| Oct. 6th, 2008 @ 11:15 am How Come There Are Fewer Guys Out Front at Home Depot??? |
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Illegal immigration slows as economy weakens:Illegal immigration slows as economy weakens
Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer
(10-02) 12:09 PDT WASHINGTON -- Illegal immigration has slowed in the past three years, and the influx of legal permanent immigrant residents in the United States now exceeds the number of new undocumented residents, according to a report released Thursday by a Washington think tank.
There were approximately 11.9 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States as of March, down from 12.4 million in March 2007, says the report by the Pew Hispanic Center.
The number of people coming into the country illegally decreased from 800,000 a year from 2000 through 2004 to about 500,000 a year from 2005 through 2008. The number of legal permanent immigrant residents - those granted lawful permission to live in the United States but who are not citizens - who came into the country in 2007 was about 650,000.
That was the first time in a decade that new legal immigrant residents outnumbered new illegal immigrants, the study said. It cautioned that the changes may not be statistically significant because of the possibility of sampling errors.
In the past decade, large numbers of undocumented immigrants arrived at a time when legal immigration remained stable.
"In the last year or two, there has been no growth at all of incoming illegal immigrants," senior demographer Jeffrey Passel, who co-authored the report, said during a telephone conference to discuss his findings. "It was growing rapidly and substantially over 15 years and now has essentially come to a halt.
"There are far fewer undocumented immigrants coming into the country."
The report was not designed to explain why the numbers have decreased, but it suggests that possible reasons include the heightened focus on enforcement of immigration laws and slower U.S. economic growth.
"The drop reflects the weakness of the economy, particularly the sectors that employ undocumented workers like construction," said Harley Shaiken, a professor at UC Berkeley specializing in labor issues, said there are a number of powerful forces reducing the numbers of undocumented immigrants. "People are less likely to risk everything to get here if they can't get a job."
Immigration experts also said stepped up enforcement has created a climate of fear.
"Polls show that many Hispanics are concerned about enforcement and deportation," said D'Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center who co-authored the report.
But William Frey, a demographer at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said he believes the economy is the biggest influence on the drop in illegal immigration.
"We don't usually think of illegal immigration as responding to the labor market, but apparently it does," Frey said.
Although the influx of illegal immigrants has slowed, the population of them has still increased by about 40 percent since 2000, when it was 8.4 million, to an estimated 11.9 million in March.
One of the changes in this decade is that the growth of Latinos is coming more from births than immigrants, Passel said.
"The Latino population will continue to grow rapidly regardless of what happens to illegal immigration," he said. "The growth is coming from people already here, and the children they are having."
Mexico continues to be the largest source of unauthorized migration, accounting for an estimated 59 percent of all undocumented immigrants.
The census does not differentiate between legal and illegal residents when it counts immigrants. The researchers estimated their numbers by using the difference between foreigners who can be accounted for and the total number counted by the census.
A report on income, also released Thursday by the center, says the economic slowdown has taken a far greater toll on noncitizen immigrants than on the U.S. population as a whole.
The median income for noncitizen households fell 7.3 percent from 2006 to 2007, while the median income for all households increased 1.3 percent, the report said. The report explains that noncitizen immigrants are most susceptible to economic downturns, in part because many do not have college degrees and are employed in blue-collar jobs.
The largest losses in income were for Hispanics from Mexico and Latin American countries, said Rakesh Kochhar, a research director at the Pew Hispanic Center.
"The economy is taking a far greater toll on noncitizens than households as a whole," Kochhar said, "especially those without high school education or working in construction and or service occupations."
The reports by the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization that studies the impact of Latinos on the nation, are based primarily on census data.
So that's the latest report showing that immigration is into the U.S. from Mexico is slowing, due to the crippling economy. Interesting don't you think?
Hmm... let's see, let's look back to the 2004 election when immigration was such a huge issue, and there was all this saber rattling "get tough on furrigners" attitude was going on, and every politician and his brother that was running for office was "out-raged", wanted to "build walls" and enact legislation to "send them all back".
Meanwhile, there were a few people walking around stating simple facts:
1. There are already laws on the books that target the cause, and not the victims.
2. Problem: These laws target the real problem. Middle to Upper Middle class white voting men that hire these people and pay them illegally and go unpunished. Therefore, making an attractive offer to anyone (esp. in an extremely economically repressed position to risk traversing the dessert or being smuggled in the back of a truck, oh and possibly DYING through all of this), to try to come here to earn a living.
3. Solution: Punish the actual cause and source of the problem. The contractors that are paying these guys illegally are going unprosecuted and creating the problem. If they were held liable for their actions, they would likely stop hiring illegal labor when they are either in jail or in a courtroom unable to earn money themselves.
4. Why This Will Never Happen: See the second sentence in item 2.
It's always ok to send anyone to prison other than the well-off/rich white guy.
So here we are, on the heels of this report, and what do we have happening?
As there are fewer jobs and less pay in this country, fewer illegal aliens are coming here.
Gee, doesn't that kind of prove the "If You Take Away the Incentive, They Won't Come" ideology?
Why... I think it does!
If there's no reason for them to come here... THEY WON'T! Or damn sure not as many.
As has been stated before, if you want to address the illegal immigration problem, address it at the source. The reason WHY they are coming here. As long as it is as easy as it is for a contractor to pay day labor, and there's no paper trail, they are going to keep doing it.
If they really wanted to solve the immigration problem, THAT is what they would do. The reason they don't do that? They don't really want to solve it.
Consider this:
Legislation has been attempted in three border states now, making it a felony (1 year minimum in most states) to BE an illegal alien. You're an illegal alien, you get caught in this country, you go to prison. State with 3 strikes and you get caught 3 times, you're going away for life.
We now live in a corporate prison complex society (for profit prisons run by corporations), where inmates are "encouraged" to work. Work at tasks and jobs contracted by the prison for vendors. For which, the prison gets paid, the inmates do not.
So now, in addition to all the legal citizens you're putting in corporate indentured servitude in this country for making personal life choices by making such choices felonies, you know are also getting a jump in inmate numbers from the illegal Mexicans that was already getting paid less than min. wage in most cases, and is now working completely for free, because he's a prisoner, and a felon. Which would also mean, he would NEVER be eligible for American citizenship. Two birds, one stone.
And it's all good, because at least, a rich white man doesn't go to jail. By and large for the most part, just the people with color on their skin.
The same reason, oh so very sadly, that some people will flatly refuse to vote for Barack Obama. 2008, and we STILL have to deal with this kind of ignorance.
Really says a lot about the state of our country and us as a people. Doesn't it? |
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