Beyond the Border Buildup: Towards a New Approach to Mexico-U.S. Migration

A proper understanding of the causes of international migration suggests that punitive immigration and border policies tend to backfire, and this is precisely what has happened in the case of the United States and Mexico. Rather than raising the odds that undocumented immigrants will be apprehended, U.S. border-enforcement policies have reduced the apprehension rate to historical lows and in the process helped transform Mexican immigration from a regional to a national phenomenon. The solution to the problems associated with undocumented migration is not open borders, but frontiers that are reasonably regulated on a binational basis

Commentary on "Trajectories for the immigrant second generation in New York City"

This article is commentary on a paper presented at a conference organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in April 2005, "Urban Dynamics in New York City." The goal of the conference was threefold: to examine the historical transformations of the engine-of-growth industries in New York and distill the main determinants of the city's historical dominance as well as the challenges to its continued success; to study the nature and evolution of immigration flows into New York; and to analyze recent trends in a range of socioeconomic outcomes, both for the general population and recent immigrants more specifically.Immigrants - New York (N.Y.) ; Economic conditions - New York (N.Y.) ; Federal Reserve District, 2nd ; Urban economics

Restrictive Immigration Policies and Latino Immigrant Identity in the United States

The United States is presently characterized by rising anti-immigrant sentiment, repressive immigration enforcement, and the negative framing of Latinos as threatening and undesirable. As a result, social boundaries between immigrants and natives have hardened and boundary crossing has become more difficult. Under these circumstances, the prediction of classical assimilation theory is turned on its head: the more time that immigrants spend in the United States and the more contact they have with Americans and American society, the more aware they become of the harsh realities of prejudice and discrimination and the more they come to experience the rampant inequalities of the secondary labor market. Rather than ideologically assimilating, therefore, the greater their experience in the United States, the more likely immigrants are to express a reactive ethnicity that rejects the label “American.” Our work suggests that the greatest threat to the successful assimilation of immigrants comes not from foreign involvements or transnational loyalties, but from the rejection, exclusion, and discrimination that immigrants experience in the United States.Immigration, Exclusion, Discrimination, Latinos, Identity

Restrictive Immigration Policies and Latino Immigrant Identity in the United States

The United States is presently characterized by rising anti-immigrant sentiment, repressive immigration enforcement, and the negative framing of Latinos as threatening and undesirable. As a result, social boundaries between immigrants and natives have hardened and boundary crossing has become more difficult. Under these circumstances, the prediction of classical assimilation theory is turned on its head: the more time that immigrants spend in the United States and the more contact they have with Americans and American society, the more aware they become of the harsh realities of prejudice and discrimination and the more they come to experience the rampant inequalities of the secondary labor market. Rather than ideologically assimilating, therefore, the greater their experience in the United States, the more likely immigrants are to express a reactive ethnicity that rejects the label “American.” Our work suggests that the greatest threat to the successful assimilation of immigrants comes not from foreign involvements or transnational loyalties, but from the rejection, exclusion, and discrimination that immigrants experience in the United States.Immigration, Exclusion, Discrimination, Latinos, Identity

How Neighborhood Disadvantage Reduces Birth Weight

In this analysis we connect structural neighborhood conditions to birth outcomes through their intermediate effects on mothers’ perceptions of neighborhood danger and their tendency to abuse substances during pregnancy. We hypothesize that neighborhood poverty and racial/ethnic concentration combine to produce environments that mothers perceive as unsafe, thereby increasing the likelihood of negative coping behaviors (substance abuse). We expect these behaviors, in turn, to produce lower birth weights. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a survey of a cohort of children born between 1998 and 2000 and their mothers in large cities in the United States, we find little evidence to suggest that neighborhood circumstances have strong, direct effects on birth weight. Living in a neighborhood with more foreigners had a positive effect on birth weight. To the extent that neighborhood conditions influence birth weight, the effect mainly occurs through an association with perceived neighborhood danger and subsequent negative coping behaviors. Poverty and racial/ethnic concentration increase a mother’s sense that her neighborhood is unsafe. The perception of an unsafe neighborhood, in turn, associates with a greater likelihood of smoking cigarettes and using illegal drugs, and these behaviors have strong and significant effects in reducing birth weight. However, demographic characteristics, rather than perceived danger or substance abuse, mediate the influence of neighborhood characteristics on birth weight

From Illegal to Legal: Estimating Previous Illegal Experience among New Legal Immigrants to the United States

This paper develops a framework for estimating previous illegal experience among annual cohorts of new legal immigrants to the United States – using public-use administrative microdata alone, survey data alone, and the two jointly – and provides estimates for the FY 1996 cohort of new immigrants, based on both administrative and survey data. Our procedures enable assessment of type of illegal experience, including entry without inspection, visa overstay, and unauthorized employment. We compare our estimates of previous illegal experience to estimates that would be obtained using administrative data alone; examine the extent of previous illegal experience by country of birth, immigrant class of admission, religion, and geographic residence in the United States; and estimate multivariate models of the probability of having previous illegal experience. To further assess origins and destinations, we carry out two kinds of contrasts, comparing formerly illegal new legal immigrants both to fellow immigrants who do not have previous illegal experience and also to the broader unauthorized population, the latter using estimates developed by DHS (2002), Passel (2002), and Costanzo et al. (2002).administrative data, legal immigration, illegal immigration, survey data