immigration

The Los Angeles Times reports on the importance of the middle class for the city’s future, with special emphasis on middle class Latinos:

With this year’s census likely to show a Latino majority in both the city and county of Los Angeles, it’s obvious that our collective future is linked to the social health of that group of people. And if you think of Latinos only in the dysfunctional terms described in so many media reports, then a Third World L.A. seems like an inevitability.

While the experiences of poor and working-class Latino immigrants are often the focus of scholars and the media, other immigrants may go unnoticed:

You might not think about L.A.’s Latino middle class much. But USC sociologist Jody Agius Vallejo has eschewed more exotic topics to investigate its middling peculiarities.

Agius Vallejo’s research looks at the “pathways to success” that allow even people of humble immigrant origins to reach middle-class status. Her work rebuts the widespread perception that Mexican immigrants and their offspring are following what she calls a “trajectory of downward mobility into a permanent underclass.”

More on Agius Vallejo’s research:

Agius Vallejo interviewed 80 subjects who possessed at least three of these four characteristics: college educations, higher than average income, white-collar jobs and home ownership. Seventy percent of the people in her sample grew up in “disadvantaged” communities. Their parents had, on average, a sixth-grade education.

The members of this arriviste Mexican middle class might look like their white counterparts on paper, Agius Vallejo said. But in other ways they are different. Among other things, they have stronger social ties to poorer relatives.

Another of Agius Vallejo’s subjects is a lawyer who has recently visited jail (to bail out a cousin) and the social-security office (to help an uncle). Relatives turn to the lawyer in times of need because “she’s the one in the family with knowledge,” Agius Vallejo said. “She’s the one who’s made it to the middle class.”

Each person who achieves social mobility improves the overall well-being of the community. Social climbers show others behind them the way forward. “The future of the city really hinges on the mobility of immigrants,” Agius Vallejo told me.

The importance of the immigrant middle class extends beyond the city of Los Angeles, though:

A healthy middle class with Latin American roots is critical to the entire country’s future too. That’s what another USC professor, Dowell Myers, argues in his book “Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America.”

Myers, a demographer, says our aging country needs to invest in its younger, immigrant communities as an act of self-preservation. Immigrants’ incomes and rates of homeownership rise the longer they stay in this country, he writes, and provide potential members of the taxpaying middle class that will fund the retirement of the boomer generation.

Immigration researcher, Marta Tienda, was recently profiled on NJ.com:

She is one of the world’s foremost sociologists, an achievement she insists has little to do with genius and everything to do with “trying harder than everybody else.”

“What I bring to the table is proof that anybody can make it if they do the work,” says Tienda, 59. “I want what I am and where I came from to resonate with people, particularly young Hispanic women.” …

Tienda’s road to excellence began as a child migrant worker in the farm fields of the Midwest, where she picked vegetables alongside her three sisters, brother and her father, an illegal immigrant from Mexico.

It is a journey that involved loss, sacrifice and decades of 18-hour workdays.

At college, she developed a passion for social change:

Tienda studied Spanish literature on a full scholarship at the University of Michigan. Her plan to become a teacher was derailed by a summer job working with immigrants. Tienda discovered she could mediate change, for instance, when she convinced growers it was in their best interest to provide day care for workers. She vowed to become “a problem solver.”

She recognized that sociological research could be a tool to help improve the lives of Hispanic people in the U.S.:

For more than 20 years, Tienda has done just that, although her research has expanded to cover other minorities.

Her seminal work, “The Hispanic Population of the United States,” was published in 1987 and is still used in college classrooms. Analyzing demographic patterns over a 20-year period, it was the first authoritative description of this country’s diverse Hispanic population. It led to a professorship for Tienda at the University of Chicago.

There, she helped rebuild the population studies office into a world-renowned research center and eventually became chairwoman of the sociology department. She collaborated with Israeli sociologist Haya Stier on another benchmark study — “The Color of Opportunity: Pathways to Family, Welfare and Work,” published in 2001. Based on a survey of Chicago’s racially diverse, inner city poor, it documented ways in which race limited economic opportunity.

Her strengths, colleagues say, lie in the breadth of her knowledge, her grasp of the mathematics that drive quantitative demographic research and, of course, that prodigious energy.

The New York Times reports that the number of foreign-born workers is on the rise in the U.S.

Nearly one in six American workers is foreign-born, the highest proportion since the 1920s, according to a census analysis released Monday.

Because of government barriers to immigration, the share of foreign-born workers dipped from a 20th-century high of 21 percent in 1910 to barely 5 percent in 1970, but has been rising since then, to the current 16 percent.

In 2007, immigrants accounted for more than one in four workers in California (35 percent), New York (27 percent), New Jersey (26 percent) and Nevada (25 percent).

But that’s not all the Census Bureau found:

For the first time, the Census Bureau also compared immigrants by generation. Generally, income and other measures of achievement rose from one generation to the next, although educational attainment peaked with the second generation.

Monica Boyd, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto, said the second generation personified “the overachievement model, a tendency for very high achievement that seems to come as a result of immigrant parents’ instilling in these kids an enormous drive.” Professor Boyd added, “Many try to instill in their kids the phrase, ‘We did this all for you.’ ”

Among all immigrant families, median income rose from $50,867 in the first generation to $63,359 and $65,144 in the second and third, respectively. The only group to register any decrease was family households headed by single mothers; their income declined from the second generation to the third.

Similarly, the overall proportion of immigrant families living below the government’s official poverty level declined, from 16.5 percent to 14.5 to 11.5 among three generations. But among adult immigrants, the proportion who are poor grew again between the second and third generations.

However, while overall measures of income seem to be improving from one generation to the next (with some variation among sub-goups), those for overall educational achievement tell a different story:

While the proportion of high school graduates increased from one generation to the next, the share who had bachelor’s degrees or more higher education declined from the second to the third generations. The proportion with doctorates peaked with the first generation.

Elizabeth Grieco, chief of the Census Bureau’s immigration statistics staff, said the figures suggested substantial progress from the first generation to the second.

“This really shows that immigrants integrate over time the same way they always have,” Ms. Grieco said.

In terms of education, she said, “the third generation seems to be stopping at bachelor’s or master’s degrees.”

So, what do sociologists make of this decline in educational attainment between second and third generations?

Nancy Foner, a sociology professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, said, “If there is some evidence of third-generation decline, then this no doubt has a lot to do with persistent inequalities and disadvantages facing many of the second generation and their children.”

Professor Foner added that “the economic declines of the past few years no doubt play a role” and that “it could also be that second-generation parents, themselves born in the U.S., are less optimistic and push their children less hard than their own immigrant parents who came here and struggled so their children could succeed.”

The North County Times reports that there is a “convergence in values” between Mexican and American people:

In fundamental attitudes about work, religion, sex, politics, the free market and the like, we are becoming more like each other, according to polls during the last 30 years, and the melding is only likely to continue. The growing economic integration under the North American Free Trade Agreement, an explosion in travel and communication, and the fact that 10 percent of Mexicans now live here and that many Americans are retiring there help push the trend.

Recent survey and poll data provides insight:

Half of all Mexicans in 2005 supported actually abolishing the border, a doubling since 1980, according to the latest World Values Surveys, done by a global association of sociologists.

This is consistent with a September Pew study showing that a third of Mexicans would “say yes” to moving to the U.S., and 18 percent would do so “without authorization.” They are pulled by jobs and relatives here, helping reverse what historically had been a deep suspicion of the U.S.

Indeed, the World Values survey finds that the number of Mexicans who distrust Americans as a people plummeted from 52 percent in 1990 to 31 percent, while those who trust us grew. Mexicans overwhelmingly look favorably on President Barack Obama, Gallup and other polls show, but that is a more fickle political measure.

Far fewer Americans —- 18 percent in the World Values survey —- favor union with Mexico. But until the recent drug violence along the border, nearly two-thirds of Americans have supported closer ties and had favorable views of Mexico, according to various polls from the last 20 years.

Americans remain righteous about maintaining national identity, but so do Mexicans. In fact, the World Values survey shows that Mexicans have more national pride than Americans, by a margin of 83 percent to 66 percent.

Even the gap between individualist versus collective orientations seems to be narrowing:

In the 1950s, the celebrated sociologists David Riesman and William Whyte lamented the decline of individualism in America, and they were partially right, as Americans have steadily placed higher emphasis on what polls coincidentally show are Mexican values oriented toward community, family and group.

At the same time, Mexicans in 1980 placed little emphasis on encouraging children to be independent, imaginative or determined, but now do so almost as much as Americans, according to World Values.

So…

The list goes on, and what such convergence on broad values means, at the very least, is that mutual understanding becomes easier.

The Sacramento Bee recently reported on a political battle unfolding over the 2010 Census that brings sociologists and demographers center stage.   The fight has begun over whether and how to count legal and illegal immigrants in the Census.

The context:  Senator David Vitter of Louisiana wants only legal citizens to be counted in the Census.  Steve Gándola, president and chief executive officer of the Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, wants to count all Latinos in the 2010 census, including millions of noncitizens.  Meanwhile, Rev. Miguel Rivera, who heads the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, wants illegal Latino immigrants to boycott the Census as a way to show their displeasure with Congress’ refusal to overhaul national immigration laws.  His motto: “No legalization, no enumeration.”

A sociologist weighs in on the stakes at hand:

With the largest Latino population in the nation, California has a big stake in the debate.  The Golden State would lose five of its 53 House seats if noncitizens were not counted, according to a study by Andrew Beveridge, a professor of sociology at Queens College in New York.

Some historical context on the issue:

Citizenship has never been a requirement, dating back to the first census in 1790, when each slave was counted as three-fifths of a person, said Clara Rodriguez, a sociology professor and census expert at Fordham University in New York.  “Slaves were not citizens,” she said. “They did not become citizens until after the Civil War.”

Rodriguez sympatheizes with Rev. Rivera’s goals but thinks the effort is misguided: 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Rodriguez said. “I think that they’re shooting themselves in the foot. I think if people are here, they should be counted. Whether they’re here in an undocumented fashion or not, you’re here. And most of these people have to work and pay taxes.”

Rodriguez said an organized boycott would just complicate the work of the federal officials who fret about undercounts every 10 years, when the census is conducted. In the past, she said, individuals have decided on their own whether or not to participate.

“The census has had a very hard time in the past getting people to cooperate, for a variety of reasons,” Rodriguez said.

“Some people don’t want to be bothered. Some people don’t want government interference. Some people don’t want to fill out all those forms. They don’t think the government should know all that. And some people don’t want the government to know that they’re here.”

A new study funded by the Ford, Joyce, Haynes and Russell Sage Foundations and publicized by the New York Times this week revealed that low-wage workers in the U.S. are often cheated out of their pay. The survey of workers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago found that low-wage workers are “routineley denied proper overtime pay and are often paid less than the minimum wage.”

The Times reports:

The study, the most comprehensive examination of wage-law violations in a decade, also found that 68 percent of the workers interviewed had experienced at least one pay-related violation in the previous work week.

“We were all surprised by the high prevalence rate,” said Ruth Milkman, one of the study’s authors and a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the City University of New York.

In surveying 4,387 workers in various low-wage industries, including apparel manufacturing, child care and discount retailing, the researchers found that the typical worker had lost $51 the previous week through wage violations, out of average weekly earnings of $339. That translates into a 15 percent loss in pay.

The researchers said one of the most surprising findings was how successful low-wage employers were in pressuring workers not to file for workers’ compensation. Only 8 percent of those who suffered serious injuries on the job filed for compensation to pay for medical care and missed days at work stemming from those injuries.

“The conventional wisdom has been that to the extent there were violations, it was confined to a few rogue employers or to especially disadvantaged workers, like undocumented immigrants,” said Nik Theodore, an author of the study and a professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois, Chicago. “What our study shows is that this is a widespread phenomenon across the low-wage labor market in the United States.”

More of their findings…

According to the study, 39 percent of those surveyed were illegal immigrants, 31 percent legal immigrants and 30 percent native-born Americans.

The study found that 26 percent of the workers had been paid less than the minimum wage the week before being surveyed and that one in seven had worked off the clock the previous week. In addition, 76 percent of those who had worked overtime the week before were not paid their proper overtime, the researchers found.

And…

The study found that women were far more likely to suffer minimum wage violations than men, with the highest prevalence among women who were illegal immigrants. Among American-born workers, African-Americans had a violation rate nearly triple that for whites.

“These practices are not just morally reprehensible, but they’re bad for the economy,” saidAnnette Bernhardt, an author of the study and policy co-director of the National Employment Law Project. “When unscrupulous employers break the law, they’re robbing families of money to put food on the table, they’re robbing communities of spending power and they’re robbing governments of vital tax revenues.”

Read more.

U.S. News and World Report also picked up the story.

The Houston Chronicle reported yesterday on the increasingly brazen tactics for crossing into the United States from Mexico. The Chronicle reports, “U.S. Border Patrol agent John Lopez has seen it all: Men hiding in tiny holes in the ground, in car trunks and behind seat backs. He’s even captured an illegal immigrant hiding in a suitcase. ‘You don’t expect to find someone in a suitcase. You never expect that,’ said Lopez, who is based in the Rio Grande Valley.”

These attempts to sneak people and drugs across the border are constantly changing and are often increasingly harmful to the immigrants, an alarming trend illustrated in several recent incidents.

• In Presidio County along the Texas-Mexico border, a man trained illegal immigrants who had just crossed the border to fake illnesses and call 911. Unwitting ambulance attendants took them to an Alpine hospital beyond the Border Patrol checkpoint near Marfa. The immigrants would refuse treatment and run away. Lionel Armendariz-Cabezuela, 38, was arrested in March and pled guilty to smuggling charges in the scheme.

• In the past few months, officials have intercepted three ultralight aircrafts attempting to smuggle drugs into the U.S. The small planes fly so low they evade radar and have been particularly active on the Arizona-Mexico border.

• In California, smugglers meticulously painted vehicles to resemble DHL package delivery trucks and a company contracted to help build the border fence. They used the vehicles to transport illegal immigrants to the U.S. in March and April. Some people in the construction company truck wore reflective vests and hard hats.

But the debate about reform versus enforcement is a complex one, and the Houston Chronicle calls upon sociologist Nestor Rodriguez, who has studied these migrants based at the University of Texas.

Immigrant rights advocates warn that it’s flawed and dangerous to put more focus on enforcement instead of reform. As it becomes more difficult to cross the border, people will take extreme risks, said Jennifer Allen, executive director of Arizona’s Border Action Network.

“People have to rely on smuggling networks. This means that smuggling networks continue to grow and become more costly, and they become more professionalized,” Allen said, adding that she expects smuggling to increase in remote areas.

Said Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas: “What I have learned from talking with migrants is that smugglers try a variety of old and new approaches to cross the border, so I don’t think there is just one approach.”

And another sociologist weighs in…

Unless officials reform immigration laws, though, it doesn’t matter whether border officials step up enforcement, said David Spener, a sociology professor at Trinity University in San Antonio.

“If the past is prologue, this will just mean more danger for migrants and more risky crossings,” Spener said.

Read more.

The Houston Chronicle ran a front page story earlier this week about how new numbers from the Pew Center indicate a shift in immigrant demographics. Nearly one in ten Texas children has an undocumented parent, while 73% of the children of illegal immigrants are U.S.-born citizens.

The Chronicle reports:

The Pew Hispanic Center released a report Tuesday estimating that about 73 percent of the children of illegal immigrant parents were U.S.-born citizens in 2008, up from roughly 63 percent in 2003. During that time frame, the estimated number of children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents increased from 2.7 million to 4 million. The report estimates that at least one in 10 Texas school children has a parent in the country illegally.

Pew’s estimates were based largely on March 2008 Census Bureau survey data, which was adjusted to account for census undercounting and legal status.

The report’s findings highlight an emotional issue in the immigration debate: mixed status families of undocumented parents and U.S.-born children. High-profile immigration enforcement raids across the country in recent years have generated stories of American schoolchildren coming home to find out their parents had been picked up by immigration officials.

The demographic shift will have significant implications through the summer as the immigration reform debate heats back up. Last week, the Obama administration indicated it was gearing up to tackle reform, including creating a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants.

The sociological commentary…

“These are American citizens, and we’re rounding up and deporting their parents,” said Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg, calling the overall immigration strategy “totally bankrupt,” and in need of repair.

Sociologist Katherine Donato elaborates…

Vanderbilt Sociology Professor Katharine M. Donato said the Pew Center’s findings highlight a marked shift in illegal immigration patterns, which in turn have changed the demographics of the nation’s undocumented population.

Donato said the U.S. immigration system used to be largely cyclical, with workers — legal and undocumented — returning to their home countries on a regular basis, until the massive buildup of agents and infrastructurealong the Southwest border in early 1990s.

Facing more dangerous treks and steeper smuggling fees, many illegal immigrants opted instead to bring their families to the U.S. and settle in here, which accounts for the growth in the share of births in the U.S., she said.

Read more.

The Houston Chronicle reports today on new naturalization statistics indicating that Latinos are driving the recent record-level surge in United States, comprising nearly half of the one million new Americans in 2008.  The numbers:

Nearly half of the record-setting 1 million new U.S. citizens sworn in last year were Latino immigrants — a 95 percent increase among that ethnic group from the previous year, according to an analysis by an Hispanic advocacy organization.

Department of Homeland Security data shows the number of immigrants naturalized in the U.S. grew from about 660,000 in 2007 to more than 1 million in 2008 — an increase of roughly 58 percent. The Houston metropolitan area saw more than 28,000 naturalizations last year, an increase of roughly 54 percent from 2007.

Nationally, Latino naturalizations jumped 95 percent from about 237,000 in 2007 to 461,000 in 2008, according to the analysis released Tuesday by the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. NALEO used data from the DHS’ Office of Immigration Statistics, counting immigrants who hailed from predominantly Spanish-speaking countries as Latinos.

And the sociologist weighs in…

Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas, said the growth in naturalization applicants was expected based on the level of legal immigration to the U.S. in the 1990s. More than 9.7 million people were admitted as legal permanent residents during that decade, he said, roughly 80 percent of them from Latin America and Asia. Although it takes only five years for a green-card holder to be eligible for citizenship, many historically have waited to take the oath.

“This is like a boa constrictor that eats something, and it makes its way through the body,” Rodriguez said. “This is the bump that’s going down the body.”

Rodriguez added that some new citizens may have been spurred to action by the fee increase that took effect in July 2007 and raised the cost of a citizenship application from $330 to $595.

And another sociologist…

Tom Janoski, an associate professor of sociology from the University of Kentucky who has researched international naturalization trends, said some new citizens may have been driven to apply because of a fear of deportation in many immigrant communities.

“One factor that causes people to naturalize is that they’re scared,” Janoski said.

Immigration officials conducted a series of high-profile work-site enforcement raids and targeted home raids in 2007 and 2008 that prompted protests. Unlike citizens, legal permanent residents convicted of crimes can be stripped of their legal status and put into deportation proceedings.

Read more.

The Chicago Sun Tribune ran a story today about how Chinese immigrants working in Italy’s fashion industry have had a transformative effect on the Tuscan city of Prato. While the impact of this wave of immigration and success appears positive, there are some indications that life for Chinese workers in the fashion industry be more grim than originally thought.

Christine Spolar reports:

Like some city neighborhoods, suburbs and small towns across the U.S. where Mexicans and other immigrants gather in search of jobs, Prato is a place where two culturally different communities can live side-by-side and never really know each other.

“In all my travels, I had never seen anything like it,” said Roberto Ye, a son of Chinese immigrants and an Italian citizen who opened a Western Union office in the heart of Prato. “I said to myself: This is not like being in Chinatown in Chicago or New York or anywhere else. This is like China. White people are the foreigners here.”

To understand the impact, follow the money. This year, Chinese immigrants in Italy sent home a whopping 1.68 billion euros, about $2.4 billion, the lion’s share of all 6 billion euros in remittances recorded by Italy’s government.

“You have to forget anything you have ever learned about immigration when you come to Prato. Forget typical patterns. Europe has turned itself into a global marketplace and the Chinese who come are trying to take advantage of that,” said Andrea Frattani, Prato’s multicultural minister.

The darker side of this success story…

Police have raided hundreds of crowded workshops in the past few years where Chinese live, work and sleep. They earn far-below standard wage yet produce wares reportedly sold even in designer shops.

Some Chinese offer excuses for breaking labor laws. Workers still find conditions in Italy better than in China, they claim. But law-enforcement agents argue that Italian and Chinese entrepreneurs wrongly squeeze the most vulnerable. Italians subcontract with Chinese businessmen to cover dodgy business practices. Chinese owners rule over workers desperate for jobs.

Authorities worry about potential dangers: Criminal networks can prey on outsiders who don’t speak the native language — and Italy is a place where mafias already operate.

Social integration between Italians and Chinese is almost non-existent; schools are the few places where the young of both cultures mingle.

The sociological commentary…

Chinese businesses exist in Italy but they aren’t part of Italy. There has been immigration but not integration,” said Daniele Cologna, a sociologist at the Codici research group in Milan.

Full story.