immigration

Religious and nonreligious organizations may have a similar impact on the ability of immigrants to acclimate to life in the U.S., despite the organizations’ different motivations for providing charitable services, according to new research from Rice University and the Russell Sage Foundation.

More Research on Immigration
• RSF Program: Immigration in the United States
• RSF Book: Immigration Research for a New Century
• RSF Book: Civic Hopes and Political Realities

“There’s been a lot of discussion as to whether religious organizations offer some special or unique benefit to immigrant groups that will help them better adapt to American society,” said the study’s lead author, Elaine Howard Ecklund, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Sociology and director of Rice’s Religion and Public Life Program. “We wanted to see at the organizational level whether there was any practical difference between these two groups.”

The study examined the behavior of two Mexican-American organizations, one religious and one nonreligious. The two groups identified different motivations for providing job placement, language and financial services to immigrants: The religious organization said its religious convictions necessitated service to the local community, whereas the nonreligious organization cited its commitment to at-risk groups. However, the study showed that there was was little difference in the impact of the two organizations – both sought to provide outreach and services to their respective communities.

The study’s co-author, Michael Emerson, the Allyn and Gladys Cline Professor of Sociology and Kinder Institute co-director, noted that although there is little difference between the organizations at the present time, that may change in the future.

“There may be significant changes as these organizations deal with second- and third-generation Mexican-Americans,” Emerson said. “These individuals might have different concerns, so the mission and services provided by these organizations very well may change.”

Social Science Quarterly has published a new RSF-funded paper that examines the politics of adolescent children of immigrants in the United States. Written by Melissa Humphries, Chandra Muller and Kathryn Schiller, the study "aims to evaluate the adolescent political socialization processes that predict political participation in young adulthood, and whether these processes are different for children of immigrants compared to white third-plus-generation adolescents." Here is a summary:

Methods
We use a nationally representative longitudinal survey of adolescents to evaluate the predictors of three measures of political participation—voter registration, voting, and political party identification—and whether the process leading to political participation varies by immigrant status and race/ethnic group.

Results
We find that the parental education level of adolescents is not as predictive for many minority children of immigrants compared to white children of native-born parents for registration. Additionally, the academic rigor of the courses taken in high school has a greater positive estimated effect on the likelihood of registration and party identification for Latino children of immigrants compared to white third-plus-generation young adults.

Conclusions
The process of general integration into U.S. society for adolescent children of immigrants may lead to differing pathways to political participation in young adulthood, with certain aspects of their schooling experience having particular importance in developing political participation behaviors.

John Logan and Richard Turner have released a new U.S. 2010 report entitled "Hispanics in the United States: Not Only Mexicans." Here is the executive summary:

This report summarizes what is known about the sizes, social backgrounds and locations of each major Hispanic group. We emphasize the differences among them at the neighborhood level in the extent of their segregation from other groups, and the degree to which they form separate residential enclaves in the metropolis.

Analyses of the most recent data show how important are the differences among these Hispanic groups:

• While Mexicans continue to be about 60% of the Hispanic population, growth of Puerto Ricans and Cubans lags behind and the New Latino groups are gaining much faster. The extreme case is Hondurans, up nearly 400% since 1990 and now numbering over 600,000. Except for Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, a large majority of all other groups (over 60%) is foreign-born. However the share of immigrants who arrived in the last decade is lower than it was ten years ago.
More from RSF's U.S. 2010 Project
• Unauthorized Immigrant Parents: Do Their Migration Histories Limit Their Children's Education?
• An Uneven Road and Then a Cliff: US Labor Markets since 2000
• Separate and Unequal: The Neighborhood Gap for Blacks, Hispanics and Asians in Metropolitan America
• How Changes in Employment, Earnings and Public Transfers Make the First Two Years of the Great Recession (2007-2009) Different from Previous Recessions and Why It Matters
• The socioeconomic ladder of groups shows advantages for Cubans (long considered an advantaged minority) but also for Puerto Ricans and South Americans. Other groups are more similar to Mexicans, with Guatemalans an extreme case of low education, low wages, and high poverty.
• Each Hispanic group has its own pattern of regional concentration, including especially the Southwest, Northeast, and Chicago. The main trend over time is for dispersion from the
  metropolitan regions that historically housed the most group members.
• Hispanic segregation from whites is dominated by the moderately high segregation of Mexicans, which has not changed since 1990. Dominicans and Central Americans are considerably more separated, while South Americans are more spatially assimilated. The striking finding is that all groups aside from Mexicans have become much less segregated
  over time.
• Hispanics overall live in neighborhoods with poorer and less educated residents than do non-Hispanic whites. But South Americans are relatively advantaged and Dominicans are in the worst position. A positive trend is the increasing share of neighbors with college education, which reflects a national trend toward higher education levels.

RSF grantee Roger Waldinger has co-authored a new paper, "Inheriting the Homeland? Intergenerational Transmission of Cross-Border Ties in Migrant Families," in the latest issue of the American Journal of Sociology. Here is the abstract:

Theories of migrant transnationalism emphasize the enduring imprint of the premigration connections that the newcomers bring with them. But how do the children of migrants raised in the parents’ adopted country develop ties to the parental home country? Using a structural equation model and data from a recent survey of adult immigrant offspring in Los Angeles, this article shows that second-generation cross-border activities are strongly affected by earlier experiences of and exposure to home country influences. Socialization in the parental household is powerful, transmitting distinct home country competencies, loyalties, and ties, but not a coherent package of transnationalism. Our analysis of five measures of cross-border activities and loyalties among the grown children of migrants shows that transmission is specific to the social logic underlying the connection: activities rooted in family relationships such as remitting are transmitted differently than emotional attachments to the parents’ home country.

Dr. Liana Epstein, a social psychologist connected with RSF's Racial Bias in Policing Working Group, recently co-published an article on cross-deputization, which mandates that police officers enforce immigration laws. The article, entitled "Safety or Liberty?: The Bogus Trade-Off of Cross-Deputization Policy" can be read here.

Q: Let's first define the issue -- what exactly is "cross-deputization" and why has it become such a prominent issue?

A: Cross-deputization (codified in 1996 as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act) is an optional federal training program that "deputizes" police officers to seek out undocumented immigrants and to charge them for their presence in the country without documents. This policy has gained significant popularity in recent years (U. S. Department of Homeland Security, 2008), culminating in laws such as Arizona’s SB 1070 (enacted in 2010). It has become a prominent issue because of its burgeoning popularity and the potentially negative consequences it engenders.

More Research on Policing
• Conference: Rethinking Finance
• Lessons from the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act
• Paper: Causes & Effects of Cross-Deputization Policy in Salt Lake City, Utah

Q: Your paper argues that the debate over cross-deputization wrongly pits civil rights against safety. Instead, you say that ensuring civil rights is a "necessary precondition of public safety and lawfulness" because it protects police legitimacy. Why do you believe that police officers enforcing immigration laws would hurt the perception of police?

A: Our research operates from the premise that cross-deputization is "poisonous" because it is not applied equally across groups. When one is told to “find the illegal immigrant,” it is not Caucasians who have overstayed their visas who are likely to be asked for proof of their right to be in the country. We argue that as Latinos have become the accessible “picture in our heads” for undocumented immigrants there are no truly “race-blind” cues to documentation status, and thus any basis for enforcement will ultimately target Latinos disproportionately. Thus cross-deputization is inherently racialized and becomes not a question of legal versus illegal, but Latino versus non-Latino. Consequently police officers are then seen as racist. My dissertation explored this in more detail.

Chandra Muller, a sociologist at the University of Texas, as co-authored a new article in the latest issue of Social Forces. Funded by an award from the Russell Sage Foundation, Muller's study examines school stratification in new and established immigrant destinations. Here is the abstract:

The growth and geographic diversification of the school-age Latino population suggest that schools in areas that previously had very few Latinos now serve many of these students. This study uses the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey and the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to compare public high schools in new and established Latino destinations. We examine school composition, school quality indicators, instructional resources and access to advanced math courses. We find that schools in new destinations display more favorable educational contexts according to a number of measures, but offer fewer linguistic support services than schools in established destinations. We also find evidence of a within-school Latino-white gap in advanced math course taking in new destinations, suggesting greater educational stratification within schools in those areas.

As part of our Election 2012 series, James A. McCann evaluates the political voice of non-citizens during an election season. A political scientist at Purdue University, McCann is also a former RSF Visiting Scholar.

At present, some forty million residents of the United States – or about one-eighth of the total population – are foreign-born. The number of immigrants in the U.S. is now at an all-time high. To find a period in history when as large a proportion of the mass public was foreign-born, we must look back a century to the first great wave of migrant settlement. Immigrants today vary widely with respect to country of origin, language use, cultural practice, family structure, and job skills. There is also considerable variation in formal civic and migration status. According to the most recent Census estimates, 37 percent of the foreign-born are naturalized American citizens, 35 percent are permanent or temporary legal residents, and 28 percent are unauthorized to reside in the United States.

More Research on Immigration
• RSF Program: Immigration in the United States
• RSF Book: Immigration Research for a New Century
• RSF Book: Civic Hopes and Political Realities

In this campaign season, much concern has been expressed about these latter two groups, and the possibility that immigrants without voting rights may gain access to the ballot box. Over a dozen states have sought to purge alleged non-citizens from electoral registration lists, and nine require voters to prove their identity by showing a government-issued document with a photograph at polling stations. To date, however, exceedingly little evidence of unlawful voting has emerged. Except in scattered municipalities around the country where non-citizens can vote in local elections, immigrants who have not completed naturalization cannot, and do not, cast ballots.

But does the lack of citizenship rights necessarily translate into a lack of voice during major national election campaigns? Large-scale telephone surveys of Mexican immigrants that I conducted with Stacey Connaughton (Purdue University) and Katsuo Nishikawa (Trinity University) during the 2008 campaigns with the support of the Russell Sage Foundation demonstrate that the foreign-born are far from disengaged from electoral politics. This holds true even for immigrants without voting rights. Below I point to three features of political engagement that we discovered among the foreign-born.

As part of our Election 2012 series, John D. Skrentny and Jane Lilly Lopez examine the crucial Latino vote and President Obama's record on immigration reform. A contributor to the RSF book, Reaching for a New Deal: Ambitious Governance, Economic Meltdown, and Polarized Politics in Obama's First Two Years, Skrentny is the director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Lopez is a graduate student in sociology at UCSD.

Obama’s support among Latino voters remains unchanged from 2008 despite the failure of his central promise to Latino voters: that he would pass comprehensive immigration reform. In actuality, Obama did not even come close to passing immigration reform. The administration never promoted a bill, and no bill reached the floor of either the House or the Senate. How does failure in policy lead to success in politics? The answer is that Obama used his executive authority to do just enough on policy to signal his support for Latinos. The Republicans, meanwhile, have contributed by further alienating Latinos even as their presence in the electorate has grown.

More Research on Immigration
• RSF Program: Immigration in the United States
• Report: The Impact of Race and Ethnicity, Immigration and Political Context on Participation in American Electoral Politics
• RSF Book: Asian American Political Participation
• RSF Book: Civic Hopes and Political Realities

Why was comprehensive immigration reform such a failure in Obama’s first term? Comprehensive immigration reform has come in different versions over the years, but always retains the basic model of a "grand bargain" that pairs mass legalization of undocumented immigrants with efforts to control the border with Mexico to prevent a new population of undocumented immigrants from forming.

The Politics of Comprehensive Immigration Reform

The reasons Obama failed to pass reform can be stated succinctly. First, by the 2000s, much of the electorate and members of Congress had adopted negative attitudes toward undocumented immigrants and comprehensive reform. Many saw these immigrants as undeserving lawbreakers, and they saw reform as doomed to fail. This was because a 1986 comprehensive reform legalized almost 3 million migrants, but left the borders uncontrolled – by the mid-2000s, there were about 10 million new undocumented migrants in the country. For this reason, even many Democrats were skeptical of reform.

This factor helps us to understand Obama’s failure to enact reform, as well as George W. Bush’s failure. He tried twice in his two terms, and could not even rally a majority of his own party.

Another major factor was Republican opposition to nearly all Obama initiatives. Some Republicans had sponsored comprehensive reform under Bush. Under Obama, comprehensive reform did not have a single GOP sponsor. Even former stalwart supporters, such and John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), abandoned the effort.

The final factor was the institutional structure of Congress. There are so many "veto points" that it is not difficult for a determined minority to pull the plug on any legislation.

The Executive Route

Failing at legislation, Obama avoided the Republicans and institutional obstacles in Congress by boldly going it alone to signal support for Latinos. Responding to the negative moral meaning of “illegal immigrants,” Obama targeted a legalization effort at the most deserving of the undocumented: those who would have been eligible for the “DREAM Act.” This category included those who came into the country when they were fifteen or younger, and thus as minors moving with parents were never “lawbreakers” in the true sense of the term. Moreover, to benefit from Obama’s plan, they had to be productive members of society: either students or soldiers. Finally, the plan was not a pathway to citizenship, it was simply a Department of Homeland Security announcement that there was no plan to deport them. It could even be reversed—if the wrong person became president.

Vivian Louie is an associate professor of education at Harvard University. A former Visiting Scholar, she is the author of Keeping the Immigrant Bargain: The Costs and Rewards of Success in America, which examines the journey of Dominican and Colombian newcomers whose children have achieved academic success one generation after the arrival of their parents.

Q: Let’s start with the title of your book – what exactly is the "immigrant bargain"?

A: The immigrant bargain is one made between immigrant parents and their American-born and/or raised children. The children try to make up for their parents’ sacrifices with migration by successfully going on to college, a transition that would hopefully help them be upwardly mobile.

Q: Your book seeks to explain the sources of academic success among the children of Latino immigrants in America. One popular narrative, which you challenge, argues that culture largely determines why some immigrant groups do better than others. According to this theory, Asian-Americans generally do well in school chiefly because their culture values education more. Why do you think we should be cautious about accepting this explanation?

More Research on Immigration
• RSF Program: Immigration
• RSF Book: Achieving Anew: How New Immigrants Do in American Schools, Jobs, and Neighborhoods
• RSF Book: Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age

A: Motivation and optimism, which lie at the heart of the cultural narrative about success, are definitely both important to becoming successful. What we need to think more about, however, is where this motivation and optimism actually come from, and how they are maintained or depressed by the opportunities and constraints immigrants and their children find in the United States. By emphasizing family cultures, the cultural argument shifts the emphasis away from powerful institutional and other factors outside the family, which are crucial to understanding success.

The research I have done with the children of Chinese, Colombian, and Dominican working-class immigrants reveals that a key factor in their paths to college was having access to resources that provided critical help at important times, like referrals to a gifted class, a better middle school, after school programs, and quality college-counseling.

My comparative research also highlights the role of residential segregation and of ethnic community wealth in shaping different opportunities. First, the working-class Chinese were less residentially segregated, and thus had access to better public schools. Second, even when they lived in ethnic communities with substantial rates of poverty, e.g., a Chinatown, these communities also had a lot of transnational (from Asia) and ethnic wealth, which allowed for educational investments; as a result, the working-class Chinese had access to institutions that helped with schooling and ties to middle- and upper-middle class Chinese that provided key schooling information. Both are key advantages that were not as available to the Dominicans and Colombians, despite the fact that they were also highly motivated to help their children with schooling in America.

In a review for the American Journal of Sociology, John D. Skrentny praises Brokered Boundaries: Creating Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times (Massey/Sánchez R.) for its "rich and illuminating detail [on] the Latino immigrant experience in the United States":

The book provides an impressively rigorous and data-rich analysis of the process of immigrant assimilation in the United States. This book will invigorate an already lively area of scholarship and spur new research questions and comparative analysis—as well as much critical reflection on who we are and how we treat the strangers among us. [...]

his book will likely provoke a whole line of new research. For example, sociologists of race, ethnicity, and immigration may consider how these arguments might be generalized to other populations. How does boundary brokering work in “new gateways” of immigration? How does it work with other immigrant groups who may face different contexts of reception, such as Asians, Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, or skilled immigrants? Massey and Sánchez R. have provided a valuable model that will change debates on immigrant assimilation.