Posted on 11/29/2007 7:31:54 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Washington — Most of the 953,000 immigrants living in Georgia are in the country illegally, according to an analysis for the Center for Immigration Studies released Thursday.
Basing its findings on U.S. Census Bureau data, the analysis said Georgia has one of the fastest-growing immigrant populations of any state. It calculated that 53 percent of the state's foreign-born population — 504,000 people — are illegal immigrants. Only the estimates for Arizona, at 65 percent, and North Carolina, at 58 percent, were higher.
Overall, one in eight people living in the United States is an immigrant, the analysis found, for a total of 37.9 million people — the highest level since the 1920s. The nation's immigrant population — legal and illegal — reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007, it said.
The analysis was conducted by Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the center, which advocates reduced immigration.
Camarota has been active in the national immigration debate. Independent demographers disputed some of the survey's conclusions, but not Camarota's methods of data analysis.
"The immigrant population in Georgia is there because of the state's severe labor needs, including the poultry, agricultural and carpet industries," said Lisa Navarette, a spokesman for the National Council of La Raza, an advocacy group for Hispanic-Americans.
The analysis said half of the immigrants from Mexico and Central America are in the country illegally and one-third of those from South America are illegal immigrants. It also documented the surge of new arrivals and described its impact.
"The last seven years have been the highest period of immigration in American history," it concluded. "Immigrants and their young children [under 18] now account for one-fifth of the school-age population, one-fourth of those in poverty and nearly one-third of those without health insurance."
Camarota was criticized by some immigration scholars for failing to examine the progress immigrant families make the longer they remain and work in the United States.
"This is a one-eyed portrait," said Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California who has studied immigrants' use of public services. "It is a profile of immigrants' dependency without any profile of their contributions."
Myers said his research shows that within a decade, new immigrants in California moved up quickly to steadier jobs with more benefits, and the rates of uninsured immigrants dropped sharply.
And Wayne Cornelius, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego, who has studied Mexican immigration for decades, called Camarota's conclusions about immigrants' use of public services "misleading."
The census data, Cornelius said, does not allow concise estimates of use of public services by illegal immigrants.
Cornelius said his field research in San Diego County had shown that illegal immigrants underused the health care system, given their health needs.
The New York Times contributed to this article.
Keep praying.
One of my neighbors has a “Pray for Rain” sign in their yard, so I am reminded to pray every time I drive by.
I saw that big yellow blob headed east across Mississippi/Alabama last week:’). I’ve prayed for yall too.
We will be shelling out thousands next year so our Grandson will not have to be in a classroom which will ignore him so they can possibly help one Hispanic child to learn english.
This is Hall County, GA.
I help shell out for three grandkids, soon four.
Kinda like the rest of America?
I’m sorry your schools are bad.
I thought when we moved here from CA that we would have to put our children in private school, but our city runs its own schools and they are outstanding.
And the dollar is worth less by the day.
Regards
In Georgia "outstanding" is a relative term. When we moved here from New Hampshire in 1998 we went from the #1 grammar school in the state that was #1 in the nation for academic performance to the state that was 49th in the nation overall. Our county is "outstanding" also but I never saw my kids do homework again. I believe Georgia is still in the bottom 5 but I haven't been paying as much attention since the kids graduated.
Most of the illegals are here around S. Georgia in the farm communities. Most of the farmers have gone from using the Crew Leader and their workers to the H2A program.
Bad thing about illegals is you have to house them, feed and pay them. Then they move into your housing, trash it to no end, leave in the dead of the night and the Gov’t comes down and fines the farmer for substandard housing.
If you use H2A, you pay them 8/hr, bring them from Mexico, feed and house and they pay no taxes, but it is safer.
Wanna complain about it? Okay. Grab a bucket and hit the field in late June. Temps of 95+, humidity of 90+. Pay is 6.25/hr, or do you want to pay OUTRAGEOUS prices for groceries? Or would you rather catch chickens and cull dead ones that turn to soup in 12 hours? Not fun, believe me.
I am not proposing that we hire illegals, but there are some jobs that people feel are beneath them now. Reminds me of “Grapes of Wrath”.
I’m in Lilburn, the Latin Kings tagged a fence at a major intersection in town over Thanksgiving. They are migrating from the north side of 29.
I have lived in Gwinnett for 15 years. It is absolutely disgusting what has happened here. My town used to be like Mayberry, now the crime is skyrocketing. They had to stop rec. baseball at Lucky Shoals park a few years ago because of the gangs, it was too dangerous for the kids. At our park we need to have police on bikes patrol. We now have true gangs in the area, not wanna be’s. If you go to the Walmart on Hwy 29, it is truly like shoppping in a Mexican market. From what I actually SEE with my own eyes is illegals breeding like rabbits. They are having kids in middle school here.
Indiantown, Pahokee, Belle Glades, Immokolee, South Bay as well as so many other little towns in Florida have such high proportions of illegals it is sickening. But they all work for the Fanjul family in the sugar cane fields that also pollute Floridas water air and land.
The U.S. govt along with the E.P.A. look the other way so as to not upset big donors.
Here is the study and there is lots more to it than the article mentions.
"Only a few states represent the majority of the foreign-born population. In 2007, the nearly 10 million immigrants in California account for 27 percent of the nation’s total immigrant population, followed by New York with 11 percent, Florida and Texas with 10 percent each, and New Jersey with 5 percent. These five states account for 61 percent of the nation’s total foreign-born population, but only 32 percent of the native-born population. The table also shows evidence that the immigrant population is becoming more dispersed. Table 1 indicates that although the top-five states account for 61 percent of the total immigrant population, only 54 percent of post-2000 arrivals went to these states."
"New York, for example, the number of immigrants increased 585,000 between 1995 and 2000, but in the seven years after 2000 it grew by 262,000. New Jersey, which is right next to New York, is quite different. The numerical increase in that state was larger between 2000 and 2007 than between 1995 and 2000." NB: NJ had 45% increase in immigration between 2000 to 2007.
According to the study [Table 21], NJ has an illegal alien population of 429,000, which is 23% of the foreign born population and 5% of the total state population. NY has an illegal alien population of 552,000, which is 13% of the foreign born population and 3% of the total state population.
Most of us who pay attention to such things (and live in the area) know the reason for this. Since real estate skyrocketed in the outer boroughs there has been a large outflow of immigrants, legal and illegal, to New Jersey from the outer boroughs. Brazilians who used to live in Astoria have been pushed out by high rents and are now in places like Elizabeth, where the rents are considerably lower. Same thing with the seemingly thousands of Ecuadorians who first settled in Brooklyn and Queens, but are now in places like Hightstown and Newark.
I can remember 10 years ago when it looked like Astoria was going to become a Hispanic/Brazillian area a la Harrison, NJ, but the boom in city real estate and increase in rents ended that trend.
*I* am calling our schools outstanding, although they are award winning schools.
Just because they are located in Georgia doesn’t mean they are somehow doomed. Everyone agrees that our elementary school is run more like a private school than a public one.
The Northeast has more than its share of immigrants, legal and illegal. The fact that New York and NJ are in the top five of states in terms of the number of immigrants is instructive. Although GA and NC have experienced much higher increases percentage wise, in terms of absolute numbers, they still trail the the top five. GA however has more illegal aliens than NJ despite having half as many total immigrants, legal and illegal. It is no wonder that GA has passed some very tough legislation to crack down on illegal aliens.
If, instead of paying all of that extra money to house, feed and pay the illegals, you just offered a decent wage to citizens then perhaps you'd get some people who would think the work wasn't "beneath" them. You are using the same pathetic argument John McCain used when he said he couldn't get people to pick lettuce for $25/hr and you sound just as silly as he did.
I am near Nashville. We have had an unusually wet October and November that has filled the ponds and lakes and streams quite well. I don’t know about Atlanta, though. They received hardly any of what we did.
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