Posted on 06/15/2005 9:05:07 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
One in every 11 people born in Mexico and still alive is a U.S. resident, and about half of these immigrants crossed the border illegally, according to a comprehensive report released Tuesday. In the Pew Hispanic Center study of immigration trends, analysts estimated that in March 2004 about 10.3 million immigrants from around the world were living in the United States without legal documents to be here -- some 24 percent of them in California. About 10.6 million people born in Mexico live in the U.S. -- about 5.9 million of them illegally.
"The approach has been to try and make life ... possible for them so they don't go home," said Jeffery Passel, the study's author. "This (study) shows that not only are they not going home, but more are coming.
"If we are going to realistically deal with this population, we have to figure out what to do with the people who are staying."
Most undocumented immigrants are Mexicans with little education who are trying to escape the poverty in their native country. And though they make incremental strides, many never achieve economic success, with about 27 percent lingering in poverty -- twice the rate for native-born Americans.
The study, prepared for a bipartisan independent task force on immigration, comes as Congress faces increased pressure to revamp what some have called a broken system.
Immigration reform is likely to take center stage this July when President George W. Bush is expected to outline his plans for border security, immigration-law enforcement and guest-worker programs.
"We have a dilemma. We love the benefits of low-cost labor -- the nannies, the cooks. On the other hand, we don't want all the pressure. We complain when they go to the emergency room," said David Hayes-Bautista, director of the center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Something has got to give."
An immigration wave this massive -- with about one-third of all immigrants coming from Mexico -- has not been seen since in the United States since the late 19th century, when Germans and Irish poured in.
According to the Pew report, more than half of the 10.3 million illegal immigrants came from Mexico and an additional 24 percent from other Latin American countries.
Undocumented immigrants are parents to 3.1 million U.S.-born children and 1.6 million undocumented children. Those children -- many of whom attend public schools -- account for more than one-third of the illegal immigrant population.
Nearly half of undocumented immigrant children drop out of high school, compared with 21 percent of legal immigrants and 11 percent of U.S.-born students. And only 15 percent of illegal immigrants go on to graduate from college, the study showed.
Los Angeles Unified School District officials do not track students' legal status, but said nearly 40 percent speak English as a second language. And teachers said experience tells them the number of children of immigrants has surged over the past three decades.
"They don't have health care. They sometimes are hungry. It hurts their education. It's the great detriment to their education," said John Perez, president of the teachers union in the LAUSD.
Nationally, more than one-third of undocumented immigrants work in the service sector. But their numbers are highest in farming, cleaning and construction, where employers often overlook their legal status or can mistreat illegal immigrants without fear of retribution, the report author wrote.
"There is an underclass in Los Angeles. Most of these employers get the cheapest labor," said Hilda Delgado, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, representing more than 800,000 workers. "Many of them do not report abuses, whether it's labor or human-rights abuses. They won't, for instance, report if they do not get paid or if their checks bounce. (Illegal immigrants) are too scared to lose their job."
Working menial jobs and lacking health insurance, illegal immigrants take advantage of the public-health system. The county's cost of providing medical care for illegal immigrants has soared from $340 million in 2003 to $392 million currently, officials said.
The growing pressure on the county's health budget comes as the public and private hospital system is increasingly in danger of collapse. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Services faces a $435 million deficit by July 2006 and more than $2.5 billion by 2008.
Furthermore, in the last year, nine private hospitals in the county have closed their doors, and the trauma center at the beleaguered Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center was closed -- flooding surrounding hospitals with more patients. Services in some other counties are also under pressure.
"This is costing us billions in health care, the criminal justice system and education," said Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, who advocates a more stringent employment-verification system. "You can't run and stick your head in the sand."
We have essentially been invaded.
This invaion has been allowed to happen and lots of elected officials and businesses fingerprints are all over the ball that keeps getting dropped.
invasion
Survey finds broader role of illegal immigrants (PEW)
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/13067961p-13913474c.html
Michael Doyle - Sac Bee
WASHINGTON - Illegal immigrants are entering the United States faster than legal immigrants, a new study finds.
But while famously abundant, the illegal immigrant population also challenges some common stereotypes.
"The population is now intertwined with American society," Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said Tuesday. "It is not only a larger population (than earlier), but it's one that is also more widespread geographically and in terms of occupations."
The number of undocumented immigrants entering the country annually has averaged about 700,000 since the beginning of the decade. That outpaces the 610,000 legal immigrants entering annually, the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center's study found.
The report says there are an estimated 10 million illegal immigrants in the United States, about a third of the total foreign-born population.
These are people like Angel Rivera, a 29-year-old Fresno County stableman.
Rivera came from Colima, Mexico, three months ago, leaving behind his wife and two children. He said it was too hard to move up the economic ladder in Mexico, even with a job. So he trekked across the border near San Diego at night with the help of a "coyote," an immigrant smuggler whom he paid $1,500.
He now works cleaning horse stables, makes $500 every two weeks and sends about $400 a month home to support his family.
"There's work in Mexico, but you earn very little money," Rivera said.
--snip--
Gracias, Presidente' Jorge Bush!
Yeah, the rest just sneak over.
Why doesn't Mexico have an Olympic team?
Because everybody that can run, jump or swim is already in the US.
As long as the illegals are here and no one is kicking them out, we might as well draft them for military service. Didn't the Romans do something like that?
The United States of Mexamerica?
Sugar daddies used to be the craze, now it's anchor babies.
------
Study finds the number of undocumented soaring
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig15jun15,1,1350091.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
By Nicole Gaouette, Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — Illegal immigrants are moving in unprecedented numbers to the southeastern United States, choosing that area over traditional "destination states" such as California, according to a study released Tuesday.
The study by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, also shows that for the last 10 years, illegal immigration has far outstripped its legal counterpart. Most of the country's estimated 10.3 million undocumented immigrants have arrived since 1990, the study found, at an average of 500,000 a year.
The findings underscore how badly the immigration system is broken and how difficult an overhaul may be, analysts say.
"This report shows that the illegal alien population is becoming an integral part of the communities and workforces in a larger part of the country," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a centrist public policy center in Washington.
"This is much more of a mainstream phenomenon than people are thinking. It's not something you can either flip the 'stop' switch on or keep going with," he said.
The report paints a picture of an immigrant community that is young, poor and largely Latino. The immigrants are almost always employed and live in family groups that the reports' authors described as "mixed," consisting of U.S. citizens and people here illegally.
Because illegal immigrants gave birth to children in the U.S., "most of the children living in these families are U.S. citizens," said Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center. He noted that such a family structure has implications for proposed guest worker programs that require immigrants to return home after a set period.
"The presence of wives and kids in the U.S. and the fact that they are working suggests that, by and large, this population may be reluctant to leave us," Suro said.
Of the almost 14 million people in families in which the head of the family or the spouse is here illegally, 3.1 million are children who hold U.S. citizenship, the study found.
--snip--
Word of The Day ping:)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1423128/posts
Word For The Day, Wednesday, June 15, 2005 - emigrate
the jobs Americans don't want to do - shovelling manure for 13,000 a year. you can't raise a family on that here - even the Mexicans can't - that's why this man's family is back in Mexico.
Pay 26,000 a year, and you would find Americans to shovel manure, and they could maybe raise a family. People rich enough to own a stable of horses ought to pay a living wage.
Institute an effective system for employers to check workers' status, and send to jail those who knowingly hire illegals.
"Annex Mexico.. "
If one out of 11 Americans moved to Mexico, we could. We outnumber Mexicans.
A couple of points:
I am struck by the fact that 1.3 million people enter this country to stay, year in and year out, and yet we still have the lowest unemployment rate in the world, which means we are absorbing these people.
Is our economy really that dynamic, or is something else going on?
Do you remember a few decades back when there was a constant drumbeat in the press that we were overpopulated? And yet now we need an influx of a million people a year to stay even?
I am struck by the fact that, in rough numbers, our immigration rate is equivalent to the number of abortions we have each year. We kill a million of our own per year, and take in a million from outside to replace them. In effect, to be crude, our Democrats are committing suicide and replacing themselves with Mexicans. Or to put it another way, those Americans who don't believe in life are killing themselves and being replaced by people who do. There is some kind of biblical punishment in here somewhere.
I am very disturbed that no one in political life is willing to secure the border. The National Guard should be on the border right now, for any number of reasons. For the security of the country as well as for humanitarian reasons. It shocks me that no one, no one, outside of Tancredo, is willing to talk about this.
If there is a real need for these people, as there may well be, then we'll see it in short order and establish legal avenues to bring in the people we need, with no need to pay smugglers and no need to risk death in the desert or locked in the back of a shipping container.
It is wrong to create a whole body of labor law to protect American workers, and then shortcut those very laws by using workers who aren't subject to those laws.
Mexico likes to claim that America's prosperity depends on the influx of cheap labor, but obviously that is not the case, otherwise Mexico, the source of that cheap labor would be swimming in prosperity. And Mexico would be inviting immigrants from Honduras to take their place on the factory production lines in Mexico. But they don't, so clearly even they don't believe what they are saying.
Mexico is one of the major oil producing nations in the world, and a fairly important industrial producer in its own right, and its primary products are sold on the world market for dollars. By rights their people should be paid on par with Americans, and they should have a demand for workers similar to ours. The fact that a country rich in natural resources must export its people by the millions is shocking, and yet they, and many of us, accept that state of affairs as normal, just like the weather.
Anytime 9% of a country is crossing the border and changing the "status quo" of its neighbor, it's an invasion.
The elitist corrupt political class in Mexico is allowed to export its problems and its political sentiments at the same time.
Bush is deaf, dumb and blind on this and I have yet to figure out why.
Full report here:
http://pewhispanic.org/reports/report.php?ReportID=46
"Bush is deaf, dumb and blind on this and I have yet to figure out why."
The greatest influx has occurred since 1990.....guess who was Pres then?
"cheap labor?"
at a cost of around 15 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR for the border states of CA, TX, NM & AZ to allow illegals to stay here, I wouldn't call it cheap!!!
and I just posted a piece this a.m. that FIFTEEN THOUSAND cases of TB have been reported in the last year at a cost of between 200K to 1.2 Million dollars per case to treat.
If you average the cost to only 500K per case, that's 7 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR just to treat illegals who are carrying this disease!!!
Cheap?
I don't know what you call "cheap" but allowing illegals to stay here is definitely NOT CHEAP!
That fact should not blind anyone, especially Bush, to the fact that the problem continues and the continuation of the problem compounds the difficulties with solving it. The more people who are allowed to come in illegally, and stay, and the longer that state continues, the harder it becomes to stop it without the measures needed to stop it seeming to be very drastic - cause and affect; the worse the problem, the worse the solutions. Delays make it worse. Bush has made a grave political miscalculation.
Hillary will exploit this with unions, areas of the country looking for protectionism, hardworking blue-collar moderate-conservatives and many others siding with her. She will gain many more votes than the Hispanic votes she will lose - and don't forget the draconian abuse of power her idol - FDR - was willing to use, exploiting populist sentiment.
Actually we did that to immigrants getting off the boat during the Civil War. Straight from the boat to the front.
ooooh all those funny looking people who don't speak english . . . ooooh we're being invaaaaaded.
What are "you people" afraid of? That your jobs are going to be taken away? That the price of housekeepers and gardeners will go down? That you will no longer be competitive in the national marketplace? That your children might (horrors of horrors) marry someone who was born south of the Rio Grandeee?
It bothers me to think that my fellow freepers might be so small minded.
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