Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Is there really an illegal immigration crisis in the US?

abaya · 06-11-2007, 04:20 AM

What can I say, Shani... alright, here is my previous post on the topic, from the thread http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=112318 earlier this year... maybe it helps to explain where I'm coming from.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jorgelito

However, I interpret the OP's objections as those coming here (such as yourself) and REFUSE to even learn the language and fail to reach out to the "natives". This point I feel is the one that gets lost in all the rhetoric of how anti-immigrant or ignorant blah-blah we American allegedly are.

I agree to your point that the debate is not cut and dry... there are not two easy sides to choose from.

Which is why I am glad this thread is still going... because I'd like to examine some of the misunderstandings about what academics call the "classic era" (1880-1930) of American migration and why it is really not so different from the "new regime" of immigration that started around 1965-1970.

Keep in mind that those who came 100 years ago often did not learn English, either (or the "natives" forced them to, in the case of those who were already living here... the Native Americans). A few examples... there are Polish neighborhoods in Chicago where the grandmas and great-grandmas there today have STILL never learned English, sent most of their earned money home, and depended wholly on their children in the public schools to get them through their daily business. There are Chinese in San Francisco who never left their ethnic enclave, and where most signs are still in Chinese... and 100 years ago, "natives" saw the the Chinese (and Irish, of all people!) as the "unassimilables."

"Natives" saw these groups, and others, as COMPLETELY isolating themselves and being a total drain on the economy, contaminating American culture/language, not assimilating, and creating ghettos (in the old, true sense of the term) where immigrants made "natives" feel unwelcome.

Sound familiar?

Adding onto that the observations of perhaps the foremost immigration scientist today, Douglas Massey, in a powerful peer-reviewed journal article on the difference between US immigration today and 100 years ago (Massey, 1995; Population and Development Review 21:3, pp. 631-652)... that one of the major differences between immigrants then and now is that in the early 1930s, there began a hiatus of immigration to the US that allowed the second generation the time and space to assimilate.

Because assimilation does not happen overnight, or even over decades. It happens over generations, as children and their children's children acculturate themselves to the host society. And even then, it doesn't happen as positively as we'd like to imagine (see segmented assimilation; Portes & Zhou, 1993; The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530, pp. 74-96).

Back to the hiatus: from around 1930 to 1970, there was a significant drop in immigration overall, to the US. Several events/policies influenced this process:

--WWI (drop in European immigration)
--the Bolshevik Revolution (Russia ceased to be a major immigrant-sender)
--the Depression (lack of jobs for immigrants in the US--e.g. in 1930, there were 241,000 immigrants, whereas ONE year later there were only 23,000--Massey, 1995)
--the end of WWII and Marshall Plan (building up Europe's economy)
--the Cold War (again cutting off Eastern Europe from the West, as had happened with the Bolshevik Revolution)
--and, finally, stricter immigration quotas that the US lifted/shifted (especially from Asia, which had been banned since 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act) in 1965 with the Immigration and Nationality Act

...and the flow has ratcheted back up ever since. (The Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 also played a role in kicking up levels of immigration from Latin America, very ironically, but that's another topic.)

So, if a series of unpredictable world events and policies give post-1965 immigrants a similar 40-year hiatus, maybe they would assimilate just as well as those who came in the classic era. That's the only difference I can really see between the two groups... the fact that the first group had *time* to assimilate, to send their children to school, to move up socially. But there probably will not be a hiatus, much as the American public would probably prefer that to happen.

So my guess is that 40 years from now, things WILL look different. But why does that have to be a negative thing? Why *don't* we all speak two languages? Is there really any harm in the idea, other than a blow to this thing called "identity" that we all claim to have (which wouldn't make sense, considering in the thread I started on identity, no one has claimed "speaking English" as a core part of who they are).

Quote:

Originally Posted by jorgelito

As an aside, if in your heart you feel closer to Mexicans, than why not get Mexican citizenship instead? (not picking on you per se, but just putting that out there for some stimulation/stirring the pot).

I know you're not talking to me per se, either, but I wanted to say that I do actually have two citizenships, and would get a third, fourth, more if I could. (Technically, I could probably get four through family/spouse alone, but it would be impractical to get the Lebanese one... most would agree.)

And I love having multiple citizenships, I really do. I don't see it as a problem at all, and I actually wish more people could access that level of participation in multiple countries. That would be true globalization.

So yes, in summary, the issue is quite complicated. But I do not think it can be divided cleanly down legal vs. illegal lines, either... we've really got to examine the *whole* history of US immigration to understand where we're at now, how "dangerous"/invasive it really is, and where we might be headed with our current policies.

That's where I get all up in arms, because I feel like a ton of people make judgments about immigration without always seeing the bigger picture. Maybe I am wrong about that; maybe my picture is just as limited as everyone else's. I am willing to admit that, and to hear what your evidence has to say.

But after a hell of a long time of living with immigrants (legal and illegal) and studying the issue at the graduate level for several years, I feel I have at least something to contribute to this debate. That is what I am trying to do with this post. What is the point of all my freaking education if I can't even use it when posting on a public forum, I figure...