Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration

By Katherine Fennelly, Professor of Public Affairs at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute, IHRC Affiliate

The American press has been filled with news stories on the rapid increase of the Latino population in both traditional and non-traditional immigration states (“Hispanics driving population growth in Georgia” The Telegraph, “Lee minority population young, soaring” Newspress.com, “Beaufort County leads state in growth” The Beaufort Gazette). At the same time local officials in some parts of the country are proposing legislation that would deny benefits to the US-born children of undocumented immigrants, a majority of whom are Latinos.

The Institute of Medicine Report “Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century” has called upon the United States to ensure that quality care is available to all, without differentiating by race or ethnicity, yet lack of health insurance is the single largest determinant of the differences between Latinos and Whites in access to regular health providers (Mayberry et al, 2006). The growing ‘chasm’ is particularly ironic given that first-generation immigrants—including low income Latinos—are generally healthier than US-born residents when they first come to the country. It is only by the second and third generations that alarming health disparities begin to emerge in the form of higher risk behaviors and chronic illnesses. Scientists speculate that lack of access to health care is one of the culprits in what is known as the loss of the ‘healthy migrant effect’, as are changes in diet and exercise. Given the size and the rapid growth of the Latino population in the US today, decisions regarding access to health and social services will not only determine the future of Latino youth, but that of the nation as a whole.

Additional reference:
Improving quality and reducing inequities: a challenge in achieving best care
R. M. Mayberry, D. A. Nicewander, H. Qin, and D. J. Ballard Proc (Baylor University Medical Center) 19:103-118, 2006
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Contributer: Katherine Fennelly
Office: 144 Humphrey Center
Phone: (612) 625-6685
E-mail: fenne007@umn.edu

Katherine Fennelly is Professor of Public Affairs at the Hubert H.
Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota, and the 2006-2007
Fesler-Lampfer Chair in Urban and Regional Affairs. Her research,
teaching and outreach interests include immigration and public policy,
leadership in the public sector, the human rights of immigrants and
refugees in the United States, and the preparedness of communities and
public institutions to adapt to demographic changes. Recent projects and
publications focus on the determinants of attitudes toward immigrants
and their successful integration into US communities.

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Posted by Sylvie Thao at 09:23 AM | Permalink

By Donna R. Gabaccia, Director, IHRC, University of Minnesota

What country in the world has the highest proportion of foreigners living on its national territories? If you think the answer is the United States—as well you might, given the passionate debates about immigration in recent months--you’d be wrong.

Worldwide, 191 million people currently live outside the countries of their birth. They are a modest 3 percent of the world’s population (of 6.5 billion). They are not evenly distributed of course. The estimated 32 million living in U.S., while certainly an impressive number, constitutes only 12 percent of the American population. And in today’s world, 12 percent foreign-born puts the United States near the middle of a very long list: the wealthy country at the top of the list has roughly 75 percent foreign-born.

To identify that country, American readers must tear themselves away from the headlines about U.S. immigration that dominate page one and explore the “inside pages,” where newspapers bury international stories. (They can also read to the end of this column.)

A reader of international news this week would have learned, for example, that Mexicans are far more concerned about their southern border with Guatemala than with the border that dominates U.S. headlines: "Illegal Immigration and Mexico's Maras". As many as 100,000 migrants enter Mexico illegally from the south each year; as a result, the population of Tapachula, a southern Mexican border town of about 300,000, has doubled in only ten years.

In Europe, we learn that a million “Brits” emigrate every year (to Spain, Australia, and America), thus outnumbering the 474,000 foreigners who arrive annually: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1951273.ece . In Russia, “illegal immigration” is debated in much the same terms as in the United States, right down to estimates of how much these foreigners harm the national economy by not paying taxes. "'Love Bridge' Fuels Anti-Immigrant Backlash on Swedish Border"

But the really huge stories of international migration—like the relative proportions of foreigners—are in Asia. Readers of a recent New York Times article learn indirectly just how ubiquitous foreigners are in the oil-enriched economies of the Middle East. ("Dubai Swats Pests Ogling Beach Beauties")
The article focuses unsympathetically on male foreign workers who go to public Dubai beaches to look at and attempt to meet western women in bathing suits (“Dubai Swats Swarms of Pests Ogling Beach Beauties”). It fails to note these workers constitute 60 percent of Dubai’s population. Or to mention that foreign men outnumber women three to one.

What country in the world has the highest proportion of foreigners living on its national territories? Few Americans, or Arabs for that matter, think of the United Arab Emirates as a “nation of immigrants.” Yet it, and not the U.S., provides the correct answer to our question.
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Posted by Donna Gabaccia at 07:51 AM | Permalink

By Jeff Manuel, PhD Student at the University of Minnesota. IHRC Affiliated Faculty

Election day. Today voters around the U.S. will travel to their polling places and elect the individuals who will govern them for the next several years. And today the news media will shift from endless rounds of prediction to endless rounds of analyzing election results. Given all that’s been said about immigration in the political sphere this year, from the substantive to the idiotic, it’s tough to believe that any new information will sink in. Instead, we might take a step back from the details and consider how “immigration” has been told as a political story in recent months. Telling a political story—whether in the news or in the academy—involves organizing the chaotic mess of the real world into meaningful patterns, which in turn means bringing some agents into the story line and pushing some agents outside of the narrative. Organizing “immigration” into a coherent political story has been no different and it’s worth considering who and what has been included in this story and what has been left out to make the story coherent.

Perhaps the most curious omission has been the immigrants themselves. Of all the actors involved in the political drama of immigration—including President Bush, members of Congress, fences, and Minutemen—surprisingly little has been said about the immigrants who are supposedly the main actors in this story. For example, in a curious development, the recent emergence of African American groups protesting illegal immigration finds African American community leaders meeting with white supremacists and arguing with the Southern Poverty Law Center about the nature of their campaign. Are immigrants from Latin America a “threat” to black communities? Should Mexican-Americans and African-Americans work together because of their shared minority status? Is this simply an issue where some African-American community leaders agree with the KKK? Who knows? The point is that immigration is once again framed as a political drama that both revolves around immigrants and simultaneously ignores them. Like so many other flashpoints in our current political world, immigration has largely been turned into a symbol.

The role of corporations and their demand for cheap labor has also been largely pushed outside the storyline of immigration. The recent move by anti-immigration groups in North Carolina to protest companies suspected of hiring illegal aliens ("Immigration activists target employers" The News and Observer) highlights how various groups, both on the left and the right, have tried to add an economic angle to the political story of immigration. Yet the failure of this sub-plot to make it into the national debate suggests that certain aspects of the story are simply less palatable to media corporations and their audiences than others. Additionally, the way that this story pops up when it is supposedly outside the mainstream story of immigration reminds us that maintaining the coherency of a story—and this is true for political stories as well as stories about national identity—requires constantly policing its boundaries. Because people, things, and ideas simply refuse to act in the ways we want. They rarely follow the channels we’ve laid out in our narratives. For immigration, this means that laws or no laws, people will continue to move around the globe and across national boundaries. The fence that is supposed to neatly divide the Mexican desert from the U.S. desert will require maintenance. And ideas, which have never respected borders, will continue to move around our world.

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Jeff Manuel is a PhD Student in History at the University of Minnesota and a member of the IHRC Advisory Council. His research focuses on media, politics, and culture in the modern United States.
Contact Information: manu0014@umn.edu

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Posted by Sylvie Thao at 11:54 AM | Permalink