Social Factors

From WolfWikis

Introduction

Perhaps no domestic issue in America receives as much attention as immigration—specifically the illegal movement of Mexican nationals into the southern portion of United States. While more prominently addressed in political and economic terms, there are a number of important and widely debated social issues raised by the increasing number of illegal immigrants in US cities.

Crime

Many social scientists have noted that first-generation illegal immigrants are “more likely to be law-abiding than third-generation Americans of similar socioeconomic status.”^[1] This runs counter to the traditionally accepted “social disorganization theory,” which states, according to Harvard professor Robert Simpson, that the heterogeneity created by factors like immigration reduces cultural understanding and cooperation and thus helps “create more crime.” The trend, among first-generation immigrants, seems to be just the opposite. To the majority of new illegal immigrants crime, in general, would be counterproductive. Simpson theorizes that immigrants “have a certain amount of motivation to work and not get arrested.”^[2] Arrest would more than likely lead to deportation, and deportation to a loss of livelihood.

While many have found a disinclination toward crime amongst new immigrants, the evidence suggests that second and third-generation immigrants, the children of largely law-abiding parents, are far more disposed to commit criminal acts. According to Alejandro Portes, “Poorly educated migrants who come to fill menial positions at the bottom of the labor market and who lack legal status have greater difficulty supporting their youths. Because of poverty, these migrants often move into central city areas where their children are served by poor schools and are daily exposed to gangs and deviant lifestyles. A number of children of immigrants trapped in this situation suffer from what is being called downward assimilation.”^[3] Downward assimilation within immigrant communities has led to increased high school drop-out rates, a rise in teen pregnancy among females, and a rise in incarceration rates among adolescent males.

Hispanic adolescent males have become increasingly involved in inner-city gang violence. Gangs with names like "Still Out Killing," "Hispanics Taking Over," and "Just Mobbing Crazy," all Hispanic in origin, are now prominent in areas like South Central Los Angeles. The negative effects of this gang violence are not felt strictly in the US. As Portes points out, there are serious consequences for Mexico and other Central American nations. "When young immigrants who have become socialized in deviant lifestyles return to Mexico or are deported there," he argues, "they bring along these behaviors and often recruit local youngsters into similar activities. The maras or youthful gangs that have become a public security problem in Mexico and Central America were, in their origins, an import from Los Angeles, Houston, and other U.S. cities. Youth gangs are suddenly emerging where none existed before."^[4]

Health Care and Public Health

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), illegal immigrants represent potentially serious health risks. As stated on the organization’s web site: “the rapidly swelling population of illegal aliens in our country has also set off a resurgence of contagious diseases that had been totally or nearly eradicated by our public health system.” ^[5] There have been an increasing number of documented occurrences of diseases once considered controlled or eradicated, especially along the US-Mexico border. Instances of tuberculosis, leprosy, and dysentery, among other diseases, have become markedly more common in counties along the border. According to Dr. Laurence Nickey, director of the El Paso health district in Texas, the "incidence of tuberculosis in El Paso county is twice that of the US rate" and "dysentery is several times the U.S. rate."^[6] These diseases are not limited to the border. As immigrants spread, so to do the communicable diseases. An out brake of TB in an Alexandria, Virginia high school in 1995, for example, was ultimately traced to a student who had entered the country illegally.

Of considerably more importance, however, is the effect that illegal immigration have on the cost of health care. Illegal immigration adds substantially to the ranks of the uninsured. As of the year 2000, there are an estimated 11.6 million uninsured immigrants in the united states, accounting for one quarter of the total uninsured population. Studies show that illegal immigrants are far more likely to use hospitals and other emergency services over less expensive preventative medical services. Recorded hospital and clinic use "by illegal aliens (29 percent) is more than twice the rate of the overall U.S. population (11 percent)."^[7]

Health care costs for illegal immigrants are ultimately passed on to tax-paying Americans, and the bills are staggering. Health costs for illegal immigrants in the state of California in the year 2004 amounted to $1.4 billion dollars, $.85 billion in the state of Texas, and $.4 billion in the state of Arizona.^[8]

Education

Immigration greatly increases the cost of education in the United States. As of 2005, it cost US tax payers an estimated $12 billion dollars a year to educate the 1.1 million children of illegal immigrants in American primary schools. The cost falls to state governments: in 2005 the estimated yearly cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants in the state of Florida was $1.2 billion dollars, $952 million in Georgia, $2 million in Illinois, $3.9 billion in Texas, and a staggering $7.7 billion in the state of California. In 2005 alone, North Carolina spent in the arena of $771 million dollars educating the children of illegal immigrants, which, according to FAIR, could have been used to "Redress part of a $1.2 billion state budget shortfall and obviate the need for new taxes proposed by Gov. Mike Easley for the 2006 budget." Immigrants represent a tremendous cost to states where budgets are already thread-bare. According to Jack Martin of FAIR " all of our children—native-born and immigrants alike—are receiving a poorer education as a result of the federal government passing its immigration law enforcement failures on to the states."^[9]

Public Response in the US

Neo-nativism

Protesting illegal immigration

The problems created by illegal immigration have generated many kinds of public response. The last decade has seen the rise in a new sort of nativism, directed primarily at Mexican immigrants. Along with the negative economic implications of illegal immigration, Many Americans see a continued, unchecked influx of illegal immigrants into the country as a threat to American Culture. Immigrants to the US have traditionally had little trouble assimilating into the melting pot that is American culture. Many feel that, with such large numbers and a general desire among illegal immigrants to remain anonymous , the current crop of immigrants will not assimilate.

In response to the growing number of immigrants entering across the US-Mexican border, public organizations like the Minutemen Civil Defense Group, have begun actively bolstering the thin ranks of the US border patrol. According to the Minutemen website, the group formed in 2005 in an effort to "Secure the border, and save American lives while ensuring American sovereignty." The group has reported 30,108 immigrant sightings, and have, in concert with the border patrol, been involved in the apprehension 13,572 illegal immigrants from 26 different countries. The organization also claims to have saved the lives of 310 people from death by exposure.^[10]

Minutemen in action with the Virginia National Guard in Arizona

Support for Immigrants

Other Americans, however, find themselves deeply concerned by the plight of the immigrant worker, and actively campaign for improved treatment of migrant workers. One example, a boycott of Mt. Olive pickle products in the state of North Carolina, actually resulted in beneficial concessions for migrant workers. Organized by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and supported by over 300 organizations state wide, the boycott lasted from 1998 to 2004. The three-way settlement that ended the boycott allowed 8,000 migrant workers in the State of North Carolina to unionize. Mt. Olive agreed to pay more for cucumbers and cucumber farmers agreed to provide workers with better pay.^[11]

Conclusion

These issues merit serious consideration, and serious legislative action. Several things are at play here. Illegal immigrants are increasingly more of a financial burden on the States, and thus on tax payers. Costs related to education and healthcare are costs that citizens and legal immigrants should not have to pay. However, given our history as a "nation of immigrants" and a "land of opportunity," it would be rather hypocritical to bar immigrants from entry. Enforcement of extant laws seems impractical, because many benefit from the cheap labor illegal immigration provides. Perhaps some consideration should be given to streamlining the legal immigration process, so as produce a more mutually beneficial relationship between legal and illegal residents.

References

Back to US Immigration Policy

Annotated Biblography

1. ↑ Robert Simpson, "Latinos Nix Violence." Harvard Magazine. Oct, 2006. online at http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/soc/faculty/sampson/2006_HarvardMagazine_LatinosNix.pdf
2. ↑ Simpson, Latinos
3. ↑ Alejandro Portes, "The Overlooked Costs of Immigration." Online at <http://blog.aapss.org/index.cfm?CommentID=16>
4. ↑ Portes, Costs
5. ↑ Federation for American Immigration Reform, "Illegal Immigration and Public Health." Online at: <http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=iic_immigrationissuecenters64bf>
6. ↑ FAIR, Public Health
7. ↑ FAIR, Public Health
8. ↑ FAIR, Public Health
9. ↑ FAIR, "Breaking the Piggy Bank: How Illegal Immigration is Sending Schools into the Red." Online at: <http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_researchf6ad>
10. ↑ Minutemen Civil Defense Corps Website: <http://www.minutemanhq.com/>
11. ↑ Bill Norton, "Mt Olive Pickle Boycott Ends." Online at: <http://archives.umc.org/interior.asp?ptid=2&mid=5685>