U.S. Immigration: Fact, Fear and Fantasy
Demetrios Papademetriou
The immigration debate in America is often a dialogue of the deaf
At the dawn of the 21st century, immigration to the United States has again become a national issue of the first order. Four factors account for most of this newfound prominence.
First, the magnitude of immigration, or, more accurately, the rate at which immigration has grown: It may have approached 11 million in the last decade, nearly two-and-a-half times the number in the 1970s.
Second, its composition: It has become overwhelmingly non-European.
Third, its distribution: Although still dominated by traditional destinations (the handful of "gateway" states and metropolitan areas within them), it is spreading throughout the country at remarkable speed.
Fourth, the complexity of its effects: These make an accurate appraisal of immigration difficult and add plausibility to all sorts of extraordinary claims about it, pro or con.
All of these trends will gain strength in the years ahead, and the national debate about immigration will intensify accordingly. In order to have an intelligent discussion of the subject, we need to answer some basic questions. Among those: How many people are entering the United States these days, and where do they come from? What are the effects of immigration? Is there an innovative way of responding to illegal immigration that may lead to more effective policies? And is the pace of new immigration requiring that we pay more attention to how newcomers encounter and become integrated into our communities?
Record-breaking Numbers
Legal and illegal immigration to the U.S. in the 1990s broke the record set during the first decade of the 20th century, when nearly 9.5 million persons were admitted. Proportionately, though, we are less a nation of immigrants now than we were 100 years ago. Approximately 10.5% of U.S. residents are immigrants today; that compares with nearly 15% during the period 1900-1910.
Gross legal (or authorized) permanent immigration now stands at a little more than 800,000 entries per year. This number is thought to be depressed severely by the persistent inability of the government (the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Department of Labor) to keep up with their workloads-failures that create waiting lines among otherwise eligible would-be immigrants. Gross legal entries would probably be close to one million if these agencies did not have a constant backlog. Although reliable net annual migration figures are not available, most educated guesses put emigration at about 20 to 25% of the total. This is a drop both from the historical figures of more than 40% emigration for certain immigrant groups for the first half of the 20th century and from estimates for 1950 to 1970 of about one-third of gross immigration. The U.S. lacks a system for measuring, or even officially estimating, emigration.
Legal temporary immigration (the term is "nonimmigrant" entries) has also climbed substantially in the last decade or so, reflecting and pacing the U.S. economy's aggressive global expansion. Although detailed figures for each of the 20 major nonimmigrant admission categories have been woefully inadequate, gross figures show dramatic increases in most of them and now stand at more than 25 million visas per year. There is little doubt that U.S. temporary entry programs will continue to grow at a robust pace during the next two decades.
The key source countries for U.S. immigration (legal and illegal, temporary and permanent) in the next 20 years can be expected to be very similar to the ones that currently dominate the flow-making the composition of today's immigration the best predictor of tomorrow's flows and composition. There are at least two major reasons for this phenomenon.
First, U.S. law on permanent immigration has long emphasized family reunification. As a result, in about four-fifths of all admissions, the closeness of the family relationship determines whether and how quickly a prospective immigrant can gain permanent access to the United States. This creates a strong bias in favor of those countries that use the system a lot and continuously (so that close family relationships are maintained). In fact, if the nationals of a country lose interest in large-scale permanent immigration to the U.S. for any significant period of time, as most Europeans have done for the last quarter-century, and then suddenly regain interest in it, as the Irish did in the late 1970s and 1980s, it is nearly impossible to recapture their former position in the immigration queue absent special programs geared specifically toward them.
Second, there's the dynamic of the migration process itself. Once a national group gains a substantial immigration "beachhead," an ethnic-network-fueled self-feeding process commences that grows in intensity until a significant change occurs-typically in the economic or political circumstances of the sending country.
Origins and Destinations
Immigration from Western Europe and Canada provides perfect examples of this process. Permanent immigration from these countries has fallen to about 10 to 15% of total immigration to the United States, from about one-third of the total in the 1960s.
That decline has been accompanied by commensurate gains by Asia, which now accounts for about a third of the total U.S. inflow, and the Americas, which account for more than half of the total. In the 1990s, one national group-Mexicans-probably made up between 25 and 30% of total immigration to the United States (including recent estimates of illegal immigration).
Eastern Europe and Africa have been making modest recent gains in U.S. permanent resident visas and are expected to continue to do so. In addition to Mexico, a handful of South and East Asian countries (the Philippines, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and India), the former Soviet Union, and a few Central American and Caribbean states provide the overwhelming majority of immigrants to the United States and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Early results from the U.S. decennial census are confirming a trend some have been observing for the last decade. Namely, that Mexican immigrants (and gradually others, particularly recent refugees), regardless of status, are spreading out throughout the United States in rates not seen since the great migrations of the 1870-1920 period, making immigration truly "national" for the first time since early in the 20th century. Over the next two decades this process will intensify. Despite this dispersion, most new immigrants-perhaps 70%-will continue to settle in areas in which their own ethnic group has already created a significant niche, attracted by the existence of the private social safety net and information infrastructure that newcomers value very highly.
Illegal Immigration
Illegal immigration in the 1990s has also been very strong and, absent new forms of comprehensive interventions that succeed, it will continue to be so. The Americas may account for as much as three-quarters of all unauthorized immigrants. The remainder is made up of visa overstayers who originate from just about every other country. About two-thirds of illegal immigration comes from and through Mexico. Still-emerging 2000 census evidence suggests that recent annual net unauthorized migration coming from and through Mexico may be more than 300,000-about one-and-a-half times as large as analysts' earlier estimates. Some estimates put gross annual entries through Mexico at more than 1 million, but most of those persons leave the U.S. within a short time and are therefore not counted as "permanent" immigrants.
The Battle of the Border
Even if these numbers prove only partially accurate, they provide a strong incentive for the U.S. to take a fresh look at the issue and attempt to reach a thoughtful accommodation with Mexico. Such an accommodation might start from the premise that the enormous-and at about $1.5 billion annually, enormously expensive-buildup of border defenses has failed to reduce illegal entries. This reality makes a negotiated deal with Mexico one of the few reasonable courses of action left.
The incentives for Mexico to negotiate a dramatic change in the status quo are equally powerful. They include deaths at the border, which approached 500 last year, the disorder that results from the repeated U.S. push-back of many would-be illegal border-crossers, and the clear concern that the U.S.-Mexican argument about immigration may infect the broader relationship. The United States and Mexico share an interest in attacking organized criminal networks that severely undermine the authority of the Mexican government and cause problems for the United States that go well beyond illegal immigration. In fact, the two nations, in tackling this issue, may have an excellent opportunity for broad cooperation on an unprecedented scale.
Certainly, illegal immigration is largely a U.S.-Mexican issue, and our two nations need to address that fact. But we also need to acknowledge the deep social and economic forces that drive illegal immigration. Those include (a) the ready availability of U.S. jobs for poor Mexicans (who typically make few demands on employers); (b) the existence of mature ethnic networks; and (c) U.S. consumer habits and preferences which nurture and reinforce all immigration. The result is a near-natural symbiosis between the goals of Mexican migrant workers and their families, on the one hand, and the interests and expectations of U.S. employers, investors, and consumers, on the other hand. Should we be surprised when policies that work against market forces in societies that otherwise idolize free enterprise (as the U.S. does, at least rhetorically) prove to have little success?
Managing illegal immigration will also be more effective in the long term if we commit ourselves to testing alternative management and control methods. For instance, we might choose to deepen cooperation with and increase coordination on enforcement activities with both our contiguous neighbors. The U.S. and Canada are already moving on this track.
Similarly, groupings of like-minded states can work together to keep out those without the right to enter or be in their countries, as the European Union does through the Schengen agreement. The signing by the U.S., Canada and Mexico of two international protocols-one on "Trafficking in Persons" and the other on "Smuggling of Migrants"- is a good initial step in that direction.
Alternately, the U.S. might wish to focus on managing unauthorized immigration from one or more key countries through a variety of positive incentives and sharp disincentives. Among the former might be offering them preferential immigration benefits, aggressively supporting development programs and loans by international financial institutions, or making additional trade concessions. Suspending some immigration benefits, instituting additional procedures at the border, temporarily blocking international financial institution initiatives, or withdrawing other positive incentives are the negative side of the same coin.
Does Immigration Benefit America?
An exhaustive 1997 report by the National Academy of Sciences finds that the average net economic benefits to the U.S. government of immigration tend to be small and vary widely with the following factors: the skill, age, and family composition of the immigrants in question; the economic sector in which the immigrants enter; the overall economic conditions of their areas of settlement; and the immigrants' legal status.
The Academy's accounting exercise did not measure benefits which, though difficult to quantify, are essential. Among these are the fact that the upbringing and education of immigrants have been paid for by other, usually poorer, countries. Immigrants are heavily over-represented among those holding post-graduate degrees, but also among those not having a high school diploma. And the value of immigrants' personal industry, innovation, and dynamism. Immigrants also increase the ranks of entrepreneurs and typically exhibit values-including family values and work habits-that most closely approximate those to which we sometimes aspire but no longer seem capable of producing consistently.
The benefits of legal immigration do not imply that all immigrants improve our general welfare or that more immigration will necessarily continue to prove advantageous. Responsible governance requires that immigration levels be flexible, that the impact of immigration on the labor market be monitored (so that immigration policy remains broadly in line with whatever human resource policies we may have), that immigration's demographic effects be clearly understood and in line with the goals of the receiving country, and that unanticipated and undesirable social effects (including unwarranted access to the country's welfare system) be addressed quickly, though equitably.
But what of unauthorized immigration? Illegal immigration undermines the principle that successful societies are governed by the rule of law. Thus, it provokes considerable popular anxiety and helps to stoke xenophobic rhetoric.
Demetrios Papademetriou is co-executive director of the Migration Policy Institute, a new independent think tank devoted exclusively to the study of international migration.
