The Politics of Immigration (2nd Edition)

Questions and Answers

David Wilson, Jane Guskin

• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781583676387
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Emigration & Immigration
• Index: Social Sciences

A straightforward discussion of the issues surrounding immigration U.S. immigration has been the subject of furious debates for decades. On one side, politicians and the media talk about aliens and criminals, with calls to “deport them all.” On the other side, some advocates idealize immigrants and gloss over problems associated with immigration. Dialogue becomes possible when we dig deeper and ask tough questions: Why are people in other countries leaving their homes and coming here? What does it mean to be “illegal”? How do immigration raids, prisons, and border walls impact communities? Who suffers and who profits from our current system—and what would happen if we transformed it? The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers goes beyond soundbites to tackle these concerns in straightforward language and an accessible question-and-answer format. First published in 2007, this updated and expanded edition is an effective tool to confront current stereotypes and disinformation. Those who believe immigrants take jobs from citizens, don't pay taxes, strain public services, and threaten the dominant culture will find their assumptions challenged with compelling arguments and hard data. Ideal for classroom use, The Politics of Immigration provides those who are undecided about immigration with the facts and clear reasoning they need to develop an informed opinion.

1. Who Are the Immigrants?

IMMIGRANTS CURRENTLY MAKE UP AROUND the same proportion of the U.S. population as they did during the “great wave” of migration between the 1880s and 1920: between 13 and 14 percent. As happened during the first wave, some people view the newcomers as “too different” to integrate into U.S. society. The earlier waves mostly came from Europe. Jews, Catholics, and others from Eastern and Southern Europe were not necessarily seen as fully white at the time, but eventually they were accepted as white Americans.

Since 1965, a majority of immigrants have come from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Restrictive immigration laws push millions of them into a situation of “illegality,” and many face a hostile racial climate that views them as second-class citizens and perpetual outsiders. Will the changing demographics of the United States lead us to expand our ideas about who is American? Or will we continue to put up walls and to consolidate a caste system that limits rights and opportunities for large numbers of people?

How do we define immigrants?

Immigrants are people who move into one country from another in order to settle there. They are immigrants—incoming migrants—from the perspective of their new home. They are emigrants—outgoing migrants—in relation to the country they are leaving.

“Migrants” can also refer to people who move from one area to another within their own country. Over the decades following the Civil War, millions of African Americans fled oppressive conditions in the rural South to seek a better life in northern cities, or in the West.¹ Because the United States had been reunited, these migrants didn’t have to cross a national border, so they weren’t immigrants. If the war had ended differently, African Americans might have had to cross into another country in order to escape—just as some 20,000 to 30,000 of them did between 1820 and 1860, fleeing slavery in the South and dodging bounty hunters in the northern states to reach freedom in Canada through the Underground Railroad.²

The U.S. government uses the term “alien” to cover all the different types of people who come here from another country and are not U.S. citizens. Demographers—people who study populations and how they change—generally use the category “foreign born,” which includes naturalized citizens.

Foreign-born people living here with a legal status recognized by the federal government may be referred to as “authorized migrants” or “authorized immigrants.” The government includes in a category of “non-immigrants” those people who come here from other countries but don’t plan to stay, such as tourists and other visitors, temporary foreign workers, and international students. In reality, some “nonimmigrants” end up settling here, while some immigrants decide to return to their country of origin.

Terms such as “unauthorized,” “out of status,” or “undocumented” are used to describe immigrants who are living here without permission from the federal government, or who are violating the terms of their stay.

The government, some media outlets, and many ordinary people describe out-of-status immigrants as “illegal aliens,” “illegal immigrants,” or just “illegals.” But these terms contribute to a political climate that dehumanizes immigrants. The word illegal only makes sense when describing actions, not people—and in any case, unlawful presence in the United States is not a crime.³ At a meeting with immigration officers after the arrests of immigrant workers at a factory in Wisconsin in the summer of 2006, Sandra Jiménez, an authorized migrant from Mexico, asked an immigration officer to stop calling the detainees “illegal aliens.” “The word makes me think of strange little creatures,” Jiménez said. “I am not a Martian.”⁴

How many immigrants are here?

As of 2013, about 44 million foreign-born people had settled in the United States. Nearly half of them—19.3 million—had become naturalized citizens. Another 13.5 million people were lawful permanent residents (known in legal jargon as LPRs, often referred to as green card holders because the residency document used to be green). Over 100,000 refugees and asylees—people who were granted protection here after fleeing their home countries because of persecution, but who had not yet gained permanent residency—were also living in the United States. Another million or more “temporary legal residents” were here on work visas, as students, or as diplomats.⁵

It’s harder to figure out how many people are living here out of status. Most estimates now are based on a residual method, taking the number of foreign-born people counted in the surveys or by the U.S. Census Bureau, and then subtracting the number of authorized migrants reported by immigration authorities. Demographers know that some out-of-status immigrants evade census takers, so they add in a certain percentage to compensate for the undercount.

As of 2014 the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit research group in Washington, D.C., estimated the unauthorized population at 11.3 million, including people who had been granted temporary relief from deportation. This number had not changed much over the past five years.⁶

About 8.1 million undocumented immigrants were working or looking for work in 2012, making up about 5.1 percent of the total U.S. labor force, according to the Pew Research Center’s estimates. These figures too had been basically stable since 2007, when unauthorized workers reached a peak of 5.4 percent of the labor force.⁷

Are immigrants different from everyone else?

Compared to the general population, a larger proportion of immigrants are young adults, since immigrants tend to come here when they are at peak working age—that is, between twenty and fifty-four years old.⁸

In terms of family income, immigrants lag a bit behind people who were born here. In 2013, the median annual income for a household headed by a U.S.-born citizen was $52,500, compared to $48,000 for a household headed by an immigrant (regardless of status). When you compare immigrants from different regions, a stark contrast emerges: households headed by immigrants from South or East Asia had median incomes of $70,600, while those headed by immigrants from Mexico took in only $36,000.⁹

There is one major area in which immigrants are strikingly different from the general population: race and ethnicity. As of 2014, an estimated 77.5 percent of the overall U.S. population identified as white, whereas just 48 percent of the foreign born reported their race as white. Only 17.4 percent of the overall population identified as “Latino” or “Hispanic”—terms for people of Latin American heritage or their descendants, who may identify as any race or combination of races. Some 46 percent of the foreign born reported having Hispanic or Latino origins.¹⁰

Who are the undocumented immigrants?

Out-of-status immigrants make up a little more than a quarter of the foreign-born population, but they are often the focus of political debate and media stories. People sometimes use “immigrants” as shorthand for undocumented immigrants—and also make generalizations about the undocumented that are incorrect or overly broad.

There’s a common assumption that all out-of-status immigrants are Mexican, or at least Latino or “Hispanic.” Mexicans in fact make up the majority: about 52 percent of the estimated 11.7 million out-of-status immigrants in 2012 came from Mexico, according to the Pew Research Center—six million people. This is a slight decline from 2010, when Pew estimated that some 58 percent came from Mexico, with about 23 percent coming from Central and South America and the Caribbean, 11 percent from Asia, 4 percent from Europe and Canada, and 3 percent from Africa.¹¹

People sometimes assume all out-of-status immigrants “jumped the border.” Probably about half to two thirds of them come here without permission (“enter without inspection,” in immigration jargon): they slip across the Mexican or Canadian border in secret, take a boat from a Caribbean island, or use false papers to come through a port of entry. Some present themselves at a border post to request asylum. But many people enter with permission and then fail to leave when that permission expires—they become “overstays.” The overstays are more likely to come from Europe or Asia, rather than from Latin America or the Caribbean.¹²

The undocumented are often stereotyped as agricultural laborers. Many did work on farms in the past, and as of 2012 they made up just over a quarter of the U.S. agricultural labor force. But farmworkers are a small minority of the unauthorized immigrant labor force—about 4 percent.¹³ Some 18 percent of out-of-status workers were employed in leisure and hospitality (working in restaurants and hotels, for example), 16 percent in construction, 13 percent in manufacturing, and 22 percent in professional, business, or other services, a broad category that includes legal services, advertising, landscaping, nail salons, car washing, and more.¹⁴

Another stereotype is that the undocumented all work “off the books,” that is, in the informal, or underground, economy. In 2005, the New York Times quoted a Social Security Administration (SSA) official as saying the agency assumed that about 75 percent of unauthorized immigrants were working in the formal economy, paying the same income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes as other workers. The proportion later shrank as the government cracked down on people who were using false documents to work on the books. In a 2013 report, the SSA estimated that as of 2010 about 44 percent of undocumented workers were employed on the books, while 56 percent were working in the informal economy.¹⁵

One common perception is true: many of the undocumented work at low-paying jobs. A 2009 Pew report found that while households headed by the native-born had a median yearly income of $50,000, median income for households headed by out-of-status immigrants was just $36,000, even though these households generally had more members who worked.¹⁶

There’s also a common assumption that most unauthorized immigrants are recent arrivals. Yet as of 2015 the vast majority—probably about 85 percent—had been living here for more than a decade.¹⁷

Is there a “new wave” of immigration?

In 2013 the U.S. population was over 316 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and about 44 million foreign-born people were living here that year. This means that a little more than one in eight people—13.9 percent or less of the total population—came from somewhere else. The 11.3 million undocumented immigrants were 25.7 percent of the immigrant population, or 3.6 percent of the entire U.S. population.¹⁸

In 1965, just 4.4 percent of the total population in the United States was foreign born. The proportion of immigrants rose gradually to 6.2 percent in 1980, then more rapidly to 7.9 percent in 1990 and to 11.1 percent in 2000.¹⁹ The foreign-born population was 19.8 million in 1990; it had jumped to 31.1 million by 2000, a 57 percent increase.²⁰ The 1990–2000 growth rate was even faster for out-of-status immigrants. Their numbers rose at an annual rate of 500,000 a year, more than doubling from 3.5 million in 1990 to 8.5 million in 2000.²¹

The undocumented population continued to grow at the same rate until it reached 12.2 million in 2007. But with the onset of the “Great Recession” that year, the growth stopped—in fact, the estimated number of undocumented immigrants fell to about 11.2 million in 2010, and rose only slightly to about 11.3 million by 2013. In addition to the economic crisis in the United States, other factors slowing the flow of unauthorized immigrants include a significant reduction in birth rates in Mexico over the past half-century.²²

Is the “new wave” really new?

At 13.9 percent, the proportion of immigrants in the U.S. population of 2013 was comparable to what it was during much of the sixty-year period between 1860 and 1920, when the foreign-born population never dropped below 13.2 percent.²³

The number of new immigrants started to decline after 1924, when Congress approved a law severely restricting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Immigration from Asia had already been curtailed by a number of laws barring Chinese and other Asians. Because most im...