Settlement Patterns Until 1990’s immigrants were very concentrated in 5 states—New York, California, Texas, Florida, Illinois. They went to gateway.

Settlement Patterns

• Until 1990’s immigrants were very concentrated in 5 states—New York, California, Texas, Florida, Illinois. They went to gateway cities.– 1871-1993 78% went to these states

• Paradox. 1980’s attention to black underclass, large increases in unskilled workers in gateway cities.

• Paradox. 2000’s industrial restructuring, job loss and population loss in non metro areas, magnet for illegal immigrants

Where do they go?

• Difficult, dirty, dangerous jobs. Manufacturing.– Meatpacking Poultry Plants– Leather Processing– Carpet, rug manufacturing– Petroleum processing– Construction and Service (Metro Magnets Raleigh

Durham, Atlanta, Charlotte)

Industrial Restructuring

• Shifts in the American economy away from large-scale capital intensive production, and a relatively well-paid, unionized and mostly native workforce toward labor intensive production and low-paid non-unionized foreign workers.– Labor subcontracting– Flexibility, less benefits, lower wages– Deskilling

Meatpacking

• Turnover• 1980 60%• 2005 140%

• Location– Shrank 31% in metro areas– Grew 41% in non metro areas

• Changes in nature of work

Social Impacts

• Gateway Cities—assimilation machines.• Non metro areas—new issues to deal with• Question of assimilation?

No action on immigration reform

• In the 2000s the national impasse on immigration has led states and localities to pass laws targeting immigration.

• Ambivalence about undocumented immigrants is clear.

• Meanwhile the recession accomplished what the wall could not—net migration from Mexico is now zero or negative.

State and Local Reactions

• Local ordinances to try to get deal with undocumented immigrants.

• In 2000 alone 50 states considered 1000 different measures regulating immigration

• The Constitution grants the federal gov’t authority over the regulation of immigration. Supreme Court has ruled that the “power to regulate immigration is unquestionably exclusively a federal power”

• 1876 struck down state laws on immigration

Some Examples

• 2006 Arizona Prop 300 establishes that only citizens, LPRs are eligible for family literacy programs, adult education classes, in-state tuition, financial aid at colleges, and child care assistance.

• 2007 Prince William County, Virginia restricted adult services for elderly, rental and mortgage assistance programs, substance abuse programs, tax break for renovation or rehabilitation of property.

• Hazleton, Pennsylvania– Crime to rent to illegals (harboring)– Required employers to verify identities

• Oklahoma– Deny contracts to employers who do not verify

identities. Require use of E-Verify

States attempt to make policyBills introduced by State Legislators

Year Bills Laws

2005 300 50

2006 500 84

2007 1,562 240

2009 1500All 50 states

353

New OrdinancesIllegal Immigration Relief Acts

• Regulate employers who hire unauthorized workers. • Impose fines on landlords who rent to

undocumented immigrants. • Direct state and local police to participate in

immigration enforcement.• Prohibit solicitation of employment in public streets

(day laborers)• Require state and local officials to verify legal status

of people seeking public benefits.

Arizona SB1070

• “the intent of this act is to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona”

Provisions of SB1070

• Explicitly requires state and local enforcement officials to inquire about immigration status during any lawful stop, detention or arrest.

• Makes it a misdemeanor to fail to carry proper immigration documents with a maximum fine of $100 dollars or up to 20 days in jail for the first violation and up to 30 days in jail for a subsequent violation.

Provisions of SB 1070

• Makes it illegal for unauthorized immigrants to solicit work in any public space.

• Authorizes local police to make an arrest without a warrant of any person they believe is “removable from the US”

• Allows officers to detain the person to make inquiries into immigration status if the person cannot produce valid documents.– Preliminary injunction against these parts of the law by

federal district court. Arizona has appealed and we are awaiting a decision.

Supreme Court Decision on Arizona

• Section 3: criminalizes willful failure to carry immigration papers. STRUCK DOWN

• Section 5: makes it a crime for undocumented to work. STRUCK DOWN

• Section 6: authorizes the warantless arrest of anyone police have probable cause to believe is removable from US. STRUCK DOWN

• Section 2B: requires law enforcement to verify immgration status of anyone lawfully stopped or detained. UPHELD

Other Controversial State Laws• Fremont, Nebraska recently passed a ban on hiring or renting property to

unauthorized immigrants, yet is having trouble implementing the law because of litigation costs. Officials estimated that defending the law would cost the state an average of $1 million per year in legal fees, and as a result, Fremont taxpayers could face a potential 18 percent increase in property taxes.

• Farmers Branch, Texas has already spent about $3.2 million to defend itself since September 2006, when it launched the first of three ordinances. The city has budgeted $623,000 for legal expenses through the rest of the fiscal year related to the ordinance defense. Legal costs could exceed $5 million by the end of the fiscal year.

• Hazleton, Pennsylvania’s insurance carrier is asking a federal judge to rule that it is not responsible for nearly $2.4 million in attorney fees being sought by the plaintiffs who successfully challenged the city’s Illegal Immigration Relief Act.

• Riverside, New Jersey rescinded an ordinance that penalized renting to or employing unauthorized immigrants after the town of 8,000 accumulated $82,000 in legal fees.

American attitudes towards undocumenteds

• Priority for illegal immigration policy– Better border security, stronger enforcement 29%– Path to citizenship for illegal immigrants 24%– Both equally 43%

• In-state tuition– Should be eligible 48%– Should not be eligible 46%– Don’t know 5%

• Pew Research Center Nov 9-14, 2011

Migration Reform

• Legalizing undocumented migrants• Increasing temporary work visas• Granting more permanent resident visas• Reducing illegal immigration

Long run Mexican migration declines

• Mexican birthrate in 1960s, 7 children per woman.

• Now, 2.4, and falling.• In 2009 and 2010 the Mexican GDP grew

faster than the US GDP.

Dreamers: Undocumented Children

• Congress fails to pass Dream Act• June 15, 2012 “Deferred Action for Childhood

Arrivals”• Relief from deportation for 1.7 million of the 4.4

million undocumented people under age 30.• Have to have arrived before age 16, be under 30• Enrolled in school, have a high school diploma or

GED, or have been honorably discharged by military or Coast Guard.

• No felony, no more than 3 misdemeanors.

Assimilation

• Controversial in many disciplines and venues.• Two different meanings to word:

– As coercion, policy.– As unintended consequence

• In the US our discussions about current assimilation often are comparing current immigration with past immigration.

Assimilation as Policy

• Coercion: Ford Motor Company.– 1914 Americanization program.– “Our one great aim is to impress these men that

they are, or should be, Americans, and that former racial, national and linguistic differences are to be forgotten”

– Sociology Department investigated homes for American habits. Graduation ceremony.

Assimilation as an Unintended Consequence

• As the cumulative by-product of choices made by individuals seeking to take advantage of opportunities to improve their social and material conditions.– Suburbanization– Attendance in college– Intermarriage

Assimilation Was an Open Question

• Groups such as Poles, Italians and Irish were once seen as unassimilable and racially distinct.

Jacob Schurman, Columbia University, 1924

• The public has awakened from the delusion created by the shibboleth of the “melting pot”. It is disquieted and disturbed by the spectacle of immense alien communities…more or less self contained speaking many foreign languages, containing an influential foreign-language press, with their own banks, markets and insurance companies and sometimes with

• separate schools—unleavened lumps of many European nationalities, unchanged masses of foreigners intrenched in America, yet not of it, owing in many cases foreign allegiance, and, in general tied to foreign countries by their language, their sympathies, their culture, their interests, and their aspirations.

Assimilation Worked in the Past

• It took several generations, but Irish, Italian, Polish immigrants achieved parity in incomes, education with English and other earlier groups.

• Important role of wars.

Intermarriage Widespread

• By 1990 more than half of whites had spouses whose ethnic backgrounds did not overlap with their own at all.

• Only 20% had spouses with identical backgrounds.

End Point: Symbolic Ethnicity

• People enjoy ethnicity, but it has little impact on day to day life.

• Voluntary identifications• Given the choice, people choose the most

“ethnic” option they have. Don’t want to be “vanilla”.

Then and Now

• European Immigrants Enjoyed the Expansion of the Economy between World War II and the 1970’s

• Rising Tide Lifted All Boats• Income Inequality declined 1945-1973, and

wages of those at the bottom rose most dramatically.

Income Inequality and Present Assimilation

• Immigrants who enter at the bottom of the distribution enter a system where their fortunes are declining.

• Educational mobility is much more important for today’s immigrants.

Income Inequality and Past Immigration

• Straight line assimilation describes a situation in which each generation does “better” than the generation before. For European immigrants this could happen just by entering society, and sons having the same level of education as their fathers.

Current Immigration

• How much can we expect current immigrants who are non-white to experience the same level of acceptance?

• What role did the rising economy after World War II play?

• What role did the hiatus in immigration play? What does continuing immigration mean?

Theoretical Debates on Second Generation Assimilation

• Straight Line Assimilation• Second Generation Decline• Segmented Assimilation

Measuring Assimilation:Dependent Variables

• Linguistic• Socioeconomic• Spatial• Attitudinal• Religious• Civic• Intermarriage• Identification

Straight Line Assimilation

• Each generation represents on average a new stage of adjustment to the host society—a further step away from the ethnic group, and a step closer to complete assimilation.

• Sociologists measure time since immigration and generation.

Generation

• First: Foreign Born• 1.5: Foreign Born but Raised in US

(Immigrated before age 7)• Second: One or both Parents Born Abroad• Third: Grandparents born Abroad• The Second Generation are 12% of the US

population.

Debates about Assimilation

• What are immigrants assimilating into? Is there a core culture? Are there different segments to American society that immigrants are assigned to?