetter to the American Economic Association in 1913 is a notable example of such attention. Frank Albert Fetter (1863–1949), much of whose career was spent as professor on the faculty of Princeton University, was a prominent economic theorist of the early decades of the twentieth century and author, among numerous other works, of the influential texts Principles of Economics (1904) and its two-volume successors, Economic Principles (1915) and Modern Economic Problems (1916 and 1922). Population was an early interest of Fetter's, as is shown by the topic of his doctoral dissertation, which he wrote, after studies at Indiana University, Cornell, and the Sorbonne, at the University of Halle (Versuch einer Bevölkerungslehre ausgehend von einer Kritik des Malthus'schen Bevölkerungsprincips, Jena: G. Fischer, 1894). His address to the AEA recalls that interest, looking back on the decade ending in 1910, a period of rapid population increase in the United States, fueled by heavy immigration. In the first part of the address, Fetter offers insightful comments on Malthus's novel humanitarian and democratic formulation of the population problem and on the contrasting demographic situation between Europe and the United States. But with the closing of the land frontier he sees American exceptionalism coming to an end, as the economic forces—abundant natural resources and progress in science and the “technical arts”—that heretofore counteracted the depressing effect of population growth on wages “have spent themselves.” At a time when the US population was about one-third of its present size, he argued that “we have passed the point of diminishing returns in the relation of our population to our resources.” Therefore “it is high time to revise the optimistic American doctrine of population.” To control “the fate and fortunes of the children of this and future generations,” the US would need a policy of conserving natural resources and retarding the increase of population. Of the two components of population growth—natural increase and immigration—only the latter is “controllable in large measure by legislative action.” Fetter thus devotes the second part of his address to a discussion of the effects of immigration on the American economy. His line of argument closely parallels an influential strand in the contemporary US debate on that issue. In the first decade of the century, the population of the United States grew by some 16 million and the number of immigrants was nearly 9 million. Fetter sees the potential for further immigration as nearly limitless, given an open-door policy. The motive to migrate to the United States would not cease “until real wages in America are leveled down to those of the most impoverished populations permitted to enter our ports.” Yet reducing American prosperity would afford “no permanent relief to the overcrowded lands,” as “natural increase quickly fills the ranks of an impoverished peasantry.” While unrestricted immigration is against the interest of the mass of the people, conflicting interests, ideas, and sentiments paralyze remedial action: individual or class advantage comes before consideration of the “larger national welfare.” Unless immigration is restricted, Americans may find “that they have bartered the peace and security of their children for the pleasures of a brief season.” The text of Fetter's address is reproduced below in full from American Economic Review, vol. 3, no. 1: Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, March 1913.     

An Italian Statement on International Migration

Increasing realization of the implications of persisting below‐replacement fertility in Europe—shrinking absolute numbers combined with a rising proportion of the elderly—is giving new salience to policy considerations regarding immigration in the countries most affected by low fertility. The recent United Nations report on “replacement migration” (see the Documents section in the June 2000 PDR) highlighted the issue through illustrative calculations showing the size of immigrant streams that would be needed for achieving specified demographic targets in selected lowfertility countries, given continuation of present fertility and mortality trends. For example, the UN report suggested that in Italy—which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world—maintaining a constant population over time would require a net influx of some 12.6 million immigrants during the next 50 years, and maintaining a constant labor forceage population (ages 15–64) would require a net inflow of 18.6 million. Yet immigration policy in Western Europe has become increasingly restrictive during the last quartercentury, and the official policy stance that regulating immigration is strictly within the domain of a country's sovereign right has been assiduously maintained. (International treaty obligations qualify that right in the case of bona fide asylum seekers; however, the definition of that category is also subject to the discretion of the receiving countries.) Thus, although within the European Union national borders are open to EU citizens, the power of regulating immigration from outside the EU is retained by the individual countries rather than subject to EU‐wide decisions. Suggestions coming from the developing countries to follow up the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development with an intergovernmental conference on international migration and development were set aside by the potential immigrant‐receiving countries as overly contentious. A statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy, Lamberto Dini, delivered at the 55th General Assembly of the United Nations, 13 September 2000, may be a sign of a notable shift in official approaches to immigration policy by at least one EU member state. The statement, in a departure from the practice of touching lightly upon a wide range of issues in international affairs, typical in high‐level ministerial speeches given at that UN forum, is devoted essentially to a single topic: international migration. It characterizes migration “between or within continents” as an international problem and advocates “coordinated and integrated” instruments in seeking a solution. It suggests that “today, with a declining birth rate and an aging population, Europe needs a strategy that embraces the complex process of integrating people from different regions of the world.” The rules for international migration, the statement claims, should be set in a global framework, such as provided by the United Nations. In the “age of globalization,”“a solidarity pact is needed to find the best and most effective way of balancing the supply and demand of labor.” With the omission of opening and closing ceremonial passages and a brief comment on the problem of debt relief, the statement is reproduced below.     

Unintended consequences of US immigration policy: explaining the post-1965 surge from Latin America

Immigration reforms in the United States initiated in the 1960s are widely thought to have opened the door to mass immigration from Asia and Latin America by eliminating past discriminatory policies. While this may be true for Asians, it is not the case for Latin Americans, who faced more restrictions to legal migration after 1965 than before. The boom in Latin American migration occurred in spite of rather than because of changes in US immigration law. In this article we describe how restrictions placed on the legal entry of Latin Americans, and especially Mexicans, set off a chain of events that in the ensuing decades had the paradoxical effect of producing more rather than fewer Latino immigrants. We offer an explanation for how and why Latinos in the United States, in just 40 years, increased from 9.6 million people and 5 percent of the population to 51 million people and 16 percent of the population, and why so many are now present without authorization.     

The President of Russia on Population

Russian president Vladimir Putin's 2005 annual address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, delivered on 25 April, was widely noted in the world press for the startling statement that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.” The address also contained a brief passage discussing the demographic problems of Russia. This passage, touching upon the issues of high mortality and the low birth rate, and commenting on drug abuse and alcoholism and on immigration policy, is reproduced below. The president expressed confidence that by creating conditions to “encourage people to have children, lower the mortality rate and bring order to immigration,” the size of the Russian population will gradually stabilize. (The United Nations medium population projection for Russia, which assumes gradual improvement of fertility and mortality, reaching a TFR of 1.85 and an expectation of life of 72 years by the 2040s, as well as net immigration exceeding 2 million persons, foresees a decline from the current 143 million to 112 million by 2050.) The full English text of the address can be accessed at http://president.kremlin.ru/eng/ .     

Welfare reform and immigrant fertility

Immigration policy is at the forefront of US policy discussions, and the use of welfare benefits by immigrants has been hotly debated. In 1996, Congress enacted welfare reform legislation, which imposed strict restrictions on welfare eligibility for noncitizens. However, a number of states restored access to welfare benefits to immigrants that had been cut out in the federal welfare reform law. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we examine whether immigrant women adjusted their childbearing in response to changes in the generosity of welfare benefits at the state-level. We find that noncitizen women reduced their fertility in response to cutbacks imposed by the legislation. Our findings, which prove robust to a number of identification and robustness checks, underscore how immigrants respond to state-level policies and provide insight into the potential impacts of comprehensive immigration reform, particularly the components related to the path to citizenship and access to public benefits.     

Family Sponsorship and Late-Age Immigration in Aging America: Revised and Expanded Estimates of Chained Migration

We use the Immigrants Admitted to the United States (microdata) supplemented with special tabulations from the Department of Homeland Security to examine how family reunification impacts the age composition of new immigrant cohorts since 1980. We develop a family migration multiplier measure for the period 1981–2009 that improves on prior studies by including immigrants granted legal status under the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act and relaxing unrealistic assumptions required by synthetic cohort measures. Results show that every 100 initiating immigrants admitted between 1981 and 1985 sponsored an average of 260 family members; the comparable figure for initiating immigrants for the 1996–2000 cohort is 345 family members. Furthermore, the number of family migrants ages 50 and over rose from 44 to 74 per 100 initiating migrants. The discussion considers the health and welfare implications of late-age immigration in a climate of growing fiscal restraint and an aging native population.     

Emigration from the USA: Multiplicity survey evidence

Special national surveys in the 1980s give the only recent data about emigrants from the USA, based on asking residents about their parents, siblings, and children living outside the USA who ever lived here. Each of the three surveys yielded an initial or minimal estimate of at least one million surviving emigrants. Adjusting for probable omission of emigrants without a resident immediate relative, the number of emigrants surviving as of 1990 is likely to exceed two million and, with alternative assumptions, could exceed three million. Due to inherent uncertainties in differing methodologies for measuring emigration for the past three decades, the implied level of emigration of permanent residents for the 1980s may be similar to previous levels. This finding contradicts popular belief of a simple direct association, i.e., that increasing immigration levels would be associated with increasing emigration levels. Emigration levels result from population heterogeneity on such characteristics as origin country, location and strength of familial ties, and reasons for coming to the USA, and associated probabilities of emigration. For many of the post-1965 immigrant cohorts, there is one or more decades during which emigration may yet occur.Abbreviations ALAs Americans living abroad - INS US Immigration and Naturalization Service - IRCA Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 - CPS Current Population Survey This article is partially based on a paper presented at the 1990 annual meeting of the Population Association of America in Toronto, Canada, while the author was a member of the Population Analysis Staff of the US Bureau of the Census.     

Do amnesty programs reduce undocumented immigration? Evidence from Irca

This article examines whether mass legalization programs reduce future undocumented immigration. We focus on the effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted amnesty to nearly 2.7 million undocumented immigrants. We report that apprehensions of persons attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally declined immediately following passage of the law but returned to normal levels during the period when undocumented immigrants could file for amnesty and the years thereafter. Our findings suggest that the amnesty program did not change long-term patterns of undocumented immigration from Mexico.     

Paul Fauchille on the Rights of Emigration and Immigration

International migration is squarely on the present‐day agenda of the international community, as attested by the newly released report of the Global Commission on International Migration (see the Documents section of this issue) and by recurrent controversy over proposals to establish a migration analogue to the World Trade Organization. Conventional assumptions about the prerogatives of national sovereignty come up against universalist views of human rights, the logic of globalization, and, in some measure, the regulative ambitions of international organizations. The last period in which this subject aroused comparable ferment was in the 1920s. At that time the main sources of migrants were not countries of the global “South” but self‐described overpopulated countries in Europe. In May 1924 one such country, Italy, convened what became known as the First International Emigration and Immigration Conference. Held in Rome, the meeting was attended by delegates from 57 countries and the League of Nations. Among its resolutions was an “Emigrants' Charter,” recognizing rights to emigrate and immigrate but with strong provisos. Thus the right to immigrate was subject to restrictions “imposed for economic and social reasons based in particular on the state of the labour market and the necessity of safeguarding the hygienic and moral interests of the country of immigration” (see the Notes on Migration section in Industrial and Labour Information [Geneva], Vol. XI, July‐Sept. 1924, pp. 54–68). A more systematic discussion of these putative rights appeared in an article published a few months earlier by a prominent French jurist, Paul Fauchille, which is excerpted below. The rights to emigrate and to immigrate are seen as broad and fairly symmetrical, able to be limited by a state only by appeal to its own right of self‐preservation. Circumscribing the right to emigrate may seem dated in the light of the blanket provision in Article 13 of the (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” (In Fauchille's extreme case, a state can seek to prohibit the wholesale flight of its population.) However, on immigration, about which the Universal Declaration is silent, “self‐preservation” yields a longer list of grounds for restriction. An issue with contemporary resonance is whether those grounds can include the wish by a state “to prevent a fusion of races which might alter its ethnic character or obliterate its national culture.” Restriction on such a basis would be justified, says Fauchille, only where the intending migrants “belonged to an absolutely different civilisation” and were large in number. Paul Fauchille (1858–1926) was an expert in international law, author of the four‐volume Traité de Droit International Public (8th ed., Paris, 1921–26). He was the founding editor of Revue générale du droit international public and founding director (from 1921) of the Institut des Hautes Études Internationales within the University of Paris. The excerpt below is the major part (subtitled “State and Individual Rights in Theory”) of Fauchille's article “The rights of emigration and immigration,” which appeared in the International Labour Review (Geneva), vol. IX, no. 3 (March 1924), pp. 317–333.     

Immigration and the American century

The full impact of immigration on American society is obscured in policy and academic analyses that focus on the short-term problems of immigrant adjustment. With a longer-term perspective, which includes the socioeconomic roles of the children of immigrants, immigration appears as one of the defining characteristics of twentieth-century America. Major waves of immigration create population diversity with new languages and cultures, but over time, while immigrants and their descendants become more "American," the character of American society and culture is transformed. In the early decades of the twentieth century, immigrants and their children were the majority of the workforce in many of the largest industrial cities; in recent decades, the arrival of immigrants and their families has slowed the demographic and economic decline of some American cities. The presence of immigrants probably creates as many jobs for native-born workers as are lost through displacement. Immigrants and their children played an important role in twentieth-century American politics and were influential in the development of American popular culture during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Intermarriage between the descendants of immigrants and old-stock Americans fosters a national identity based on civic participation rather than ancestry.     

Immigration Selection and the Educational Composition of the US Labor Force

Immigration policy is often viewed as an important regulator of the flow of labor and human capital into the labor market. In the US context, this perspective underlies efforts to raise the educational levels of newly admitted US immigrants, which has been proposed through a variety of mechanisms. Yet it remains unclear whether and under what circumstances such changes would significantly raise the educational level of the US labor force. We use a microsimulation model to evaluate the effects of various policy proposals that would seek to admit more highly educated immigrants. Results suggest that adopting a Canadian-style admissions policy that explicitly selects immigrants based on educational attainment would lead to a better educated labor force, especially among immigrants and their descendants. Eliminating all unauthorized immigration or family reunification and diversity admission categories, however, would have minimal impact. Additionally, the effects of all policy scenarios on the educational composition of the entire labor force are likely to be modest and would be conditional on the continuation of intergenerational mobility and high levels of immigration.     

Effects of the immigration act of 1965 on selected population characteristics of immigrants to the United States

Recent changes in immigration law have affected the characteristics of immigrants coming to the United States. The major changes in immigration policy contained in the 1965 Immigration Act, which amended the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, concerned the abolition of the quota system, preference system and labor clearances for certain classes of immigrants. The effects of these policy changes on two controversial characteristics of immigrants, their country of origin and occupational levels, are traced. The law led to clear changes in origin of immigrants. Southern European, Asian and Caribbean immigrants make up a larger proportion of immigrants than previously. Although the volume of immigration increased, the distribution of occupational levels remained about the same. The sources of the various occupational groups shifted to some extent, especially the professional level from Asian countries. Some effects of the policy changes and the changes in population characteristics on the American social and political scene are briefly outlined.     

International migration of professionals

Abstract Using chiefly data published by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service this paper presents a statistical summary of the trends in professional immigration into the United States. The proportion of immigrants who are professionals has been steadily increasing during recent decades, and change in immigration laws produced a sharper increase since 1965. The second trend of importance is the increasing proportion of professional immigrants who come from the less developed nations of the world. The effects of immigration on American science and medicine are discussed. Important benefits appear to have accrued to the U.S. The effects on the countries of origin are less beneficial. Finally, the reasons behind the migration of professionals are discussed.     

Are Migrants Going Up a Blind Alley? Economic Migration and Life Satisfaction around the World: Cross-National Evidence from Europe, North America and Australia

Are migrants satisfied with their decision to move to another country? Research shows that the income-wellbeing relationship is weak in wealthy countries, usually countries of destination. Are then economic migrants mistaken? Employing data from the Gallup World Poll, a representative sample of the world population, we investigate whether a general pattern of association exists between income and the cognitive component of subjective wellbeing, and whether this pattern differs by immigration status in 16 high-income countries. In only a handful of countries do we find a distinctive immigrant advantage in translating income into higher life evaluation or life satisfaction: Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden. For immigrants in most of these countries, income increases cognitive wellbeing even in the fifth income quintile. Depending on the measure used, immigrants in Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy and the US only have positive income-wellbeing associations at or below the third quintile. We take this as evidence that, among recent arrivals, income is positively associated with wellbeing up to the point in which non-pecuniary factors associated with long-term residence become dominant. We also find a number of “frustrated achievers” among the foreign born in the US, France and Finland. These immigrants report a negative association, in absolute value, between income and life satisfaction or life evaluation.     

Smoking and Variation in the Hispanic Paradox: A Comparison of Low Birthweight Across 33 US States

The Hispanic Paradox in birth outcomes is well documented for the US as a whole, but little work has considered geographic variation underlying the national pattern. This inquiry is important given the rapid growth of the Hispanic population and its geographic dispersion. Using birth records data from 2014 through 2016, we document state variation in birthweight differentials between US-born white women and the three Hispanic populations with the largest numbers of births: US-born Mexican women, foreign-born Mexican women, and foreign-born Central and South American women. Our analyses reveal substantial geographic variation in Hispanic immigrant–white low-birthweight disparities. For example, Hispanic immigrants in Southeastern states and in some states from other regions have reduced risk of low birthweight relative to whites, consistent with a “Hispanic Paradox.” A significant portion of Hispanic immigrants’ birthweight advantage in these states is explained by lower rates of smoking relative to whites. However, Hispanic immigrants have higher rates of low birthweight in California and several other Western states. The different state patterns are largely driven by geographic variation in smoking among whites, rather than geographic differences in Hispanic immigrants’ birthweights. In contrast, US-born Mexicans generally have similar or slightly higher odds of low birthweight than whites across the US. Overall, we show that the Hispanic Paradox in birthweight varies quite dramatically by state, driven by geographic variation in low birthweight among whites associated with white smoking disparities across states.     

Undocuqueer Stress: How Safe are “Safe” Spaces,and for Whom?

ABSTRACT

Exploring the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and immigration status, this study explored the concept of minority stress among 31 Latinx undocuqueer immigrants within the context of LGBTQ “safe” spaces. For participants, LGBTQ nightclubs and relationships represented important physical and symbolic spaces where they were able to understand what it meant to be undocuqueer. Participants described experiences of fear, anxiety, and rejection as they attempted to enter and exist within spaces presumably “safe” for LGBTQ people. The cumulative effect of feeling unsafe led participants to avoid certain spaces and inhibited their capacity to engage in relationships authentically. This study raises implications for research and policy related to serving LGBTQ and immigrant communities.