IMPACTS OF THE RECENT ECONOMIC CRISIS (2008-2009) ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

Edited by
Elaine Levine and Mónica Verea

Impacts of the Recent Economic Crisis (2008-2009) on International Migration, de Elaine Levine y Mónica Verea (eds.)

Esta obra fue publicada en versión impresa el 19 de marzo de 2009.

[ISBN: 978-607-02-5191-7]

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Hecho en México

Contents

FOREWORD

Silvia Núñez García

INTRODUCTION: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SOME IMPACTS OF THE RECENT ECONOMIC CRISIS ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

Mónica Verea*
Elaine Levine**

THE IMPACT OF THE 2008-2009 ECONOMIC CRISIS ON LATINOS AND LATINO IMMIGRANTS IN THE U.S. LABOR MARKET

Elaine Levine*

IMMIGRATION AND POLICY: NEW CHALLENGES AFTER THE ECONOMIC CRISIS IN PORTUGAL

Maria Lucinda Fonseca*
Jennifer McGarrigle**

THE IMPACT OF THE RECESSION ON MIGRATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Jon Simmons*

IMMIGRATION TO AND EMIGRATION FROM GERMANY IN THE LAST FEW YEARS

Bernd Geiss*

IMMIGRANT EMPLOYMENT AND MANAGING LABOR MIGRATION IN FINLAND

Paula Kuusipalo*

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND OVERSEAS FILIPINOS’ REMITTANCES: LEARNING TO BUILD A FUTURE BACK HOME

Imelda Nicolas*

EUROPE’S BACKLASH AGAINST MULTICULTURALISM

Jan Rath*

THE RISE OF ANTI-IMMIGRANT SENTIMENTS IN THE U.S.: ARIZONA AND ALABAMA, EMBLEMATIC CASES

Mónica Verea*

FOREWORD

Twenty-five years after the foundation in 1989 of the Center for Research on North America at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, our academic mission focuses on developing and deepening knowledge about the United States and Canada and their relations with Mexico through rigorous research that also takes into account the context of global events. Given the dimension and nature of this task, clearly we can only carry it out in close collaboration with different national and international institutions with the same objectives.

For that reason, the cisan has made a sustained effort to strengthen our academic ties by signing agreements with universities, research centers, foundations, and networks of experts, convinced that formalizing our relations guarantees mutually beneficial actions, seeking above all that they transcend institutionally over time.

I am pleased to say that the agreement currently linking our center with the Metropolis Project, signed in June 2008, has borne gratifying fruits. Its primary intent has been to support an international multidisciplinary project to give cisan researchers the opportunity to actively participate in this network, currently made up of a group of renowned experts and organizations from twenty-six countries on six continents linked to migration in the international context. Thanks to this collaboration, we are opening up our options for planning, coordinating, and implementing comparative studies on topics that include, among others, the effects of migration on economies; the social, political, and cultural impacts of international migration; the integration into receiving societies of migrant families; and the impact of migration on socio-economic inequalities.

With this background, it is with great pleasure that we bring our readers this book, Impacts of the Recent Economic Crisis (2008-2009) on International Migration. It is precisely the first published result of our interaction with Metropolis, which shows that we have gradually grown our alliance, making it possible on this occasion to reflect on the interweaving of the current economic crisis and migration from the different perspectives of nine specialists who focus on the circumstances of several European and North American countries.

In the name of the cisan’s academic community, allow me to thank Metropolis International Project Director Dr. Howard Duncan for having trusted us with the organization of the academic forum that gave rise to this publication. Congratulations to each and every one of the authors who have contributed their well-thought-out reflections to it.

For cisan researchers Elaine Levine and Mónica Verea, I wish to express my appreciation and admiration for their leadership as migration experts and the committed work that made the publication of this book in English possible.

Silvia Núñez García

Director Center for Research on North America,
unam University City, Mexico City, 2014

INTRODUCTION: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SOME IMPACTS OF THE RECENT ECONOMIC CRISIS ON INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

Mónica Verea*[1]
Elaine Levine**[2]

The global financial/economic crisis that began in 2008, the worst since the Great Depression, had an important effect in people’s movement around the world. The recession dampened the movement of economic migrants to the major immigrant-receiving countries. It has been said that some emerging economies that are continuing to grow and doing better than most of the developed world are re-attracting their expatriates and, in some cases, even luring new highly-skilled citizens of the U.S. and Europe. Academics and college-educated engineers from Brazil to China to Poland have long set off for the world’s more developed nations for better opportunities, sometimes in their own fields, often behind steering wheels or in fast-food or restaurant kitchens. Indeed, over time, about 75 percent of international migrants typically moved to a country with a higher level of human development than their country of origin, according to the United Nations Development Fund (Miller, Ford, and Marquand 2012). But now that tide is turning: immigrants no longer always see developed countries as a better place to be. This U-turn is a “brain gain” for developing countries. There is no doubt that the 2008 financial crisis has caused many to question whether the developed world is still the only land of opportunity worth migrating to (Miller, Ford, and Marquand 2012).

In terms of public policy, this severe economic crisis has exacerbated domestic pressures for implementing restrictions in immigration policies. In Russia, for example, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently enacted a policy intending to reduce the number of foreign workers in the country, while at the same time encouraging a youth section of his Unified Russia party to engage in a campaign to “reclaim jobs for Russians that are occupied by foreign migrant workers” (Globalization 101 2013). In Australia, where violence against foreigners, such as Indians, has become a problem in recent years, the government has reduced its intake of migrants to mitigate the effects that the financial crisis is expected to have on ethnic relations in an increasingly competitive job market. Countries like Japan and Spain have tried an alternative approach for lessening the political and financial burden immigrants represent by offering them cash incentives to return home.

Unfortunately, the policy response from national governments has been precisely the opposite of recommendations made by the International Organization for Migration cautioning against limiting migration. For example, in Russia, Vladimir Putin called for quotas on permits for work visas to be temporarily cut in half (Schwirtz 2009). Many other governments, such as the UK and Germany, have followed suit, stepping up deportations and implementing measures that make it difficult for migrants to enter the country. Jean-Leonard Touadi, an Italian member of Parliament, originally of Congolese descent, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “You can’t say all Italians are racist, but it would also be dangerous to underestimate what’s happening. . . . Faced with social and economic crisis, it’s easy to push rage and frustration on the foreigner. It shouldn’t make this a war between poor Italians and poor immigrants” (Donadio 2008).

Sending countries have had an important impact indirectly, since migrants who have returned voluntarily or been deported are looking for jobs in a labor market negatively affected by the economic crisis. In some countries, this situation has led to economic and social instability, because they do not have the capacity to absorb all the returnees easily. One of the most disastrous impacts has been the sharp decline in remittances, which constitute an important source of income for these out-migration countries. Some of them rely heavily on money sent home from compatriots working abroad to increase the nation’s gdp and promote economic development. Specifically, some communities with strong emigration traditions are the most affected, since remittances are the major source of income for them and the families living there.

Currently the biggest concentration of immigrants is in Europe, followed by Asia. As a country, the United States is home to one-fifth of world’s permanent, temporary, humanitarian, or unauthorized immigrants. The United Nations estimates there are roughly 20 million to 30 million undocumented migrants worldwide, comprising 10 to 15 percent of the world’s immigrants. An estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants live in the U.S. alone, according to their official data. President Obama, who in 2008 said he would push for a law to grant many of these immigrants legal access to jobs in the United States, instead deported a record number of undocumented working immigrants who left their relatives in the U.S.[3] Enforcement efforts to remove unauthorized migrants are up in many countries. Italy and France have increased enforcement measures (including controversial deportations from France of Roma immigrants back to Eastern Europe (Mittelstadt 2010).

An economic crisis usually affects immigrants more than the native population, due to their economic and social vulnerability. In most immigrant-receiving nations, immigrants’ economic vulnerability is a product of their occupational niches, characterized by informality and/or seasonal fluctuation. It is important to mention that undocumented workers represent the flows most closely linked to economic fluctuations and therefore are the ones most likely to be affected in poor economic times. China has the world’s largest Diaspora, but it has emerged as a global power —along with the other so-called bric nations: Brazil, Russia, and India. Its government has made a new push to woo back the millions of citizens, mainly highly skilled professionals and businesspersons, who had left the country over the past 30 years. The array of financial and other incentives to tempt them home is unmatched anywhere else in the world and is proving to be the icing on the cake of economic growth and opportunity that Chinese expatriates are rushing home to devour. The number of people coming home each year rather than staying on to work in their host countries has risen more than 10-fold since the beginning of the century. “What we are seeing is what appears to be European skilled migration to developing countries, like bric countries,” says Ryszard Cholewinski, a specialist on migration policy at the International Labor Organization. “Given the economic crisis in Europe,” he says, especially for young people in southern Europe, “opportunity for them now exists in the developing world” (Miller, Ford, and Marquand 2012).

During the last four years, declining gdp in most developed countries had already led to a decreased demand for labor, mainly in overrepresented industries that have seen extensive job loss, which has impacted immigrants as well as nationals. Immigrant-receiving countries have registered job losses in areas such as construction, manufacturing, and services. If we add to this the fact that trade and foreign direct investment were not as dynamic as they used to be, many migrants working in the export sector lost their jobs and in some cases, have been forced to return home. For example, 10 million internal migrants from rural China have been put out of their jobs due to decreasing export demand worldwide (Castles and Miller 2009). The crisis has also caused cuts in the formal sector, often pushing people into the informal work force where there is little social protection. Since public resources have been severely reduced, in recent years, institutions have been unable to provide services at the same level as before. Overall, recent analysis reflects the fact that migrants have been associated with vulnerable occupations, informal work, and public resource restrictions during the crisis (Emesphdnetwork 2012). A recent report reveals that the toll among migrant men has been particularly high as they are often concentrated in the sectors that experienced the most serious contractions (notably construction and manufacturing), and immigrant youth (ages 15-24) (Papademetriou et al. 2010). Unemployment among foreign-born youth has reached 41 percent in Spain, 37 percent in Sweden, and 20 percent in Canada. By contrast, immigrant women have fared better than their male counterparts in almost all wealthy countries. The report also states that certain immigrant groups and minorities have lost the most ground economically during the recession: Pakistanis and Bangladeshis in the United Kingdom, North African and Andean immigrants in Spain, and Latinos in the United States. Some migrant-destination countries that historically have been countries of emigration, such as Ireland and Greece, may be reverting to earlier trends. Ireland re-emerged as a country of net emigration in 2009 for the first time since 1995, reporting the highest net outflows of both immigrants and natives in the European Union. Nearly a million people left Spain during 2011 due to the severe economic recession and unemployment that reached 24.6 percent of the work force. According to figures from the Statistical Institute, in 2012, 420 150 people left Spain, 37 539 more than in the same period of 2011. Of this total, nearly 55 000 are Spanish (21.6 percent) and the rest foreigners (Este País 2012).

In general terms, migrants have faced worsening employment prospects in destination countries, often coupled with tightening entry regulations. With this situation, migrant workers have been forced to accept lower wages and endure poorer working conditions in order to try to keep their jobs. Others have tended to stay instead of returning home despite the lack of jobs and increasing discrimination, because the situation is even worse in their countries of origin. This has been the case more for temporary migrants than for permanent ones. Many potential migrants from developing countries have also been deterred from making the trip across borders. For example, emigration from Mexico to the U.S. decreased significantly during the last five years, particularly for the undocumented, dropping from a net difference of approximately 300 000 a year, between entries and exits (including deportations), to being almost even.[4]

Low-skilled workers still represent the bulk of global migration flows. They are the ones most affected for several reasons: the great majority lack language skills, their educational level is not high, and they are concentrated in boom/bust sectors like construction. Irregular migrants are among the hardest hit and most vulnerable during crisis situations (Khan, Abimourched, and Ciobanu 2009).

Most European countries were hit by the economic crisis and saw declines in employment rates. Eurostat reported that 33.3 million foreign citizens lived in the EU-27 member states in 2011. The population of the EU-27 countries was 502 million in 2011. Three-fourths of the foreigners in the EU were in five countries. The unemployment rate in the 17 euro zone nations was 11.2 percent in June 2012, meaning that almost 18 million workers were jobless. About 58 percent of non-EU foreigners aged 20 to 64 in EU member states were employed in 2011, compared with 69 percent of EU nationals in this age group. Europe has too many auto factories, and they are producing at less than 65 percent of capacity because of an insufficient demand for cars. Car sales in Europe were projected at about 12 million in 2012, down from 15 million in 2007.

Unfortunately, in the wake of the global economic crisis and labor market pressures, the debate over migration has gained momentum. The rise in anti-immigrant sentiments, xenophobic prejudices, and discrimination is often exacerbated in times of economic crisis. Migrants, chosen as the scapegoats, are often seen as either the source of the economic malaise, stealing jobs from natives, or as unnecessary expenditures for the economy, in terms of the costs they represent in health, education, and other items. European anti-migrant sentiment must be viewed as part of a larger trend of xenophobic attitudes exacerbated by the global recession. Nevertheless, new tendencies have emerged among the new extreme right, who encourage intolerance and hate, contaminating parties and democratic institutions across Europe. Their spectacular electoral rise in Austria, Sweden, and Holland confirms it: the hard ultra-right Jobbik in Hungary, the Northern League in Italy, the bnp in Great Britain, or the Islamophobes in Switzerland, and the crisis involving groups of Roma from Romania and Bulgaria in France and Italy are some examples. These tendencies represent a setback for democratic parties’ historic achievements, especially the progress made toward universal human rights (Ibarra 2011).

The media has also played an important a role in this cycle; as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights asserts, “Xenophobic and racist attacks on migrants are often a response to a distorted perception, at times fomented by the media, of the scope of irregular migration and its consequences for the host societies” (United Nations 2009). Changing public attitudes, even in times of economic prosperity, is a slow and arduous process. Reversing the economic decline would go a long way toward reducing xenophobic sentiments; however, without a concerted effort to promote integration on a community level, it is tremendously unlikely that any long-term progress will be made toward fully accepting the contributions of migrant workers to the global economy (Globalization 101 2013)

Economic realities often outweigh political rhetoric; thus, an increased demand for labor may prevail, in practice, over anti-immigrant discourse. Existing immigration laws may be implemented or interpreted more strictly or more leniently depending on the overall economic conditions and/or the general political climate, which is in turn influenced by the economy and vice versa. The immigration reform debate underway in the United States in spring 2013 provides an interesting example of the interactions and mutual influences —or interference— that can take place between economics and politics when immigration is discussed.

The various attempts to get immigration-reform legislation through the U.S. Congress between 2004 and 2007 seem to have been thwarted mainly because of partisan differences. Once the recession set in at the end of 2007, the stark reality of millions of unemployed was enough to deter any serious attempt to legislate on the issue. At the end of 2010, it looked as if the dream Act had some chances of getting passed, which turned out not to be the case. Simultaneously, various states, among which Arizona was the most emblematic, had taken matters into their own hands and passed punitive immigration laws at the state level.

In April 2013, despite the still uncomfortably high unemployment rate and the unusually low work force participation rate, a bipartisan group of eight senators (four Democrats and four Republicans) introduced the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. If it had passed, this legislation would have eventually provided a path to citizenship for many of the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants now residing in the U.S. Some opponents of the proposal have tried to justify their position on economic grounds. Roy Beck, chief executive of Numbers-U.S.A, a group that advocates lower immigration, was quoted in the Washington Post as arguing, “We’re in the fifth year of very high unemployment….We’re in a terrible situation for [U.S.] American workers. People at the lower levels have seen real wages decline. Given that backdrop, why would you grant people amnesty?” (Nakamura 2013). Nevertheless such concerns seem to have been trumped by the fact that Obama received slightly over 70 percent of the Latino vote in the 2012 elections. As a result some prominent Republicans, like Marco Rubio, have decided to moderate their positions on immigration reform and have urged their fellow party members to do likewise. Although the bill passed the Senate, as of the and of 2013, it had not even been brought to a vote in the House.

The 2008-2009 economic crisis has produced varied, yet in some ways similar, situations in many parts of the world in terms of changing policies and attitudes toward immigrant populations. This volume contains papers originally presented at the Metropolis International Steering Committee’s Academic Forum on “Impacts of the Recent Economic Crisis on International Migration,” held at cisan-unam in Mexico City in March 2012. In keeping with the Metropolis Project’s goal of providing “a forum for bridging research, policy and practice on migration and diversity,” papers were presented by both academics and public servants involved with immigration issues. Therefore, the chapters in this book are quite diverse, not only in terms of the countries represented, but also with respect to each one’s length, scope, aims, perspective, and content.

This volume provides just a few examples of how immigration policies and practices in many parts of the world have inevitably been affected by the “great recession.” The first five chapters explore how migration flows responded to the changing economic conditions imposed by the recession in five specific and very different country cases: the United States, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Finland. Chapter Six explains how an important remittance-receiving country, the Philippines, has tried to mitigate the impacts of continuing global economic difficulties. The two final chapters analyze how economic difficulties have kindled social backlash and anti-immigrant sentiments among some sectors of the population in both Europe (Chapter 7) and the United States (Chapter 8).

Elaine Levine’s article, “The Impact of the 2008-2009 Economic Crisis on Latinos and Latino Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market,” explores labor market outcomes for Latinos and Latino immigrants in the U.S. today, in particular Mexicans and those of Mexican origin. After brief comments on the history of labor migration to the U.S., she explains how certain industries and occupations had recently become labor market niches for Latino workers. She examines job losses after 2007 and the evolution of employment between 2007 and 2010 in those industries and occupations with the highest numbers and percentages of Latino workers and discusses the increasing difficulties for Latino workers in the U.S. labor market since the onset of the 2008-2009 recession. She concludes with references to the rise in anti-immigrant sentiments in the state of Georgia, which, as she concludes, may prove even more detrimental to immigrant workers, particularly the undocumented, than lost jobs and lower wages.

Maria Lucinda Fonseca and Jennifer McGarrigle begin their article “Immigration and Policy: New Challenges after the Economic Crisis in Portugal,” by explaining how Portugal —along with other southern European countries heretofore characterized by significant emigration— recently became a destination for international labor migrants. Nevertheless, in the Portuguese case, emigration persisted along with the inflow of workers from Eastern Europe and Asia, and a renewed flow from Brazil. They analyze the connections between macroeconomic performance and migratory flows and the changes taking place in what is now a much less favorable economic context. Thus far, Portugal seems to have been able to avoid significant social tensions and conflicts between national and foreign workers, or political discourses expressing anti-immigrant sentiments and attitudes, which no doubt have been dissipated to some extent by persisting emigration.

In his article “The Impact of the Recession on Migration in the United Kingdom,” Jon Simmons explains why net immigration is still significant in spite of the recession. He incorporates several data sets into his analysis to show how migration flows and patterns have changed over the past few years. First of all,

the period of the recession coincided with a sharp fall in immigration but an even sharper fall in emigration. In a period when the economy was contracting and unemployment rising, more people were still coming to reside in the uk than were leaving to go elsewhere. . . . As the recession ended in the fourth quarter of 2009, immigration recovered and began to rise again, . . . but emigration numbers for British citizens have remained low.

He points out that during the recent recession, the number of foreign students coming to the uk overtook the number of foreign migrants coming to work. He argues, therefore, that the recession has had “only a relatively modest impact on migration trends [in the uk] overall” and that this result was “due to the changed composition of the migratory flows to the uk, and specifically the significant rise in student migration over this period.”

Bernd Geiss writes about “Immigration to and Emigration from Germany in the Last Few Years.” His assessment is that the impacts of the recent financial and economic crisis on migration to Germany were relatively small. In contrast to events in some other European economies, the crisis in Germany lasted only for a short time. He underlines the fact that, even though economic growth did decline somewhat, the employment rate remained nearly stable because of special measures implemented by the government to maintain employment levels and workers’ incomes. Thus, while he believes that Germany was “successful in managing the last economic crisis,” he expresses concerns about the future. Total population will decline and the age distribution will change. He maintains that Germany will need more skilled workers. He laments, however, that migration policies are not based only on economic logic, but also “on traditions, mentalities, irrational imaginations, and, last but not least, the fear of strangers.”

In her article “Employment of the Immigrant Population and Managing Labor Migration in Finland,” Paula Kuusipalo explains that Finland has only recently changed from an emigrant-sending to an immigrant-receiving country. The transformation started in the 1980s, first attracting Finnish returnees, and gradually, as a result of economic growth and a rising demand for labor, becoming more and more work-related. She points out that the current public discussion on immigration issues is framed, on one hand, by concerns over a declining population and future labor force needs and, on the other hand, by the fairly recent populist opinions against foreign influences, some of which also have racist overtones. Studies show that getting settled, learning the language and other new skills, and finding one’s place in the community takes time. The government has implemented various measures to facilitate immigrants’ social and economic integration. Nevertheless, in some instances new arrivals suffer from high unemployment rates, while certain industries and rural areas experience labor shortages. Kuusipalo concludes that the levels of integration achieved over the past 30 years have served to increase trust between immigrant populations and receiving communities despite the populist political movement’s negative rhetoric.

In her article “The Economic Crisis and Overseas Filipinos’ Remittances: Learning to Build a Future Back Home,” Imelda Nicolas points out that the Philippines has emerged as one of the major migrant-sending countries in the world today. Remittances from Filipinos abroad constitute over 10 percent of gdp, clearly outranking investment flows and official development assistance. Official data show that remittances rose steadily between 2005 and 2011. She attributes this sustained remittance growth to the following factors:

diversity of overseas Filipinos’ skills and expertise in more than 200 countries all over the world, new and expanded markets for labor migration, expansion of bank and non-bank services tailor-fitted for overseas Filipinos, and the various efforts by the government and civil society organizations in mitigating the effects of the global economic crisis.

She concludes, “Migration is a complicated and complex issue and concern. It is a development challenge but one that proposes a wide spectrum of opportunities for learning and growth.”

Jan Rath, in his article “Europe’s Backlash against Multiculturalism,” explores some fears Europeans have expressed lately about immigration. He questions whether Europe has been taken hostage by political entrepreneurs trying to gain political influence by trampling on immigrant ethnic and religious minorities, or if they have been too naive accepting individuals and groups from countries that are —or are seen as— culturally distant from the imagined national centers. He states that the recent “cultural backlash” is not confined exclusively to Europe, where he analyses different cases, but that several traditional receiving countries are experiencing these anti-immigrant attitudes. He points out different examples of the “classical countries of immigration.” Some examples are the Tea Party in the United States, with their swipes at minorities and some recent electoral campaigns; Australia, known for its unconditional embrace of multiculturalism, where they now fear being swamped by Asians; and Canada, which has supported cultural pluralism as a core element of its identity, and has now come up against the limits of multiculturalism, calling for “reasonable accommodation.” Rath highlights that, while ethnic and cultural diversity is becoming commonplace, in many receiving countries, general discontentment has emerged that is more critical of the state’s role and immigration and diversity.

Finally, “The Rise of Anti-immigrant Sentiments in the U.S.: Arizona and Alabama, Emblematic Cases,” by Mónica Verea, explores how the severe economic recession, exacerbated by domestic pressure, has encouraged the U.S. government to implement a series of much more restrictive measures in its migratory policy than in the immediate past. She believes that the rise of anti-immigrant actions, xenophobic pressures, and discriminatory attitudes are often aggravated in times of economic crisis. In order to understand these attitudes, she presents the main legal frameworks that the U.S. government and Congress approved to manage undocumented migrant flow from the 1980s to the Obama administration and the recent proposal in Congress from “The Gang of Eight” to reform their broken immigration system. The growing number of foreign residents and undocumented migrants in the United States during the last decade has made society more aware of who the immigrants are and what their make-up is. Language, physical appearance, and certain customs that are inherent characteristics and values of some ethnic groups, embedded in a specific place, have become more visible and evident because of their continual —and in some cases sudden— growth. These changes have also contributed to fostering anti-immigrant attitudes, especially in certain states that have played an increasing role in controlling irregular migration, filling the vacuum the federal government has created by its reluctance to approve an immigration reform. Verea explains how Arizona and Alabama have become emblematic cases, because of their anti-immigrant movement and harsh measures proposed, approved, and in some cases implemented during the last few years.

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[1] * Professor and researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte (cisan) and cisan founding director (1989-1997), mverea@unam.mx.

[2] ** Professor and researcher at the cisan, unam, elaine@unam.mx.

[3] From 2008 to 2011, for example, the Obama administration deported approximately one million undocumented migrants to their places of origin, many more than under the Bush administration. Most of the detentions took place in work places, not while crossing the border. This has coincided with the economic recession (dhs 2010).

[4] The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 340 000 foreigners just inside U.S. borders in FY2011, including 96 percent apprehended on the Mexico-U.S. border. The number of Border Patrol apprehensions has been declining from 1.6 million in FY 2000. There were 21 400 Border Patrol agents at the beginning of 2012, of whom 86 percent were on the Mexico-U.S. border. Almost 2 million undocumented immigrants were deported between 2007 and 2011 (only 397 000 in 2011). Gradually, the priority shifted to immigrants with criminal records (55 percent in 2011) or who had been deported previously and returned. The detentions of undocumented foreigners have not stopped, though the number of immigrants who simply have no papers seems to be diminishing (Chardy 2012).

THE IMPACT OF THE 2008-2009 ECONOMIC CRISIS ON LATINOS AND LATINO IMMIGRANTS IN THE U.S. LABOR MARKET

Elaine Levine*[1]

The recession that officially began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009 is the most severe that the United States economy has experienced since the 1930s. The post-recession recovery has been exceptionally weak and unemployment remains unusually high. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls) recognized that “the employment decline experienced during the December 2007-June 2009 recession was greater than that of any recession of recent decades,” and 47 months after it started, in November 2011, “employment was still over 4 percent lower than when the recession began.” In February 2012, the bls pointed out “that many of the statistics that describe the U.S. economy have yet to return to their pre-recession values” and that the proportion of long-term unemployed (those unemployed for 27 weeks or longer) remained notably high (usdol 2012b).

As of July 2012, three years after the recession had officially ended, the unemployment rate stood at 8.3 percent. There were 12.8 million people unemployed and 40.7 percent of these, or 5.2 million, were long-term unemployed; and 8.2 million persons involuntarily worked part time, because they had not been able to find full-time work. Another 2.5 million were considered only marginally attached to the labor force because although they were available for work and wanted to work, and had looked for a job sometime in the previous 12 months, they had not looked for a job in the 4 weeks prior to being surveyed. Over one-third (34 percent or 852 000) of those counted as marginally attached to the labor force are listed as discouraged workers, persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. In other words, three years after the recession ended, 23.5 million people, or 15 percent of the labor force, were either unemployed or underemployed (usdol 2012c). Furthermore, since the recession began, the labor force participation rate has declined from an annual average of 66.0 percent in 2007 to 63.7 percent in July 2012. The number of persons 16 years old and over counted as not in the labor force rose from an annual average of 78.7 million in 2007 to 88.3 million as of July 2012 (usdol 2008; 2012c).

Over the past two decades, Latino immigrants have been an important component of labor force growth in the United States. They were responsible for 54 percent of the increase in the labor force between 2000 and 2010 (Kochhar 2012), and in 2010 slightly more than half the Latinos in the labor force (51.1 percent) were immigrants (Motel 2012). Before the 2008-2009 recession, Mexican and other Latin American immigrants easily found work in several labor market niches where their participation had grown rapidly during the 1990s and the first part of the 2000s: construction, meat packing, poultry processing, crop production, various branches of food processing, plant nurseries and landscaping services, building cleaning and maintenance, and personal care for children or the elderly, among others. The recession brought high levels of unemployment for all. Throughout the economic decline, from the beginning of 2008 until the middle of 2009 and the weak recovery thereafter, unemployment for Latinos was consistently higher than the rate for non-Hispanic whites and lower than the rate for blacks, just as it has been since the 1970s or earlier.

In this chapter, I analyze labor market outcomes for Latinos and Latino immigrants in the United States today, with special attention to Mexicans and those of Mexican origin, who constitute approximately two-thirds of the Latino population. I begin with some very brief comments on the history of labor migration to the U.S. and then analyze U.S. Department of Labor statistics to show how certain industries and occupations have become labor market niches for Latino workers. I examine job losses after 2007 and the evolution of employment between 2007 and 2010 in those industries and occupations with the highest numbers and percentages of Latino workers. I discuss the increasing difficulties for Latino workers in the U.S. labor market since the onset of the 2008-2009 recession. I conclude with some references to the state of Georgia, where I conducted field work in 2009 and 2010, interviewing Mexican immigrants about their living and working conditions. The situation in Georgia illustrates some of the more far-reaching social and political consequences of the economic crisis, which may prove to be even more detrimental to immigrant workers, particularly the undocumented, than lost jobs and lower wages.

Historical Tendencies in Labor Migration To the United States

Attracting immigrant labor has been fundamental for economic growth in the United States throughout the nation’s history. Furthermore, the influx of migrants has more or less adapted to the ups and downs in economic activity and demographic tendencies within the country. The industrial boom at the end of the nineteenth century marked the beginning of a period of rapid growth, both absolute and relative, in the arrival of new immigrants. By 1910, the 13.5 million foreign-born in the U.S. made up 14.7 percent of the population, almost equivalent to the historical high of 14.8 percent reached in 1890, when the number was 9.2 million (Gibson and Lennon 1999).

In the late nineteenth century, Chinese immigrants and later some other groups of Asians had been prohibited entry to the United States. For most other national origins, the first quantitative restrictions placed on the number of newly arrived immigrants admitted were established in 1921. At that time, it was decided that the number of persons admitted from any one country could not exceed three percent of the total number of persons of that nationality residing in the U.S. in 1910. Exceptions were made for professionals, servants, and persons already living in the Western Hemisphere for more than a year. Lower percentages and a numerical limit, to be implemented over the next few years, were stipulated in the Immigration Act of 1924. Nevertheless, the total number of immigrants continued to grow, reaching 14.2 million in 1930 (11.6 percent of the population), until the economic crisis reversed the tendency. From that point on, due to the combined effects of declining inflows, deaths, mass deportations of Mexicans, and voluntary return to their countries of origin by other groups, the number of immigrants residing in the U.S. dropped to 9.6 million in 1970. This was only 4.7 percent of the total population, which had grown from 122.8 million in 1930 to 203.2 million (Gibson and Lennon 1999).

The 1970s marked a new inflection point. From then on the number of immigrants began to rise rapidly and stood at over 38 million in 2007. At that point the foreign-born were 12.6 percent of the population and 15.7 percent of the labor force. In addition to these changes, which to a certain extent responded to the economic and demographic changes taking place in the U.S. at the time, significant shifts occurred in immigrants’ countries of origin. Since colonial times and the subsequent establishment of the United States as an independent nation, the country had been increasingly populated by European immigrants and their descendants. The indigenous groups, or Native Americans, had been pushed ever further westward and to a large degree exterminated by the European settlers. During the first half of the twentieth century, Europeans continued to dominate the migratory flows, until the 1960s, when new trends began to emerge, not only in the case of immigration to the U.S., but worldwide as well.

Among other things, the post-World War II reconstruction and the later consolidation and expansion of the European Union brought growing prosperity to the region and converted several of the countries there into destinations for immigrants from other parts of the world. The increasingly unfavorable terms of trade for the primary goods exported by many Latin American countries, as well as generally unfavorable economic conditions there and significant population growth, turned many of them into immigrant-sending rather than immigrant-receiving countries. There were also political changes, and even armed conflicts, in parts of Central America, Asia, and Eastern Europe, that have spurred emigration since the late twentieth century.

Therefore, in the early years of the twenty-first century, Latin America became the most important region of origin for immigrants entering the U.S., followed by Asia, and then Europe to a much lesser degree. In 2007, 31 percent of all immigrants in the U.S. were from Mexico. The Philippines, India, and China followed in importance, with 4 percent each, and then came El Salvador, Vietnam, Korea, and Cuba, with 3 percent each. By that time, Canada accounted for only 2 percent. According to Migration Policy Institute (mpi) data, no European country figured in the top 10 counties of origin for immigrants to the U.S., and Europeans as a whole made up only 13 percent of the foreign-born population (Migration Policy Institute 2009; U.S. Census Bureau 2008, 44).[2] Approximately 27 percent of all immigrants in the U.S. were from Asia, and about 54 percent were from Latin America (including Mexico).

Given the fact that the native-born population has been aging rapidly over the past few decades, immigrants in general, and Latin American immigrants in particular, constitute an increasingly important component of the U.S. labor force. At the end of the twentieth century the contribution of new immigrants to labor force growth was the highest it had been over the previous 60 years. The eight million new immigrants who joined the labor force between 1990 and 2001 accounted for 50 percent of the growth during that period (Sum, Fogg, and Harrington 2002).[3]

In general, growth in the U.S. labor force has slowed down after the 1970s. Over that decade it rose by 29.9 percent due to the incorporation of those born during the post war “baby boom” and increasing participation by women. During the 1990s, the labor force only grew by 11.5 percent, but without the newly arrived immigrants who entered the job market, growth would have been only 5 percent. The tendency has been much the same for the beginning of the twenty-first century; in other words, at least half or more of the growth in the labor force has been the result of immigration. There is a more or less generalized consensus among economists that the absence of new immigrant workers would have significantly limited both employment and economic growth in general in the U.S. at that time (Sum, Fogg, and Harrington 2002; Council of Economic Advisers 2007).

After the mild 2001 recession, and despite the greater difficulties in crossing the border after 9/11, Mexican migration grew significantly from then until mid-2006. Furthermore, the number of undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. at that time was much higher than the number of authorized entries for Mexicans (Passel and Cohn 2009b). However the arrival of undocumented Mexicans declined significantly as of 2007, not because living and working conditions have improved in Mexico, but rather because possibilities for employment in the U.S. have declined. The 2008-2009 recession and the persistently high unemployment rates thereafter have discouraged many potential migrants. These fluctuations in migration flows are evidence of the growing complementarity and a certain degree of de facto integration between the two labor markets. The flow of migrant workers from Mexico adapts, in general, to the demand for labor in the U.S.

In addition to the more or less normal cyclical fluctuations, the U.S. labor market has undergone some radical changes over the past few decades in response to the challenges posed by globalization and increased international competition. Employment in general for both skilled and unskilled workers has become less stable and many jobs are quite precarious. Technological innovations have made it possible for companies to eliminate jobs and contain wage increases. Manufacturing jobs have declined steadily from their peak level of 19.4 million in 1979 to just under 14.1 million in 2010. However, as manufacturing jobs disappear, new opportunities have opened in the service sector, which now employs over 75 percent of the labor force. Patterns in the supply and demand for labor have changed considerably. The male labor force participation rate declined more or less steadily from 79.1 percent in 1971 to 70.5 percent in 2011. Meanwhile the participation rate for women rose from 43.4 percent in 1971 to 60 percent in 1999 and has declined slightly since then to 58.1 percent in 2011 (usdol 2012a). Many male workers displaced from relatively well-paying manufacturing jobs over the past few decades consider the wages prevalent in many of the new service sector jobs unacceptable and have preferred to leave the labor force. However, the supply of Mexican immigrants willing to accept those jobs grew considerably as long as companies in the U.S. were willing to hire them.

The sustained economic growth achieved in the 1980s and 1990s generated a rise in the demand for labor at both ends of the skills spectrum, in other words both very high and very low-skilled jobs. The U.S. attracted a wide range of professionals from all over the world. Most recently Asia stands out as the main source of highly skilled immigrants. Less skilled labor comes primarily from Mexico and also some parts of Central America and includes a high proportion of undocumented workers (Passel and Cohn 2009a, 2011). The question of how to deal with the over 11 million undocumented persons currently in the U.S. remains at the center of the unresolved debates over immigration reform. In spite of all the negative rhetoric and the large number of deportations since 2008, the number of undocumented persons in the labor force —estimated to stand at around 8 million in 2010 or 5.2 percent of the labor force (Passel and Cohn 2011)— indicates a continued practice of hiring undocumented workers whenever and wherever it is considered profitable and convenient.

Some immigrant groups are clearly consolidating specific labor market niches for themselves. While most of the Asians are concentrated in certain technical and professional areas, Mexicans and some of the other Latin Americans tend to be employed in construction, light manufacturing, and some services. Given the proliferation of Mexican and Mexican-origin workers in low-skilled, low-paying jobs, it is somewhat surprising to note that in 2006, Mexico was the second most important provider of highly skilled immigrants in the U.S., with 462 409, after India’s 599 361 (Giorguli and Gaspar 2008). However, taking into account the total number of immigrants from each country changes the perspective somewhat, since there are almost eight times more immigrants from Mexico in the U.S. than from any other country of origin.

Data on occupational distribution from the 2000 census clearly illustrate these proportional differences. At that time, the highest numbers of immigrants employed in management and professional occupations were from India (408 000), Mexico (358 000), China (320 000), and the Philippines (317 000). However, in relative terms the contrasts were quite clear. For Mexico those employed in management and professional positions were only 8.1 percent of all the Mexican immigrants working in the US, whereas for India, China, and the Philippines, they were 64.5 percent, 49.3 percent, and 38.8 percent respectively (U.S. Census Bureau 2012).

There are clear tendencies with respect to immigrants’ countries of origin, their human capital, and their income levels in the United States. European and Asian immigrants’ high income levels are generally proportional to their high levels of educational attainment, which in many cases surpass that of the native-born population, and hence their highly favorable insertion in the U.S. labor market. In contrast, the high numbers of undocumented workers and the generally low levels of educational attainment characteristic of most recent Mexican immigrants leave them extremely vulnerable in terms of working conditions and salary levels. Nevertheless, wages deemed insufficient by many native-born workers are enough to attract Mexican immigrants as long as there is a demand for their labor.

Hispanics/Latinos in the United States

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Hispanics (or Latinos) emerged as the largest minority group in the United States, slightly surpassing the African-American population in the 2000 census count.[4] Between 1966 and 2000 the U.S. population grew from 200 million to 300 million. The Latino component contributed with 36 percent of the overall growth while the non-Hispanic white component only accounted for 34 percent of the total population increase (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006). Currently the approximately 50.7 million Latinos constitute 16.4 percent of the total population (Motel 2012). According to Census Bureau projections, the number of Latinos will reach approximately 133 million by mid-century, equivalent to 30 percent of the total projected population of 439 million (Roberts 2008).

The Latino population’s rapid growth is closely tied to the intense migratory flows experienced in recent decades. Out-migration from Mexico and other Latin American countries and Latino settlement in the U.S. are two sides of a single coin. They are part of a single process that is simultaneously exit and entry, departure and arrival, and the causes of which are inextricably tied to contemporary globalization. This is evident in both receiving and sending countries alike, with different and specific manifestations in each case. While departure frequently separates families and leaves social voids —often evidenced in villages and towns inhabited only by children and the elderly—, new Mexican and Latino neighborhoods are springing up in many parts of the U.S. previously unaffected by migration flows (see, for example, Massey 2008; Odem and Lacy 2009).

According to the official 2010 census, there were 50.5 million Latinos in the U.S. distributed as follows: Mexicans, 63 percent; Puerto Ricans, 9.2 percent; Cubans, 3.5 percent; Central Americans,[5] 7.9 percent; South Americans, 5.5 percent; Dominicans, 2.8 percent; Spaniards, 1.3 percent; and 6.8 percent of unspecified origin (Ennis, Ríos-Vargas, and Albert 2011). About 37 percent of all Latinos are immigrants, which is very close to the proportion among those of Mexican origin (35.6 percent in 2010). The percentage of immigrants is much lower among Spanish-origin Latinos (12.9 percent). In contrast, most of the South and Central Americans residing in the U.S. now are first-generation immigrants (Motel 2012).

During the 1990s, the Latino population rose by 12.9 million. More than half of this growth, 56 percent, was due to immigration, and the remaining 44 percent was from the natural increase of those already living in the U.S. This tendency was reversed in the first decade of the twenty-first century as the natural increase surpassed the number of newly arrived immigrants. The change was particularly evident for Mexicans. Their numbers rose by 11.4 million, of which 7.2 million (63 percent) can be attributed to births in the U.S. and only 4.2 million (37 percent) to the arrival of new immigrants (Pew Hispanic Center 2011).

Furthermore, for a variety of reasons, approximately 75 percent of all Latino immigrants have not yet become citizens of the United States. According to current legislation, legal permanent residents can become citizens after five years if they meet certain requirements. It is somewhat difficult to determine exactly how many Latino immigrants are legal residents and how many are undocumented. According to recent estimates, 58 percent of the approximately 11.2 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S. are Mexican, and another 23 percent come from other Latin American countries (Passel and Cohn 2011).

Due mainly to different levels of educational attainment, other types of training, and occupational distribution, considerable variations in socioeconomic levels exist among U.S.-born Latinos, as well as among Latino immigrants, and within each of the different groups that make up the Latino population as a whole. Some national-origin groups may contain political asylum seekers, people from different socioeconomic strata, as well as professional and international business migrants. Nevertheless, the majority of Latino immigrants in the U.S. today are “labor migrants” seeking employment opportunities and wage rates that they could not expect to find in their home countries.

Often statistics and data on Latinos are presented globally, without differentiating among the various groups that constitute the Latino population as a whole. Therefore, some groups’ high levels of educational attainment and incomes are lost from sight in the aggregate figures because of the much lower levels of schooling and incomes characteristic of most Mexican and many Central American migrants. Furthermore, where distinctions are made, data will usually be presented for Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans with a catchall category for other Latinos, or at best a distinction between Central Americans and South Americans. In these latter cases, it is sometimes quite difficult to obtain information by national origin given the relatively small numbers from each country.

Among Latinos in the U.S, Cubans and South Americans tend to have the highest income levels. In contrast, Mexicans and Central Americans have higher percentages of persons with low incomes and hence significant numbers of low-income households. Puerto Ricans also have a considerable proportion of low-income households even though their individual earnings may not be as low as those of the last two groups mentioned. This can be explained by the fact that Puerto Rican men have low labor force participation rates and high unemployment rates, and there are a considerable number of female-headed households. The figure was 27 percent in 2006, which was higher than that of any other group of Latinos. Furthermore, for all population groups in the U.S., women still tend to earn significantly less than men with similar education, skill levels, or training (Levine 2010).

Given the high percentage of immigrants, Latino men tend to have higher labor force participation rates than other groups, and the rates for Latina women are slightly lower than for others. As Graph 1 shows, differences also exist among the various Latino/a groups. Mexican men tend to have a considerably higher participation rate than Puerto Ricans or Cubans, and Puerto Rican women’s participation is slightly higher than that of other Latinas. As a result of the recession, male labor force participation fell between 2006 and 2010, while it rose somewhat for women, especially Cuban women, whose participation rate was only 49.9 percent in 2006 (usdol 2007, 2011).

In 2010, unemployment rates (see Graph 2) reached their highest levels since the early 1980s, after having dropped to very low levels in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Between 2006 and 2010, unemployment rates increased by several percentage points for all population groups. Puerto Rican, African-American, and Cuban men experienced the greatest rise in unemployment, as did Cuban and Mexican women. The unemployment rate for Latinos as a whole generally falls between a higher rate for African-Americans and a lower rate for non-Hispanic whites.[6] These relative positions in unemployment rates have held for the last three decades or more.

Graph 1

U.S. Labor Force Participation Rates (2010)

Source: Compiled by the author with data from the U.S. Department of Labor (2011).

Graph 2

U.S. Unemployment Rates (2010)

Source: Compiled by the author with data from the U.S. Department of Labor (2011).

To a certain degree, the entire Latino population has been stigmatized because of the high percentage of immigrants, and more specifically undocumented immigrants, among them. This is especially true for those in the lower socioeconomic strata because of their phenotype, their limited knowledge of English, the neighborhoods the live in, and their low-skilled, low-paying jobs. Furthermore, given the preponderance of Mexicans, and in particular low-skilled Mexican workers, socioeconomic indicators for Latinos as a whole tend to be low, despite the fact that among South Americans and Cubans, in particular, and also Mexicans and Central Americans, there are many highly skilled immigrants with high incomes.

Salaries in most of the labor market niches with high numbers or high percentages of Latino workers tend to be low and, furthermore, have declined over the last few decades. Therefore, the prospects for socioeconomic mobility among new Latino immigrants are more limited now than in the past (Levine 2008). Most labor migrants with no college degree —which happens to be the case for the majority of Latin American immigrants to the U.S., given the high percentage of Mexicans in this situation— leave precarious, low-paying jobs in their home countries in search of precarious low-paying jobs in the U.S. or other parts of the world. Because of the existing wage differentials, which may be up to tenfold or more, they are, nevertheless, taking on what are usually the least desirable and lowest paying jobs in the destination country (Levine 2001, 2008).

Mexicans and Other Latinos in the U.S. Labor Market

Since their main motivation for migrating is to get a job that pays in dollars, it is not surprising that Mexicans are currently the group with the highest labor force participation rate in the U.S, 67.7 percent in 2010 (usdol 2011). The participation rate for Mexican men, 79.4 percent in 2010, is considerably higher than that of any other population group (whites, 72.0 percent; Afro-Americans, 65 percent; Asians, 73.2 percent). Although the participation rate for Mexican women, 54.1 percent, is lower than for other groups (whites 58.5 percent, Afro-Americans 59.9 percent, Asians 57 percent), it is significantly higher than the labor force participation rate for women in Mexico, which is now 44 percent (inegi 2012).

Unemployment rates tend to reflect the cyclical changes in economic activity, as they usually rise and fall more or less in opposition to the rate of economic growth. As mentioned earlier, for the past three decades or more, unemployment rates for Latinos, and for Mexican-origin Latinos as well, have consistently been above the rate for whites,[7] and below the rate for African-Americans. The unemployment rate for Mexicans is usually lower than for Puerto Ricans and higher than for Cubans. Cubans have habitually registered lower unemployment rates than whites as a whole (which, as mentioned before, includes most Latinos). However, in 2010, Cuban men had an unusually high unemployment rate (12.9 percent), which was slightly above the rate for Mexican men (12.3 percent), but not nearly as high as the extremely high rates for African-American men (18.4 percent) and Puerto Rican men (17.3 percent).

It is not unusual for some recent immigrants to hold the lowest paying, least desirable jobs in the U.S., which nevertheless provide much more than they could expect to earn in their home countries. This has been the case for most Mexican immigrants because of their low educational attainment, limited knowledge of English, and adverse labor market conditions in their home country. Unfortunately, the educational disadvantages often persist among second- and third-generation Mexicans born in the U.S.

Table 1

Occupational Distribution in the U.S. by Population Groups (2010)

Source: Compiled by the author with data from usdol (2011).

U.S. Department of Labor data for 2010 (see Table 1) indicate that the Mexican-origin work force —in other words Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born descendants— is more or less evenly distributed among three of the five major occupational categories: 19 percent in natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations; 18.2 in production, transportation, and material moving occupations; and 19.9 percent in sales and office occupations. Their participation in management, professional, and related occupations (16.1 percent) is lower than for any other ethnic or racial group, and in service occupations it is higher (26.7 percent), exceeding the rates for African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans. Only 3 percent of all Mexican-origin workers are currently employed in farming, fishing, and forestry occupations (which as of 2004 is no longer shown as an independent category and now employs less that 2 percent of the total labor force), but this proportion is much higher than that of any other group. Furthermore, 42 percent of all those working in such occupations nationwide are Latinos (usdol 2011).

In terms of occupational sub-categories, within the five major categories, 9.3 percent of Mexicans were employed in professional and related occupations. A similar proportion, 9.7 percent, worked in manufacturing, and 12 percent worked in construction and extraction; in these two categories, some well-paying positions exist for highly skilled, experienced workers, but most are low-skilled, low-paying jobs. Eleven and four-tenths percent were employed in office and administrative support occupations. This category contains many female-dominated occupations, and earnings tend to be low. The same holds for sales and related occupations which employ 8.5 percent of the Mexican-origin work force. Food preparation and serving and related occupations, and building and grounds cleaning and maintenance employ 9.6 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively, where wages are quite low. Within each of the general categories, Mexicans and other Latinos tend to be most heavily concentrated in a few specific occupations such as certain branches of light, rather than heavy, manufacturing; maids and housekeeping cleaners; grounds maintenance workers; dishwashers; cooks; and various types of construction work.

Between 1990 and 2010 the percentage of Latinos in the work force grew from 7.5 to 14.3 percent. The data for the number employed by detailed industry (see Table 2) show that some branches became increasingly dependent on Latino labor. Over the two decades considered here, the percent of Latino workers grew significantly in the following branches: support activities for agriculture and forestry, from 15.4 percent in 1990 to 35 percent in 2010; landscaping services, from 25.2 to 41.5 percent; cut and sew apparel, from 22.6 to 34.8 percent; services to buildings and dwellings, from 18 to 35.6 percent; dry cleaning and laundry services, from 14.6 to 28.5 percent; and services to private households, from 17.6 to 39.5 percent. In the general branch of food manufacturing, Latino participation grew from 14.1 to 27.6 percent, and growth was even more pronounced in some subsectors: animal slaughtering and processing went from 17.0 to 38.1 percent; and bakeries, except retail, from 13.0 to 31.8 percent. In some cases, Latino participation rates had reached slightly higher levels in 2007, before the recession, and in others it continued to grow, although minimally, even afterwards.

Table 2

Industries with the Highest Percent of Latinos Employed in U.S. (1990, 2007, and 2010)

Source: Compiled by the author with data from usdol (1991, 2008, 2011).

Construction and carpet and rug mills were the industries where the percentage of Latinos employed had increased the most between 1990 and 2007. In construction, it rose from 8.5 percent in 1990 to 25.3 percent in 2007, with almost 3 million Latinos employed. Given the severe impact the recession had on this industry, the number of Latinos employed had dropped to only 2.1 million by 2010, which was 24.4 percent of the total employed. Latino participation in carpet and rug manufacturing grew from 10.1 percent in 1990 to 29.4 percent in 2007. It dropped sharply to 19.2 percent in 2008 and registered a spectacular rebound to 49 percent in 2010. However, the total number of persons employed in this industry is quite small, only 59 million in 2010. The small city of Dalton, Georgia (known as “carpet city” or the “carpet capital of the U.S.”), is the most important site for carpet and rug mills in the country; Latinos now constitute almost one-third of the total population in Whitfield County, where Dalton is located.

Latinos’ occupational and industrial concentration is closely tied to their geographic concentration, which is still quite pronounced despite significant dispersion to new destinations in recent years. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, 75 percent of the Latino population resided in just seven states. However, some states in the Southeast, whose Latino populations are still numerically rather small, registered extraordinary growth rates (ranging from over 200 to almost 400 percent between 1990 and 2000) in their Latino populations because of the employment opportunities opening up there at that time. Mexicans and other Latinos have frequently been actively recruited for jobs in meat packing, poultry processing, carpet manufacturing, or crop production, for example, that local residents disdain. It seems that all that is necessary to consolidate a labor market niche of this type is an influx of Latino immigrants and jobs that no one else wants, at least at the going wage rates. This has been very clear for agricultural work in states like California, Texas, and Oregon. The demand for labor for many undesirable, low-wage jobs grew significantly at the end of the twentieth century, just as new waves of immigrants were arriving from Mexico and other parts of Latin America who were more than willing to accept those jobs.

I have used the U.S. Department of Labor’s data on “Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity” to provide some insights about specific labor market niches for Mexican and other Latino immigrants. It should be pointed out that given the preponderance of Mexicans in the Latino labor force —almost two thirds of all Latino workers are Mexican or of Mexican origin— and the fact that the tendencies for the other two main groups, Puerto Ricans and Cubans, often diverge in opposite directions, data for Latinos as a whole can provide a fairly accurate approximation to labor market outcomes for Mexicans. Furthermore, slightly over half the Latinos employed in the U.S. in recent years are immigrants (Motel 2012).

Having analyzed these statistics over several years, I have been able to ascertain that the occupations with the highest numbers of Latino workers are mainly low-skilled, low-paying jobs that do not require a college degree. The same holds true for occupations with the highest percentages of Latinos (Levine 2001, 2008, 2010). Moreover, most of the occupations with the highest percentages of Latinos in 2007 and in 2010 also had relatively high percentages of undocumented workers prior to the onset of the recession at the end of 2007 (Passel 2006). Therefore, I will attempt to make some inferences about the recession’s impact on Latino immigrants in the U.S. labor force by observing the effects it had on Latino workers in general.

Impacts of the Crisis on Latino Workers

At the height of the recession, Latinos had lost 863 800 jobs, or 14 percent of the 6.2 million jobs that disappeared in the U.S. between 2007 and 2009, which was proportional to their participation in the employed labor force at the time. The most severe loss for Latino workers was in the construction industry, where 720 000 people were thrown out of work. In contrast, simultaneously, in some industries and occupations, they experienced slight job gains, which can most likely be explained by the lower cost of their labor. However, Latinos registered job losses in many of the occupations with relatively high percentages of Latino workers. Table 3 shows the net changes between 2007 and 2010 in the number of Latino workers in the industries that employed the highest numbers of Latinos in 2007.

During 2010, when some sectors of the economy began to show mild signs of recovery, Latinos recuperated approximately 300 000 jobs, even though overall employment continued to decline. The economy as a whole lost an additional 813 000 jobs, and therefore Latino participation in the workforce rose to 14.3 percent (usdol 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011).

Analysis of the usdol detailed occupations data (see Table 4) shows that from 2007 to 2010 Latinos suffered net job losses in most of the occupations with high numbers of Latino workers. The annual figures reveal that in general the sharpest losses occurred between 2008 and 2009, even though the patterns are somewhat different for each occupation. Such differences are surely tied to regional and local variations in industrial and occupational structures and as well as demographic variations and different outcomes for different population groups. It is definitely noteworthy that the mild recovery observed in some sectors of the economy produced a net increase in Latino employment in 2010, even though the overall level of employment continued to decline. Nevertheless, the total number of Latinos employed in 2010, 19 886 000, was still lower than it had been in 2007, when there were 20 447 000 Latinos working. Total employment continued to fall throughout 2010, but finally reversed the trend in 2011 as employment for non-Latinos began to rise slowly.

Table 3

Industries Employing the Highest Numbers of Latinos in the U.S. In 2007 and the Changes from 2007 to 2010

Source: Compiled by the author with data from usdol (2008, 2011).

Table 4

Occupations Employing the Highest Numbers of Latinos in the U.S. In 2007 and the Changes from 2007 to 2010

Source: Compiled by the author with data from usdol (2008, 2011).

The employment behavior in specific industries and occupations and the impacts for specific groups in the labor force deserves a much more detailed analysis than can be provided here. In general, Rakesh Kochhar and his collaborators (2010) confirmed that during the first year of economic recovery, starting in July 2009, the unemployment rate for immigrants began to fall slightly (a decline of 0.6 percent), even though unemployment for native born workers continued to rise by 0.5 percent. In spite of this employment growth, the total number of immigrants employed in mid-2010 remained below the pre-recession level. This was also the case among Latinos. The unemployment rate for Latino immigrants decreased slightly, from 11.0 percent in the second quarter of 2009 to 10.1 percent in the second quarter of 2010; meanwhile the rate for U.S.-born Latinos continued to rise, from 12.9 percent to 14.0 percent. Thus, as the economy began to turn around and growth resumed, it seems that most of the initial gains in employment were for foreign-born rather than U.S.-born Latinos.

However, this small rise in immigrant employment, during what was officially the first year of economic recovery, was accompanied by a 4.5 percent decline in their earnings, whereas earnings for the native-born population fell by only 1 percent. Furthermore, Latino immigrants suffered the greatest wage losses. Their median weekly earnings decreased 1.3 percent from 2008 to mid-2009 and an additional 5.8 percent by the second quarter of 2010. As Kochhar points out, “Hispanics are the only group of workers whose median earnings decreased during both the recession and the recovery”; and moreover, “The downward momentum in earnings for Latinos was led by immigrants” (2010, 20). As a result of these changes, by the second quarter of 2010, the median weekly earnings of native born workers stood at US$653, and for foreign-born workers it was US$525. At the same time, the median for all Latinos was US$480 and only US$422 for Latino immigrants (Kochhar 2010, 20).

Undoubtedly, Latino workers and Latino immigrant workers have directly suffered the effects of the most severe recession in the U.S. since the 1930s. They are among the millions who lost their jobs, or whose family members lost their jobs, and later lost their homes because they could not meet the mortgage payments. Most of the U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who became unemployed during this recession have received at least some relief from unemployment insurance payments, which are nevertheless certainly insufficient to compensate for their losses. Obviously, none of the unemployed, undocumented immigrant workers have received any benefits whatsoever.

Furthermore, the repercussions, both direct and indirect, of this “great recession” for Latino immigrants in particular, and to some extent for Latinos in general, go far beyond the immediate economic impacts. In some places, especially in some of the southeastern states, the hard times experienced throughout the country have generated hostility toward those who a few years earlier had been sought out and even actively recruited to fill thousands of jobs that local workers would not accept. I will briefly refer to the case of the state of Georgia, where I conducted field work during a sabbatical stay from August 2009 to July 2010, to show how the recession contributed to generating an extremely adverse social and political climate for Latino workers and their families.

Growing Hostility toward Latino Immigrants in Georgia

The number of immigrants in Georgia has grown tremendously over the last two decades —this is also the case in other states in the Southeast or other regions where previously there had been few immigrant workers—, rising from just 173 000 in 1990 to approximately one million in 2010. Two-thirds of these recent immigrants have settled in and around metropolitan Atlanta. They come from many different countries of origin, but more than half are Latin Americans and approximately one-third are from Mexico. Mainly as a result of these recent migratory flows, the Latino population in Georgia has grown from 109 000 in 1990 to 853 700 and increased from 1.7 to 9 percent of the state’s total population.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center’s “Demographic Profile of Hispanics in Georgia, 2010,” the state’s Latino population is now evenly divided between immigrants and U.S.-born Latinos. However the median age of Latino immigrants in the state is 32 and for U.S. born Latinos, it is only 11. This means that a significant majority of the working-age Latinos are immigrants. The proportion of immigrants in Georgia’s Latino population is significantly higher than the national rate of 37.1 percent in 2010 (Pew 2012; Motel 2012). Median income for Latinos in Georgia was US$17 300 in 2010, in other words, US$2 049 less than in 2008 and US$2 700 below the national median for all Latino workers in 2010. In contrast, median income for Latinos who worked full time year round was $29 000 in 2010, with a considerable difference between the median for immigrants (US$25 000) and U.S.-born Latinos (US$34 800).

Over half the immigrants in Georgia are presumed to be undocumented. However, this was not such a problematic issue during the economic boom years of the 1990s and early 2000s. It is well known that in the mid-1990s, undocumented Mexicans were actively recruited to work in constructing the installations for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, just as they had previously been sought to work in Dalton’s carpet mills and Gainesville’s poultry processing plants (Amescua 2006). However, only a decade later the political and economic climate had changed considerably. In 2006, Georgia began to pass anti-immigrant laws that affected undocumented workers. Four counties with high percentages of Latino immigrants have established 287(g) agreements with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ice),[8] which allow local police to make inquiries about a person’s immigration status and as a result have led to the detention and deportation of thousands of undocumented immigrants.

Many of the 91 persons I interviewed at the Mexican Consulate in Atlanta reported that they had initially been attracted to Georgia because of the abundant job opportunities there and that often wages were higher and the cost of living lower than in other regions. The annualized individual median income of those interviewed was US$23 400, not much lower than the US$25 000 median for Latino immigrants nationwide. Median household income (for those interviewed) was US$35 880, only US$1 020 below the national median for Latino immigrants. Almost half (48 percent) reported more than one person working per household. Most had been living in the U.S. for 10 years or less and only 36.4 percent had lived elsewhere in the U.S. before coming to Georgia. In all, 30 percent worked in construction-related occupations and 15.7 percent worked in restaurants.

Ten of the ninety-one persons interviewed reported having lost their jobs because of the recession, but only two said that they were planning to return to Mexico for that reason. Most of those interviewed had not returned to Mexico at any time since they arrived in the U.S. and had no plans to do so in the near future. Three women reported having entered the labor force because their husbands had lost their jobs or had their working hours cut back. Thirty-three persons (36.3 percent of those interviewed) reported working fewer hours because of forced layoffs for several days or even weeks and in some cases months, and/or a considerable drop in the amount of overtime they had previously been accustomed to working. This was most prevalent for those employed in construction. However, when the interviews were conducted (between February and May 2010), almost all of them said that working hours had begun to rise again somewhat.

Some reported having to cut back on spending because of the recession and that their incomes were insufficient to cover their living expenses. They said the cost of living was going up at the same time that their income was going down. A few said that some family members and friends had left the state of Georgia because of the economic conditions related to the recession. Others mentioned the rise in detentions and “persecution” of Latinos as situations somehow related to the economic crisis. However, in Georgia in 2010, Mexican immigrants did not speak very freely about the problems they had because of being undocumented. In this respect, my experience was quite different from what it had been in Los Angeles ten years earlier, before 9/11, and long before Arizona’s sb1070, or Georgia’s hb87 and the 287g agreements in four Georgia counties.

It was mainly by means of other experiences, rather than from direct interviews, that I was able to perceive the effects that anti-immigrant actions have had on Latino communities in Georgia. By working as a volunteer in the office of an organization that defends Latinos’ human rights in Georgia, I could see the impact that detention and deportation policies were having on Latino residents in the state. My main task was simply to answer phone calls, take note of the situations callers reported, and write down the pertinent information. I also attended various meetings with community members seeking information about how to cope with the enforcement measures implemented in the counties where they lived and worked. Based on everything I saw and heard as a result of this experience, I am convinced that the intimidation, fear, emotional suffering, and human rights violations caused by anti-immigrant attitudes and persecutory actions prevalent in Georgia over the past few years have had —and will continue to have— a more profound, devastating, and lasting impact on the individuals and communities affected than all the hardships and difficulties caused by the recession.

Information from a 2012 Department of Homeland Security report provides an example of the terrible injustices committed with the pretext of combatting what is referred to as “illegal” immigration. Thousands of minors under the age of 18, who are U.S. citizens by birth, have been separated from their parents; the parents, in turn, have lost parental rights and custody of their children because of their detention and deportation due to being undocumented immigrants. The report “Deportation of Parents of U.S.-Born Citizens” (usdhs 2012) provides data on the number of deportation, exclusion, and removal orders sought and obtained by ice in order to expel from the U.S. foreigners who have U.S.-citizen minor children. During the first six months of 2011 (January 1 through June 30, 2011), ice reports having expelled from the United States 46 846 foreigners who have at least one minor child that is a U.S. citizen.

It is interesting to note that 21 860 of the persons reported as expelled from the country had been detained for some period of time prior to their deportation and the numbers are registered by “District/area of responsibility (aor) in which the removal order was obtained.” The Atlanta district/aor showed the greatest number of removals, 2 249 or 10.3 percent of the total, reported for the six month period (usdhs 2012). In the vast majority of these cases, the circumstances would not have warranted detention, except for the fact that the individual involved was an undocumented immigrant. A recent study carried out by the Applied Research Center found that “a disturbing number of children with detained or deported parents are now in foster care.” It was also the case that “in jurisdictions where local police aggressively participate in immigration enforcement (e.g., 287[g] and Secure Communities), children are more likely to be separated from their parents.” Furthermore, “once children of undocumented immigrants enter foster care, [this] research indicates that their families face significant barriers to family reunification” (Freed Wessler 2011, 5, 17, 27).

Conclusions

Attracting immigrant labor to the United States has played a fundamental role in the nation’s economic development throughout its history, and the migratory flows have generally adapted to the ups and downs in economic activity. Latin American immigrants have become an important component of labor force growth in the U.S. over the past few decades. Moreover, there is a clear tendency toward consolidating labor market niches for specific groups of immigrants. The demand for low-skilled labor to carry out undesirable tasks in low-skilled services, construction, food processing, and light manufacturing for low wages rose considerably in the late twentieth century, just as new waves of immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries arrived who were more than willing to take such jobs.

Over this period, the labor demand in the U.S. and the labor supply from Mexico evolved in such a way that Mexico became the primary source of low-skilled, low-wage workers in several branches of activity in various parts of the U.S. Low-skilled Mexican workers, especially if they are undocumented, have become an ideal source of “disposable labor” that is available “just in time.” They have proven to be readily available and easily expendable. They can be easily attracted or recruited in boom times and are totally expendable when the economy contracts. They can be laid off and even deported with no obligation on the part of, or disadvantage for, their employers.

The severe recession in 2008-2009 has momentarily stemmed the arrival of new labor migrants, especially the undocumented. Such changes in supply flows show the increasing complementarity and a certain degree of de facto integration of the Mexican and U.S. labor markets. The supply from Mexico is more or less adaptable —or can be forced to adjust— to demand conditions north of the border. From 2009 through 2011, given the severity of the recession and the increasingly hostile political climate in the U.S., ice removed an average of 1 000 undocumented immigrants a day, and the majority of them were Mexicans.

My central conclusion is that three conditioning factors have all combined to propitiate a hostile climate toward Latin American immigrants: 1) generalized anti-immigrant sentiments that flourished after September 11, 2001; 2) the growing numbers of immigrants, with greatly increased presence in new destinations; and 3) the severe recession, beginning at the end of 2007, with high and persistent unemployment rates since. This is despite the important role these immigrants have played in the country’s economic dynamism in recent decades up until the onset of the recession. In several states in the Southeast, these factors interacted with vestiges of racism and intolerance present in the region to exacerbate anti-immigrant feelings and attitudes and facilitate the passing of hostile and punitive state laws that would criminalize undocumented immigrants if they are allowed to take effect. Therefore, it is likely —and also most unfortunate— that the social effects of this deep and prolonged recession will be felt for a considerable time after economic growth has been restored because of the anti-immigrant sentiments that took root and flourished in the midst of it.

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[1] * Researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte (cisan), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (unam), elaine@unam.mx.

[2] The data presented in the World Bank’s Migration and Remittances Fact Book (2011) included Germany in fourth place, and the United Kingdom in tenth place, on their list of the main countries of origin for immigrants to the U.S. in 2005, but did not give figures. The mpi data (2009) does give percentages, and therefore I have used this data in the text since it seems more precise. In the 2000 census data, Germany was listed in ninth place as a country of origin for immigrants to the U.S. and the United Kingdom in tenth.

[3] Those considered “new immigrants” in the text by Sum and coauthors are those who arrived after 1990.

[4] The term “Hispanic” was first used by the Census Bureau in the 1970s to designate persons born in Latin America or Spain and all persons born in the U.S. who are descendants of someone born in Latin America or Spain. Subsequently, and to a certain extent in rejection of a term viewed as imposed by the U.S. government, some of these persons began to refer to themselves as Latinos. The use or acceptance of either term may vary by region within the U.S. Currently in many academic and political circles both terms are used as synonymous and interchangeable, as will be the case in this text.

[5] According to the definition used in the report by Ennis, Ríos-Vargas, and Albert (2011), the category “Central American” excludes Mexicans and includes persons who reported themselves as Costa Rican, Guatemalan, Honduran, Nicaraguan, Panamanian, Salvadoran, from the Canal Zone, belonging to a Central American indigenous group, or simply as Central Americans.

[6] According to U.S. Census Bureau definitions, the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” are ethnic, not racial descriptions; therefore, racially, Latinos may be either white or black.

[7] The unemployment rate for non-Hispanic whites is lower than the figure indicated here, which is for all whites and therefore includes most Latinos, who tend to have higher unemployment rates than non-Hispanic whites.

[8] I am referring to what are known as “287(g) agreements” derived from section 287(g), “Delegation of Immigration Authority,” of the Immigration and Nationality Act, in accordance with the reforms established as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of September 30, 1996.

IMMIGRATION AND POLICY: NEW CHALLENGES AFTER THE ECONOMIC CRISIS IN PORTUGAL

Maria Lucinda Fonseca*[1]
Jennifer McGarrigle**[2]

Introduction

Until relatively recently, like other Southern European countries, Portugal was a country of emigration. Political and economic hardship and lack of opportunities acted as motivating factors compelling people to search for prospects in more advanced European economies or across the Atlantic. However, at the end of the 1980s following the entry of Portugal into the eec, the economic tide began to turn, leading to the civil construction boom in the 1990s. As a result, from that point through the turn of the century, Portugal became a destination for international labor migrants. Labor migrants arriving through both formal and informal networks from Eastern Europe and Asia and a new wave from Brazil added to the migrants that had arrived earlier from the former colonies, namely Portuguese-speaking African countries.

The sudden change in Portugal’s migration balance meant the country was ill-prepared in policy and legislative terms for the incorporation of the new and diverse migrant groups. As such, immigration policy developed retrospectively. Despite this, the subsequent development in immigration and integration policy as well as nationality law has attracted attention as a frequently cited example of best-practice across Europe. At present, however, Portugal finds itself in a severe financial crisis. As a consequence, a growing body of evidence suggests not only that the inflow of migrants into Portugal has slowed, but that return migration is occurring to some countries, particularly Brazil and Eastern Europe.

The current economic climate poses major questions about how immigrants will react and be impacted by the economic downturn. This article explores these processes, illustrating the link between national economic growth and the rise in immigration in the 1990s through the turn of the century. It considers the same relationship, albeit with the inverse direction, in the post-crisis period in Portugal. In addition to changes in flows, stock, and policy, attitudes toward immigrants and inter-group trust in Portugal compared with Greece and Spain are examined using recent survey data from the geitonies project.[3]

The Dynamics of International Migration and Economic Growth in Portugal over the Last Two Decades

In the 1990s, Portugal underwent a migratory transition process that transformed a traditional country of emigration into one of immigration.[4] In the time between the 1981 and 1991 population censuses, net migration reached 404 747, becoming the main factor in demographic growth.

This is mainly due to the significant increase in the number of foreigners settling in Portugal after 1998 and especially after 2000 (see Figure 1). This phenomenon, which cannot be dissociated from the favorable economic conditions in Portugal during this period, has also been linked to other more structural causes, namely the Portuguese population’s increasing skill levels, which contributed to rising labor market expectations, the maintenance of low-cost and labor-intensive sectors, the relevance of highly seasonal economic sectors (e.g., tourism-related activities, construction, etc.), the consolidation of the heavily segmented labor market, the size of the informal economy, and also the perception of Portugal as an “easy country of entry and stay” in the EU context (Fonseca 2008; Baganha, Marques, and Góis 2004). This process started somewhat earlier in other Southern European countries like Spain and Greece and has been explained by various factors such as joining the eec in the 1980s and the demographic and economic transition, namely the coexistence of laborand capital-intensive activity sectors in the context of a modernizing service economy (King, Fielding, and Black 1997).

The increase in foreigners registered in 2001 (Figure 1) is the statistical consequence of the implementation of the stay permits scheme under the changes that were introduced in the 1998 Foreigners Law by Decree Law No. 4/2001. This enabled the regularization of the status of more than 180 000 foreigners between 2001 and 2004, the majority from Eastern European countries (in particular, the Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, and Romania) and Brazil. From 2004 onward, at the end of an extended period of public works, in the context of economic recession and more efficient mechanisms for controlling irregular migration and the employment of undocumented workers, the trend observed in previous years reversed, with a reduction in the number of legally documented foreign citizens. The decline mainly affected the Ukrainian community. However, between 2005 and 2009, the number of foreign citizens still grew due mostly to the inflows of Chinese, Brazilian, Moldovan, and Romanian immigrants and the regularization of the status of some undocumented immigrants (Malheiros and Fonseca 2011).

Figure 1

Evolution of the Number of Legal Foreigners (All Categories) Settled in Portugal (1990-2010)*

* Until 2000, only foreigners with residence permits. From 2001 to 2004, foreigners with residence permits and stay permits (title introduced in 2001). In 2005, 2006, and 2007, foreigners with residence permits, renewed stay permits, and long-term visas. In 2008, 2009, and 2010, foreigners with residence permits and long-term visas.

Source: sef (n.d.a).

The worsening of the country’s economic and financial situation is reflected in decreased immigration to Portugal, the increased emigration of Portuguese citizens, as well as in return flows to sending countries or re-emigration to other destinations of a growing number of foreigners (Pires, Machado, Peixoto, and Vaz 2010). Thus, in 2010, the number of immigrants decreased by 1.97 percent, going against the growth trend observed over the previous two decades. However, it is important to stress that part of this decline can also be explained by the acquisition of Portuguese nationality by a considerable number of foreigners residing in the country (sef 2011).

As far as emigration is concerned, Malheiros (2011, 135) contends that some migratory flows to traditional destinations such as Switzerland, Germany, and Luxemburg were reactivated and new destinations such as the UK, Spain, and Angola have emerged. It is estimated that in the second half of the last decade, there were approximately 70 000 annual departures.

The growth of immigration to Portugal during the last two decades was accompanied by the diversification of sending areas. As is the case in other Southern European countries, like Spain and Italy, the dynamics of immigration to Portugal are characterized by a growing diversity in migrants’ countries of origin, including migratory flows of workers and family members from Brazil, Portuguese-speaking African countries (palop), Eastern and Central Europe, and Romania, as well as highly skilled migrants, retirees, and lifestyle migrants from other European Union member states.

At the end of 2010, the largest groups of foreigners in Portugal were Brazilians (119 363), Ukrainians (49 505), and Cape Verdeans (43 979). Among the EU member states, the Romanians and the British were the largest groups (36 830 and 17 196, respectively). In addition, as Figure 2 shows, Guinea-Bissau, China, Moldova, and Saint Tome and Prince are also included in the top 10 nationalities of documented foreign citizens settled in Portugal.

Figure 2

Documented Foreign Citizens Residing in Portugal (main nationalities) (2010)

Source: Developed by the authors with information from sef (n.d.b).

Concomitant to the growing diversity of sending countries, changes also occurred in the migratory processes and in migrants’ social and professional profiles. The development of the migratory chain from Eastern Europe represents a turning point in the traditional processes of immigration to Portugal. The organizational strategies based on social networks that characterized immigration from palop have been replaced by a system organized by international labor recruiting networks. Another new element brought about by the rising flow of immigrants from Eastern Europe is related to their relatively high educational and professional skill levels. A large proportion has intermediate-level technical training or higher education. Despite this, like immigrants of African origin, they work predominantly in socially devalued and low-paid activities such as civil construction (men) and cleaning and domestic services (women). However, a considerable proportion of immigrants work in agriculture, specifically in the regions of Alentejo, Ribatejo, and Oeste, and in some industrial activities, particularly labor-intensive ones in the Littoral North and Center (Fonseca, Ormond et al. 2005; Fonseca 2008).

A recent study by Reis, Serra, Tolda, and Pereira (2010) clearly demonstrates the relationship between economic growth and the expansion of the labor force (extensive growth model), where in a context of a specific economic growth cycle (1996-2002), Portugal became a country of immigration (Figure 3). This labor-intensive model results in low levels of innovation and a lack of articulation with the European economic context. As a consequence, there was a divergence in comparison with the EU average and stagnant economic growth, aggravated by the effects of the international economic and financial crisis.

The Spanish and Greek economies have also profoundly contracted since 2008. In the case of Greece, due to the external debt crisis, the recession has become more serious and gdp decreased by 2 percent in 2009, 4.5 percent in 2010, and, according to Eurostat estimates, the decline will reach 5.5 percent in 2011. Spain, contrary to Greece and Portugal, began to show signs of recovery in 2011, although the most recent Eurostat estimates (0.7 percent) point toward a much lower figure than that defined by the government at the beginning of the year. Moreover, Spain has one of the highest unemployment rates in the EU: 22.8 percent in October 2011.

The economic benefits of immigration to Portugal have been identified by several research studies (Ferreira, Rato, and Mortágua 2004; Corrêa d’Almeida 2003, Corrêa d’Almeida and Duarte Silva 2007; Reis, Serra, Tolda, and Pereira 2010; Carvalho 2004; Faustino, Peixoto, and Baptista 2009), in particular its positive impact on gdp and public finance. The Portuguese labor market has also benefited from immigration. Migrants have occupied low-paying jobs that were difficult to fill, thus avoiding any negative impact on the employment of Portuguese citizens (Ferreira, Rato, and Mortágua 2004; Peixoto 2007). So, the negative impacts of immigration on the labor market are mainly felt by immigrants themselves through continued low wages and high precariousness. Therefore, there is little competition between immigrant and native workers or between immigrants from the more recent migratory waves and those from previous flows (Pereira 2010).

Figure 3

gdp Growth: Percentage Change in Previous Period (1996-2011) (market prices)

Source: Eurostat (n.d.a).

Over the last two decades, the activity/employment rates of both foreign-born men and women are above those of the native-born. According to data from the Employment Survey conducted by the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (ine, or Statistics Portugal) in 2009, the foreign population residing in Portugal accounted for 4.5 percent of the total active population, whereas their global activity rate was 77.1 percent, 15 points higher than that of the Portuguese (61.9 percent). In an analysis by gender, one can observe higher differences among men with an activity rate of 84.4 percent among immigrants and 68.2 percent among Portuguese nationals. The equivalent proportions for women are lower than those for men, but foreign female workers also have a higher activity rate than their Portuguese counterparts: 70.5 percent and 56 percent, respectively. Despite the fact that this is partly explained by the younger age structure of foreigners, it is worth mentioning that the difference still persists when the activity rate is controlled for age (oecd 2008). In addition, it should be noted that the number of immigrant workers is most likely underestimated, due to the fact that a considerable number labor in the informal sector, namely in construction and domestic work.[5] Therefore, according to some estimates, the proportion of immigrants in the total active population may reach 6 percent (Ferreira, Rato, and Mortágua 2004; Peixoto 2008).

The Evolution of Policy and Legislation In Response to Immigration

Until the mid-1990s, immigration policy in Portugal was rudimentary, focusing to a large extent on the regulation of flows and responding primarily to the process of post-colonial transition. While it has been retrospectively and gradually integrated into the legislative framework, it can be said to have developed rapidly and quite uniformly. This is due to an assortment of factors including the very fast growth in the number of foreigners in the country, their relative and visible disadvantage, and the expansion of lobbies and the influence of the European Union. In addition, the lack of a strong extreme-right party has meant that immigration has not been politicized to the extent that it has in other EU states.

Regardless of political awareness of the illegal character of migration to Portugal from Portuguese-speaking Africa after decolonization and entry into the EU, little was done to regulate this flow (Baganha 2005; Peixoto and Sabino 2009) until the two processes of extraordinary regularization in the 1990s. In 1992/1993, the papers of around 40 000 undocumented migrants were regularized and of approximately 35 000 more in 1996.

The policy focus broadened in scope under the Socialists (1995-2002) to tackle issues of integration (Peixoto and Sabino 2009, 36). To this end, a less restrictive immigration law (244/98) was enforced in 1998, which strengthened the principle of equality of rights and made provision for family reunion and regularization (Fonseca, Caldeira, and Esteves 2002; Baganha and Malheiros 2000; Pires 2003). Despite these advances, some authors argue that immigration policy only really developed after the turn of the century in response to the increasing visibility of illegal migrants and claims of labor shortages (Fonseca, Malheiros et al. 2002; Peixoto and Sabino 2009). For the first time, economic issues became central in the immigration debate (Fonseca, Malheiros, and Silva 2005). Decree Law no. 4 was enforced in 2001, under which the circumstances of 185 000 migrant workers were regularized (Fonseca and Goracci 2007). “Stay permits” allowed legal residence for one year, renewable for up to five years (Fonseca, Malheiros, and Silva 2005), after which immigrants could apply for a residence permit (Peixoto and Sabino 2009) and provisions for family members were made. A quasi-quota system was also implemented to respond to the demand for labor. Fonseca, Caldeira, and Esteves (2002) assert that this was the first step toward bringing immigration policy in line with ec regulations. In practice, however, this system served to regularize the circumstances of existing migrants as opposed to recruiting new ones (Fonseca, Malheiros, and Silva 2005). The Social Democrats passed the more restrictive Decree Law no. 34 in February 2003, restricting entries and family reunion, strengthening the mechanisms to control irregular migration, and reinforcing the quota system as the principal mechanism of control (Peixoto and Sabino 2009). This law has been criticized as having overlooked human rights in favor of the labor market, though it proved largely unsuccessful in curbing illegal migration and in meeting short-term labor demands. Following this, two consecutive regularization processes took place.

In 2007, a new immigration law (no. 23/2007, July 4), still in effect today, was approved under the Socialist government. In short, previous legal admission titles were simplified and reduced in number and include the short-term, transit, and stopover visas and the two main visas, the temporary permit and the residence permit. Preconditions for acquiring the latter include residence for five years, means of subsistence, no criminal record, and Portuguese language skills. Family reunification provisions were widened and a less cumbersome quota system implemented (Peixoto and Sabino 2009). Harsher disincentives were introduced to counter illegal immigration and combat trafficking, while treatment of illegal migrants was made more favorable. The law also enables minors born in Portugal (and their parents) who attend school to obtain residence permits without a prior visa. Recently, in response to the current economic crisis, a joint decree of the Ministries of Interior and Labor and Social Solidarity (Decree no. 760/2009, July 16) relaxed means of subsistence as a precondition to remain in the country for involuntarily unemployed immigrants.

Citizenship, like immigration policy, was given little political consideration until after decolonization. Fears of mass migration culminated in the 1975 Nationality Law (Decree-Law no. 308-A/75, June 24), which to a large extent restricted nationality to those born in European Portugal or the descendants of emigrants. By definition, many African immigrants residing in Portugal became foreigners. Upheld by similar principles, the 1981 Nationality Law (Law no. 37/81, October 3) transferred the criteria of ius soli (right of territory/soil) to ius sanguinis (Fonseca, Malheiros et al. 2002). The law became even more restrictive with its 1994 amendment (Law no. 25/94, August 19).

With the increase in the immigrant population, it became clear over time that the legislative framework needed to adapt to the new reality. Yet, the legislature only embraced the question of citizenship in 2005. Finally, in 2006, a new nationality law was approved (Law no. 2/2006, April 17, regulated by Decree Law no. 237-A/2006, December 14). The new law updated the legislative framework in line with the European Convention on Nationality (Healy 2011a). It strengthened once again the principle of ius soli (right of territory). The Portuguese-born descendants of immigrants who had either been stateless or inherited their parent’s nationality now had a subjective right to Portuguese nationality, the right to apply for it. The new law also extended the right of nationality to a much wider group of immigrants and their descendants (Healy 2011b).

Thus presently, Portuguese nationality may be obtained by way of attribution (nationality of origin), by effect of law or will, which corresponds to cases of citizens who are Portuguese by origin, or by the acquisition of nationality (derived nationality). This last case can result from three situations: by the effect of will, by adoption, or by naturalization.

The new law reduced the requirements and residence can now be proved by any type of valid residence title. Language proficiency remains a requirement and individuals cannot have been sentenced to three years or more in prison under Portuguese law. However, moral and civil rectitude and means of subsistence have been eliminated, eradicating socio-economic discrimination from the procedure (Healy 2011a, 20).

A six-year legal residence requirement is applicable to first-generation immigrants. For Portuguese-born children or grandchildren of immigrants the principle of ius soli was reinstated in specific cases. The new law also recognizes de facto unions between heterosexual or homosexual couples. The acquisition of Portuguese nationality only implies the loss of nationality of origin if the law of the country of origin determines it (for example in Ukrainian law).

While the policy and legislative measures outlined above have had undeniable impacts on integrating immigrants, integration grew into a policy goal in its own right. The main institutional body currently responsible for implementing integration policy and coordinating intercultural dialogue is the High Commission for Integration and Intercultural Dialogue (acidi). The acidi has been instrumental in developing the currently existing infrastructure to promote immigrant integration including the National Information Network for Immigrants; the National Immigrant Support Centers (cnia); a national network of local centers (clai), which are “one-stop shops” for relevant state departments and services; and the Immigration Observatory to promote research. acidi has been responsible for the implementation of the Plans for the Integration of Immigrants (2007-2009; 2010-2012) (Fonseca and Goracci 2007) and an array of other initiatives such as the Promotion of Immigrant Entrepreneurship, now in its third term (2011-2012).

Other initiatives responding to particular needs have been implemented over the course of the last decade or so, such as the Schools Program targeting social exclusion among descendants of immigrants and minority ethnic groups living in problematic neighborhoods.

Access to social services is granted in legislation, albeit problems are sometimes encountered in practice. All legal immigrants have access to the Social Insertion Income, a minimum income guarantee, though take-up rates are very low (oecd 2007, in Peixoto and Sabino 2009). The children of immigrants have access to the educational system and all immigrants, regardless of legal status, have access to the Portuguese National Health Service.

It is difficult to measure the degree to which government funding will be restricted in the domain of immigrant integration in the context of the current economic crisis. However, a critical reading of the budget justifications for 2012 provides some insight into the changing reality:

“Despite the cuts presented, the government wants to ensure the overall measures of the II Plan for the Integration of Immigrants (2010-2012). . . . In a context of fiscal restraint, we intend to continue the work so far…with the support of Community funding (Ministério das Finanças e da Administração Pública 2011, 155).

The Impact of the Economic and Financial Crisis On Immigrants Living in Portugal

Labor Market

The economic and financial crisis has been very hard on the Portuguese economy. In 2009, gdp decreased by 2.5 percent compared to 2008. In 2010, a slight recovery produced 1.4-percent growth, but the Eurostat projections for 2011 point toward a contraction of 1.9 percent, whereas for EU27, it is estimated that gdp will grow by 1.6 percent. In addition, both Eurostat and the Bank of Portugal indicate a greater contraction in economic activity in 2012 than that anticipated for 2011 (Banco de Portugal 2011).

Figure 4

Unemployment Rates (1997-2011)

Source: Eurostat (n.d.b) and ine (2009).

The unfavorable evolution of the economy is clearly visible in the fast growth of unemployment. According to the Labor Force Survey (ine 2009), the unemployment rate grew from 7.6 percent in 2008 to 9.5 percent in 2009, 10.8 percent in 2010, and 12.4 percent in the third quarter of 2011. The severe job losses over this period affected the immigrant population more seriously than non-immigrant workers, increasing the gap between the percentage of the two groups that is unemployed (Figure 4). In 2009, the unemployment rate among Portuguese citizens was 9.1 percent, while for foreigners it was 7.3 points higher, reaching 16.4 percent and 17.3 percent in the case of non-EU27 nationals (Peixoto and Iorio 2011). In 2010, the difference between both groups was more or less the same.

Unemployment affects women more than men, both for nationals and immigrants (Figure 5). However, it must be stressed that for the foreign population, the differences between male and female unemployment tend to be smaller in the two periods of greater economic slowdown, 2003-2004 and 2008-2009. This is primarily due to the fact that the sector most seriously harmed by the recession, namely civil construction, employs mostly males.

Figure 5

Unemployment Rate by Gender and Nationality (2003-2009) (percent)

Source: ine (2009).

Portuguese law guarantees equal conditions of access to unemployment benefits and to other social support schemes for documented foreign workers. After 2007, the number of foreign workers registered in Ministry of Labor Employment Centers increased at a much faster rate than that of the Portuguese (Figure 6). Peixoto and Iorio (2011) argue that while this increase is in part a result of the higher number of regularized immigrants, who are thus protected by social security, this explanation alone cannot account for the evolution observed. Therefore, it is legitimate to infer that the likelihood that foreign workers will become unemployed has increased, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis.

Figure 6

Unemployment Registered in Employment Centers: Portuguese and Foreign Citizens (2003-2010) (2003=100)

Source: Authors’ research at the Ministério do Trabalho e da Solidariedade Social, Instituto de Emprego e Formação Profissional.

By using a geographically disaggregated analysis by nationality, increasing unemployment can be observed across groups. However, it is more intense among those who arrived in the more recent migratory waves, namely Romanians, followed by Brazilians, Moldovans, and Ukrainians. Migrants from Cape Verde, Angola, and Guinea Bissau present lower growth rates, with the first two nationalities showing almost identical trajectories (see Figure 7).

The number of foreigners receiving unemployment benefits reached 16 592 in October 2011. Paradoxically, it is important to stress, however, that compared to the same period in the previous year, this was a 13.5 percent decline, even though the number of unemployed foreign workers registered in the Unemployment Centers continued to increase.

Figure 7

Unemployment of Foreign Citizens Registered in the Employment Centers by Main Nationalities (2003-2010) (2003=100)

Source: Authors’ research at the Ministério do Trabalho e da Solidariedade Social, Instituto de Emprego e Formação Profissional.

The economic crisis and the subsequent growth in unemployment have, in general, significantly worsened the living conditions of many foreign residents. This is exacerbated by the fact that many immigrants have surpassed the maximum period for receiving unemployment benefits. Consequently, besides reduced immigration to Portugal, in the last three years the flow of return to countries of origin or re-emigration to other destinations has been growing. Moreover, the number of people asking for financial help through the Assisted Volunteer Return Program sponsored by the International Organization for Migration has increased. Between January and October 2011, 1 790 people applied, a monthly average of 179, compared to 149 in 2010, 84 in 2009, 53 in 2008 and 27 in 2007. This represents a six-fold increase in the average monthly number of candidates between 2007 and 2011.

Remittances

The effects of the economic and financial crisis are also visible in the levels of foreign workers’ savings. According to Central Bank of Portugal data, in the last three years, remittances sent to countries of origin decreased. Between 2003 and 2006, a remarkable increase in the remittances sent by immigrants, mostly to Brazil, was observed. Since then, the figures have contracted, falling from €609 771 in 2006 to €567 340 in 2010 (Figure 8).

Figure 8

Remittances of Immigrants (2003-2010) (€1 000)

Source: Central Bank of Portugal (n.d.).

Figure 8 also shows that despite the overall reduction over the past two years, in 2010 more than half of the remittances (54 percent) were sent to Brazil, 8.8 percent to the Ukraine, 6.5 percent to the palop, 3.6 percent to Romania, and 27 percent to other countries (of which 6.4 percent went to Asia).

In addition to the economic crisis, this drop in remittances may also be the result of the reduction in migratory flows to Portugal, given that more recently arrived migrants usually send proportionally more money. Taking into account the size of the respective groups, this explains why Brazilians and Eastern Europeans send proportionally more remittances than palop citizens.

Attitudes toward Immigration

As the opening lines of the recent World Migration Report concisely state, “Few areas of public policy are subject to greater misrepresentation in public and political discourse, yet more influenced by public opinion, than international migration” (iom 2011, 15). Economic concerns and the prominence given to the issue in the media (German Marshall Fund 2011) are well-known evidence of negative public sentiment toward immigration. Public opinion polls on immigration conducted in Portugal have tended to show quite mixed results: nevertheless, there seems to be a trend of improving attitudes over time. The question is, however, if this trend continues in the current context of increasing unemployment and decreasing state welfare in the wake of the global recession. On the one hand, according to 2006 Eurobarometer data (European Commission 2006), the proportion of residents in Portugal who agreed that immigrants “contribute a lot to the country,” at 66 percent, was well above the European average, and second only to Sweden —Greece was also above the average with 43 percent, and Spain represented the EU-25 average with 40 percent (iom 2011, 11). Likewise, results from the Migrant Integration Policy Index (Mipex) reveal a positive attitude toward immigration among the Portuguese: 69.3 percent support the idea that immigrants should have equal social rights; 72.2 percent defend the right to family reunification; and 45.2 percent think that foreigners should be able to acquire Portuguese nationality easily (Niessen et al. 2007, cited in Fonseca and Goracci 2007). On the other hand, data collected three years earlier in the European Social Survey (eumc 2005, 33) revealed that 62.5 percent of respondents were “resistant to immigrants,” compared to 50 percent in Spain and 87 percent in Greece. Yet, in the same report only a relatively small percentage of respondents (26 percent) opposed civil rights for legal migrants (eumc 2005, 31).

ngos, and most notably acidi, have been working to create a positive image of immigrants in society. In particular, acidi has supported the production of documentaries and television programs portraying the realities of immigrants’ lives. They established the Immigration and Ethnic Minority Journalism for Tolerance Award, which recognizes journalism that has served to combat racism (Fonseca, Malheiros, and Silva 2005). Furthermore, several authors contend that positive change has occurred in the representation of immigrants in the media related with an increase in more objective reporting (Cádima 2003; Ferin Cunha, Almeida Santos, Silveirinha, and Peixoto 2004).

A recent survey implemented in three immigrant neighborhoods in Lisbon, Bilbao, and Thessaloniki, as part of the geitonies project, explored the attitudes of both native and immigrant residents toward immigration.[6] Residents were asked if they agreed or disagreed that “immigrants are good for the economy” (see Figure 9). The survey was conducted between June 2009 and May 2010 precisely when gdp growth dropped to its lowest (see Figure 3). Interestingly, the relative positioning of the countries is the same regardless of migration background. Considering natives, the Spanish respondents show the most favorable attitudes, with the vast majority either agreeing or strongly agreeing that immigrants are good for the economy (63 percent), followed by Portugal (46 percent), with Greece in last place (35 percent). Unsurprisingly, however, migrants consistently reveal more positive attitudes than natives. Almost 83 percent of immigrants interviewed in Bilbao believed immigrants to be good for the economy, almost three-quarters of respondents in Lisbon, and over half in Thessaloniki. The Greek case is interesting as almost 30 percent of migrants disagree. This is likely related with the large percentage of Soviet Greeks in the sample, a group that shares cultural affinities with the native population and thus may not consider themselves immigrants. Furthermore, it may be evidence of tension between “old” and “new” migrants.

Figure 9

“Immigrants are good for the economy” (percent)

Source: geitonies Survey (2009-2010), unpublished data. Natives: Bilbao, 287; Lisbon, 282; Thessaloniki, 287. Immigrants: Bilbao, 286; Lisbon, 287; Thessaloniki, 275.

The relative positioning of the three cities compared to each other can be verified at the national level with European Social Survey data (Figure 10). When asked if immigration is bad or good for the country’s economy, on a scale of 0 to 10 with the latter being positive, the mean score on average across all the countries surveyed has consistently fallen below five on the negative end of the scale. Still, Spain has constantly remained above the average of all countries surveyed over the five rounds of the survey, albeit the mean score has been falling closer to the average over time. In 2010, for the first time the mean score fell below five, that is, below the threshold of neutrality. Portugal has sided on the negative end of the scale close to the average across countries or slightly below it, only peaking above it in 2008 and falling again, in line with the worsening economy, in 2010. The lowest mean score (4.39 on a scale of 0 to 10) was in 2004 after the lowest gdp growth in almost a decade (see Figure 3). Despite this, it is important to note that fluctuations have been very slight and that relative consistency is the rule. This is evidence, perhaps, that the economic crisis has not deeply affected attitudes toward immigrants. Greece demonstrates an extremely negative sentiment, and sits clearly below the average.

Figure 10

“Immigration bad or good for country’s economy” (2002-2010) (means)

Source: Authors’ calculations using European Social Survey (Round 1-5) data.

More general opinions gathered in the geitonies survey on natives’ openness toward immigrants reveal different patterns compared to the perceived contribution of immigrants to the economy. The Portuguese respondents’ evaluations are the most positive, with over 63 percent of natives agreeing or strongly agreeing that natives are open to migrants. Greek native respondents contrast starkly, with only 35 percent affirming the statement and over half disagreeing. While Spain is intermediate, it is more closely aligned with Portugal. The result for Portugal reflects well the popular perception that Portuguese culture is tolerant in its acceptance of others both at home and abroad. Furthermore, the experience that Portugal has had with emigration must be noted here as a potential explanatory factor. The difference in the opinions of immigrants when compared to natives in all three cities is very interesting. Only immigrants in Lisbon have more negative opinions than natives; in the other two cities the contrary is true, with immigrants expressing more positive opinions than the indigenous population. Immigrants in Bilbao have the most positive opinions, with almost 67 percent agreeing that natives are open to immigrants, followed by 54 percent in Lisbon and 45 percent in Thessaloniki.

Figure 11

“Natives are open to immigrants” (percent)

Source: geitonies Survey (2009-2010), unpublished data. Natives: Bilbao, 296; Lisbon, 282; Thessaloniki, 291. Immigrants: Bilbao, 293; Lisbon, 295; Thessaloniki, 292.

Conclusions

During the last two decades, the dynamics of international migration have been closely associated with economic cycles, whereby since the mid-1990s new migratory waves have coincided with periods of high economic growth. On the other hand, during periods of economic recession, the inflows of foreign workers have declined; return migration to sending regions has increased, as has re-emigration to other countries; and emigration of Portuguese nationals has grown noticeably.

These changes clearly show that the recent evolution of immigration to Portugal was steered by labor-market demand and the Portuguese model of economic growth. During the last two decades, this has been characterized by a strong segmentation of the labor market and deep social disparities, where more modern, highly productive sectors coexist with traditional ones, mostly maintained by the immigrant labor force.

Immigration policies were completely inefficient in regulating migratory flows and only intervened reactively through mechanisms to regularize undocumented migrants’ status. Thus, most immigrants are confined to the secondary labor market, with insecure working conditions, low wages, and low levels of professional mobility. Besides the inefficiency of the mechanisms regulating the labor market, visible in the informal economy, undocumented work, and precariousness of labor, there is also a remarkably high level of brain waste among highly-skilled migrants.

An original feature of international migration to Portugal, resulting from the free circulation of workers within the EU and low wages paid in the low-skilled segments of the Portuguese labor market, is the coexistence of immigration and emigration. The process of “ethnicization” of some activities such as civil construction, industrial and domestic cleaning services, and work in hotels and restaurants was accompanied by the persistence of emigration among Portuguese workers to other European countries where they performed the same kind of activities foreign workers do in Portugal. More recently, with rising youth unemployment, there has been a steady growth of emigration among young highly-skilled professionals, namely to the United Kingdom, Spain, and Angola.

Despite the economic recession and unemployment growth in Portugal, and unlike other European countries, such as Greece, there have not been major social tensions or anti-immigration attitudes expressed in political discourse, public opinion, or in conflicts between national and foreign workers. This can be explained, on the one hand, by the integration policies, internationally recognized by the Mipex and the United Nations, and, on the other hand, by the fact that much of the tension that could result from the competition between national and foreign workers in the less-skilled segments of the labor market is dissipated by persisting emigration. Another possible explanation is the belief that immigrants in Portugal have made a highly positive contribution to economic growth, and immigration also has a positive role in Portuguese population dynamics. Both ideas have been supported by a number of studies promoted by the National Observatory of Immigration (Ferreira, Rato, and Mortágua 2004; Corrêa d’Almeida and Duarte Silva 2007; Valente Rosa, Seabra, and Santos 2004; Abreu and Peixoto 2009).

Despite this, there is a clear need to respond to current levels of unemployment through policies designed to make the economy more dynamic and promote job creation. Beyond economic policy, social policies have an obvious role to play in safeguarding equality of opportunity among all citizens.

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2011 Acesso à habitação e problemas residenciais dos imigrantes em Portugal. Lisbon: Alto Comissariado para a Imigração e o Diálogo Intercultural (acidi).

Ministério das Finanças e da Administração Pública

2011 Orçamento do Estado para 2012. Relatório. October, http://www.dgo.pt/oe/2012/proposta/Relatorio/Rel-2012.pdf, accessed December 5, 2011.

2010 Orçamento do Estado para 2011. Relatório. October, http://static.publico .clix.pt/docs/economia/propOERel2011.pdf, accessed December 5, 2011.

mtss/dgeep (Ministério do Trabalho e da Solidariedade Social /

Direcção Geral de Estudos, Estatística e Planeamento)

2006 “O trabalho não declarado em Portugal – Metodologia de abordagem e tentativa de medição,” Colecção Cogitum 19, Lisbon, dgeep / mtss.

Niessen, J., T. Hudleston, L. Citron, A. Geddes, and D. Jacobs

2007 Migrant Integration Policy Index (Mipex). Brussels: British Council and Migration Policy Group.

Observatório da emigração

2008 http://www.observatorioemigracao.secomunidades.pt/np4/2454.html, accessed November 21, 2011.

oecd (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)

2008 Jobs for Immigrants vol. 2: Labour Market Integration in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Portugal. Paris: oecd.

2007 The Labour Market Integration of Immigrants in Portugal. Paris: delsa/elsa.

Peixoto, J.

2008 “Imigração e mercado de trabalho em Portugal: investigação e tendências recentes,” Migrações, no. 2, April: 19-46.

2007 “Emprego e protecção social – Oportunidades no mercado de trabalho português, competição e complementaridade, reconhecimento de habilitações e competências, projectos da Gulbenkian, empreendedorismo,” in António Vitorino, comp., Imigração: oportunidade ou ameaça?-Recomendações do Fórum Gulbenkian Imigração. Lisbon/Estoril: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian/Principia, 199-231.

Peixoto, J., and J. Iorio

2011 Crise, imigração e mercado de trabalho em Portugal: retorno, regulação ou resistência? Cascais: Principia / Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.

Peixoto, J., and C. Sabino

2009 “Portugal: Immigration, the Labour Market and Policy in Portugal: Trends and Prospects,” IDEA Working Papers 6, April.

Pereira, S.

2010 Trabalhadores de origem africana em Portugal. Impacto das novas vagas de imigração. Lisbon: Edições Colibri.

Pires, R. P.

2003 Migrações e integração. Oeiras: Celta Editora.

Pires, R. P., F. L. Machado, J. Peixoto, and M. J. Vaz

2010 Portugal: Atlas das migrações internacionais. Lisbon: Tinta da China.

Reis, J., N. Serra, N. Tolda, and T. Pereira

2010 Imigrantes em Portugal. Economia, pessoas, qualificações e territórios. Coimbra: Almedina.

Schneider, F., and R. Klinglmair

2004 “Shadow Economies around the World: What Do We Know?” IZA Discussion Paper 1043. Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labour.

sef (Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras)

2011 Relatório de imigração, fronteiras e asilo – 2010. Lisbon: sef / Departamento de Planeamento e Formação (Núcleo de Planeamento).

n.d.a Sefstat. Portal de estatística, http://sefstat.sef.pt/evolucao.aspx, accessed November 21, 2011.

n.d.b Sefstat. Portal de estatística, http://sefstat.sef.pt/distritos.aspx, accessed November 21, 2011.

Valente Rosa, M. J., H. Seabra, and T. Santos

2004 Contributos dos “imigrantes” na demografia portuguesa: o papel das populações de nacionalidade estrangeira. Lisbon: Alto Comissariado para a Imigração e Minorias Étnicas (acime) / Observatório da Imigração, 4.

[1] * Centro de Estudos Geográficos, Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning (igot), University of Lisbon, lucinda.fonseca@netcabo.pt.

[2] ** Centro de Estudos Geográficos, igot, University of Lisbon, jmcgarrigle@ceg.ul.pt.

[3] The authors gathered data in the framework of the geitonies project (Generating Interethnic Tolerance and Neighbourhood Integration in European Urban Spaces), which lasted from May 1, 2008 to April 30, 2011, and was funded by the European Union’s Seventh framework Programme.

[4] More than 3.5 million Portuguese nationals are currently living abroad (Observatório da Emigração 2008).

[5] Several authors estimate that Portugal’s informal economy may contribute more than 20 percent to gnp (Schneider and Klinglmair 2004; mtss/dgeep 2006; Abreu and Peixoto 2008).

[6] The survey was applied to 1 800 residents (900 natives and 900 people with an immigrant background) in nine multi-ethnic neighborhoods (three per city). The questionnaire was the same in all cities in order to ensure comparability to the largest degree possible. A random sampling method was used. The sample size was 200 in each neighborhood (100 natives and 100 immigrants), that is, 600 interviews per city. The target population was comprised of inhabitants who had resided in the neighborhood for at least one year and the sampling unit was the household.

THE IMPACT OF THE RECESSION ON MIGRATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Jon Simmons*[1]

This article sets out to explore in brief what the available statistics say about the impact of the 2008-2009 economic recession on international migration to and from the UK. In short, statistics suggest that economic migrants responded to the recession in the way that one might expect, with a reduced inflow and increased outflow of long-term migrants coming to work in the UK, in particular within the EU free market, although these changes did not quite translate into a net reduction in this group despite the domestic economic conditions. For non-EU migrants, the dominance of non-work-related flows meant that the recession did not influence them in the same way and the resultant reduction in overall net migration was only slight.

A Short History of Recent Migration to the UK

Although the United Kingdom has seen a great deal of international migration over the course of the last century, for much of that period the numbers leaving were often as great or greater than the numbers arriving, resulting in low or negative net migration, as measured by the international definition relating to people changing their normal place of residence for a period of 12 months or more.

Following two decades of reduced inward migration and low or negative levels of net migration, immigration to the UK began to grow in the 1980s; perhaps reflecting the global growth in international travel, the numbers began to escalate from the mid-1990s (see Chart 1). Although some of this growth was in temporary migration, the number of emigrants did not keep up, resulting in a sharp rise in net migration.

Chart 1

Long-term International Migration in the United Kingdom

Source: ons (2011c).

Table 1

Top Ten Foreign Nationalities Resident in the United Kingdom (2012)

Source: ons (2013).

The new migrants to the UK came from across the globe. In previous decades, large numbers of migrants had come from Ireland and the Caribbean. In the 1990s, the largest numbers came from the former British colonies in south Asia and Africa. Other countries such as China and the Philippines also supplied large numbers. Beginning in 2004, a significant new influx began from the Eastern European countries that had recently joined the European Union (often referred to as “the new accession states” or “A8 nationals”), particularly Poland. Polish nationals comprise the largest foreign nationality currently resident in the UK, whereas prior to the Polish accession that position was held by people originating from India, a large proportion of whom subsequently gained British citizenship. Just under half (47 percent) of the UK’s foreign population is made up from the top 10 foreign nationalities (see Table 1).

Table 2

Net Migration by Country of Last and Next Residence (2000-2012)

Note: Figures may not sum due to independent rounding.
Source: House of Commons Library (2014).

The United Kingdom is one of the most significant recipient nations for foreign migrants within Europe. In 2011, for example, the number of long-term migrants arriving was the highest in the European Union. The net migration figure was only higher in Germany and Italy (see Table 3). The situation in Germany has changed greatly over recent years, and its 2011 figure was the highest for a decade. Many German migrants are also temporary seasonal workers. In the UK, however, like Italy and, to a lesser extent, Spain until the most recent period, the numbers of migrants leaving have been considerably fewer than those arriving, resulting in high levels of net migration (see Table 3).

Differences in migration patterns are one obvious explanatory factor for differences in the demand for migrants since some countries have a history of low-skilled migration, for example, or high numbers of asylum seekers. Another factor that may be significant is population growth, and specifically whether a country is able to refresh its labor force from its own citizens. A comparison of fertility rates across the EU suggests two very different groups of countries (see Chart 2). One, which includes France, Sweden, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, has a fertility rate well above the European average, and closer to a replacement rate (although currently only Ireland is at or around replacement levels).[2] However, this “higher fertility” group comprises less than one-third of the EU member states, with other countries showing much lower fertility rates of between 1.3 and 1.6 (see Chart 2). Although there has been a general recovery in European fertility rates since their low point in the late 1990s, for the majority of countries, fertility rates are nowhere near the levels required to offer replacement of the current population. For many countries in Europe, this therefore implies a potential gap in their labor force, which migration might help to fill. For France and the United Kingdom, for example, this pressure would not apply to the same extent as in other large recipient nations.

How Do We Define a Recession and When Was the Most Recent One?

An economic recession is generally identified as a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, technically defined by a fall in real gdp in two successive quarters. For the UK, the most recent sustained recession occurred between spring 2008 and summer 2009. Although the UK has not strictly been in a sustained recession since then, the recovery has been somewhat hesitant as the Chart 3 shows.

Table 3

Immigration and Net Migration in the European Union (2011)

Source: Eurostat Statistics Database (n.d.a).

Chart 2

EU National Fertility Rates (2011)

Source: Eurostat Statistics Database (n.d.b).

Chart 3

Quarterly Changes in Gross Domestic Product, United Kingdom (1990-2013)

Source: ons (n.d.a)

Chart 4

Unemployment Rates in United Kingdom and European Union (2005-2012)

Source: Eurostat Statistics Database (n.d.c)

Compared to the rest of Europe, the UK experienced recession earlier and began to recover from it earlier. Although the recovery has shown some positive gdp growth in recent quarters, as in previous recessions, it has taken longer for this to translate into falls in unemployment; in fact, unemployment rates, both in the UK and the rest of Europe, rose considerably following the recession (from May 2008 to about mid-2009) and have remained relatively high since then (see Chart 4, previous page).

The relationship between gdp changes, unemployment levels, employment, and hence the demand for labor is not straightforward. Generally, it is thought that a recovery in gdp may not immediately translate into a growth in employment, since companies respond initially through making more use of existing workers, overtime, and other temporary adjustments. Only once there is greater confidence in the recovery do we tend to see a rise in jobs and labor market recovery.

What Happened to Migration during the Recession?

The main migration statistics for the UK are produced by the Office for National Statistics based on its International Passenger Survey. They identify migrants according to international definitions, that is, as persons who change their normal place of residence for more than a year. The estimates are produced for a rolling four quarters (one year), and the estimates best corresponding to the start of the recession in spring 2008 would be the long-term migration statistics for the year ending September 2008, that is, the four-quarter estimate the midpoint for which is closest to the month or quarter when the recession began.

Chart 5

Long-term International Migration in the United Kingdom (2001-2011)

Source: ons (2011a).

We would expect economic conditions to have a strong impact on the number of migrants coming to the UK to take up employment or to look for a job. The UK has a relatively flexible labor market that might make international labor migrants particularly responsive to economic conditions, more so than in a more heavily regulated labor market. The demand for migrant workers will also vary between different sectors and occupations. Other factors that may influence migration will include the existing relationship with the country of origin, such as the existing stock of migrants or a large Diaspora (and therefore family and other reasons that might suppress mobility), relative global economic conditions, and the availability of jobs in other countries, the attractiveness of the education sector, affordability (for example, due to movements in the currency exchange rate), and an ability to speak the same language. However, it is undoubtedly the case that the need for migrant labor, how it varies across sectors, and how it change depending on the state of the economy are “highly contested” (Ruhs and Anderson 2010).

For total long-term migration to the UK, the period of the recession coincided with a sharp fall in immigration but an even sharper fall in emigration, so that, overall, net migration rose slightly. That is, in a period when the economy was contracting and unemployment rising, more people were still coming to reside in the UK than were leaving to go elsewhere. It is worth noting that the onset of recession coincided with the introduction of a new Points-Based System, which may also have had some impact on migration flows. However —and not withstanding this point—, as the recession ended in the fourth quarter of 2009, immigration recovered and began to rise again, but emigration did not, resulting in a further steep rise in net migration.

Around half of this hike in net migration could be accounted for by a fall in British emigration. In the year ending September 2008, an estimated 173 000 British citizens left the UK to go abroad for more than a year, but two years later (in the year ending September 2010), the number of British emigrants had fallen to 122 000. This change alone would add around 50 000 to the net migration figure, which rose from +160 000 to +254 000 over the same period.

There appears to be some relationship between unemployment levels and the emigration of British citizens in recent years, in that rising unemployment has been associated with lower levels of emigration. This may appear at first to be counterintuitive in that, if economic conditions weaken we might expect to see more people move abroad to look for work. However, it could be that when people lack economic security their first priority is to obtain some stability at home rather than seek work abroad. Or, it could also be a response to the global nature of the recession and the lack of new job opportunities in countries where British citizens might have otherwise moved to work. Whichever driver is dominant, the lack of a swift recovery in the UK labor market and labor market conditions in key destination countries has meant that the emigration numbers for British citizens have remained low.

Chart 6

Long-term International Migration to the UK of Citizens of the Eight New EU Accession States

Source: ons (2011b).

However, the next biggest contribution to the uptick in net migration both during the recession and after it was from the inflow of foreign citizens. The net migration of non-British citizens rose from +253 000 to +296 000 between the year ending September 2008 and the year ending September 2010. If the dominant driver were economic, this finding might appear surprising.

We can see the expected impact of the economic conditions most clearly in the numbers for the new European nationals arriving in the UK (that is, the eight most recent accession states, sometimes referred to as the “A8”). These countries were admitted to the European Union in 2004 and gained freedom-of-movement rights, although in many countries these rights were initially restricted for up to seven years (although in the UK, unlike most other EU states, they were not).[3] Most of the migrants from these countries were relatively young and in the years immediately following the accession came to the UK in relatively large numbers in search of work.

The numbers of these new European arrivals may have peaked just before the recession, but they fell rapidly during the recession and then began to grow again, in response to the slight improvement in economic conditions, but perhaps also as a result of families being formed by the first waves of arrivals. The inverse effect can be seen in emigration by A8 nationals, with the result that by the end of the recession period, for the first time since their accession to the EU and for only one set of estimates (those for the year ending September 2009), the number leaving was greater than the number arriving and the net migration of A8 nationals was therefore negative.

For migrants from outside the European Union coming to the UK the picture was different. They did not have the freedom-of-movement rights enjoyed by EU nationals and their ability to take jobs was restricted. The low-skilled immigration route for work by foreign nationals from outside the EU (Tier 3 of the Points-Based System) had been closed since its introduction in 2008. Aside from certain shortage occupations and those family members or students with rights to work, the main routes to come to the UK to work were heavily regulated. For these reasons, as the table below shows, according to the International Passenger Survey, the proportion of non-EU, long-term migrants arriving for work was considerably smaller than for European migrants, amounting to just 18 percent of the total inflow in the year ending March 2011. The largest group of non-EU migrants coming to the UK to stay for a year or longer was now made up of students rather than workers, a change in the pattern of migration that occurred at the same time as the recession took hold.

Table 4

Proportions of Old EU, New-Accession EU and Non-EU Immigrants To the UK Coming to Work, Accompany or Join Someone, or to Study (Year Ending March 2011)

Source: ons (2011b).

Nonetheless, there were still considerable numbers of low-skilled workers coming to the UK, as family members alongside the skilled workers applying through the UK’s Points-Based System, or as students with rights to take on a limited amount of work, and whose number we might therefore expect to be affected by economic conditions.

For non-EU migrants, there was a reduction in immigration during the recession and a slight rise in emigration, but the changes were not as large as had been seen in more normal periods, and the net result was only a slightly lower net migration figure for non-EU citizens, falling to roughly the same level it had been four or five years earlier, and from which the recovery post-recession appeared to be swift.

However, as mentioned above, the motives and make-up of non-EU migrants was significantly different from the European migrants. EU citizens migrating to the UK were primarily coming to work, and it is therefore unsurprising that their numbers were significantly affected by the recession. Non-EU foreign nationals, however, came to the UK for a wider variety of reasons. More than two-thirds (68 percent) of the new European state nationals arriving in the UK in the latest year came to work, compared to only 18 percent of the non-Europeans. A further 18 percent of non-EU migrants came for family or relationship reasons. However, by far the largest group was made up of those who came to study.

Chart 7

Long-term International Migration to the UK of Non-EU Citizens (2001-2011)

Source: ons (2011b).

The growth in the number of student migrants to the degree that they now outnumber work migrants to the UK is a recent phenomenon. However, it has been rapid. The number of undergraduates arriving from non-EU countries at UK universities more than doubled from just under 32 000 at the start of the last decade to 69 000 in 2010-2011; for post-graduates, numbers tripled over the same period from 33 300 to 105 000 (hesa, 2000, 2010). Similar data is not available for the non-higher-education sector, but visa data would seem to suggest a growth in the further education and private education sectors, also.

Chart 8

Non-EU Entrants to Higher Education, United Kingdom (2000-2001 to 2010-2011)

Source: hesa (n.d.).

Although there has been long-term growth in the number of foreign students coming to the UK for most of the last decade, it was only during the recent recession that their number overtook the numbers of foreign migrants coming to the UK to work. At the start of the last decade, almost twice as many long-term migrants came to the UK to work compared to those who came to study (163 000 compared to 84 000 in the year ending December 2000). By the end of the decade, the numbers of those who came to work had risen (to 193 000 by the year ending December 2010), but the numbers of those who came to study were greater, at 236 000.

As a result of this change in the composition of foreign migrants, it is not surprising that the impact of the recession was much greater for the Europeans exercising their freedom-of-movement rights to work than it was for non-European migrants, the majority of whom were now coming to the UK to study.

Chart 9

Long-term International Migration in the United Kingdom by Reason for Migration

Source: ons (2011b).

Migrants coming for family or marriage were by-and-large not affected by the economic conditions. Those coming to study (predominantly the non-Europeans) continued to grow in number, most sharply at the formal end of the recession. One might hypothesize that when job opportunities are scarce, it makes sense to try to improve one’s skills and education to make oneself more attractive to future employers once they start to recruit again or simply to make productive use of one’s time. There is also evidence that some of the rise in student numbers came from low-skilled migrants, whose route into the UK had been closed by the latter half of the decade, and who were using the student route to obtain entry into the UK and, once there, work rather than study.[4] Whatever the motivation, foreign student numbers grew rapidly over this period, the growth only ending when the government began to take more stringent action against some of the educational establishments that appeared to be providing inadequate provision for their students or were using the cloak of study to facilitate their employment.

What Happened to Foreign Workers During the Recession?

The impact of the recession on migrants who came to work can be clearly seen in the ips measure of migration. Prior to the start of the recession (year ending June 2008), immigration for reasons related to work —either to look for a job or to take up the offer of a definite job— peaked at 239 000. By the end of the recession (year ending September 2009), that number had fallen by more than a quarter (26 percent) to 177 000. Thereafter, it has remained broadly level, with only a small increase to 191 000 in the year ending September 2010.[5]

An alternative measure is provided by the Labour Force Survey (lfs), also produced by ons, which is used to estimate the employment levels of all workers aged 16-74. The lfs does not actually measure migration directly, only stocks of workers (and non-workers) among the adult population at different points in time, but it might be reasonable to assume that the changes in the estimated levels of migrants in the lfs might equate to a net change in the flow of migrants between the relevant time periods, as indicated by the ips. In practice, for a variety of methodological reasons the comparison is not exact.

The lfs publishes data on a quarterly basis (rather than the rolling four quarters used in the ips), so the peak prior to the recession was in the April-June 2008 quarter, when the total number of foreign nationals with employment was estimated to be 2.3 million. When using non-seasonally adjusted lfs data, it is important to compare one quarter with the same quarter in earlier years, rather than the preceding quarter, to avoid mistaking seasonal changes for an underlying trend. At the turn of the century, in January-March 2000, the lfs estimated there were just over one million foreign national workers in the UK; by the end of the decade, there were just under 2.3 million, a 107-percent increase, compared to just 1.2 percent for native workers. Almost half the increase came after the accession of the new European states, whose numbers rose from 29 000 in January-March 2000 to just under half a million 10 years later.

The lfs tends to be a popular data source among economists because of its importance for measuring labor market activity and, as a measure of certain aspects of employment, it is the only source available. However, it is a less than perfect measure of international migration.

Chart 10

Change in Employment for UK, EU, and Non-EU Citizens in the United Kingdom (2008-2010)

Source: ons (n.d.b).

According to the lfs, over the course of the recession, the numbers of foreign national workers appear to grow (albeit by a lower rate than previously). The decline in foreign nationals with jobs did eventually arrive, six months after it hit UK nationals, according to the lfs.

The lfs data are reported in two different ways for migrants: one measures numbers of people who were born outside the UK and the other, people who are foreign nationals. Those born abroad will include a large proportion who have since changed their nationality and become British citizens. These long-term migrants are no longer “foreign” nor come under immigration control, and so the more appropriate statistic to use from the lfs to look at trends in migration will normally be that for foreign nationals. This is also the basis for the ips estimates.

The fluctuations in employment levels shown in the lfs seemed to be more extreme for foreign workers. Some of this could in part be due to the variability in the quarterly survey results for groups (such as foreign nationals) with only a relatively small representation in a survey aimed at measuring changes in the population as a whole. This could be true for the ips, given that this survey aims to measure all of the flows across the UK border, the largest volume of which belong to British travelers and short-term visitors, but the effects might be accentuated in the lfs because it is designed to estimate stocks of workers rather than their migratory flow.

However, the main difference between the lfs and the ips is due to the coverage of the two surveys. Specifically, the lfs includes all migrants including short-term migrants, whereas the ips records migrant movements according to the international definition, that is, “a person who moves to a country other than that of his or her usual residence for a period of at least a year (12 months), so that the country of destination effectively becomes his or her new country of usual residence” (UN Statistics Division 2013). Although a more restrictive definition of a migrant, this is a more robust measure of migrant movements because the inclusion of short-term migration in the lfs estimates for foreign nationals will tend to blur the underlying longer-term changes in migrant behavior and make it harder to identify trends clearly. This criticism will also apply to the other measure sometimes used to estimate numbers of foreign nationals: new registrations for national insurance numbers produced by the Department for Work and Pensions (and this source has the additional constraint of only recording those migrants who are working). For this reason, the ips tends to be the most reliable measure of changes in long-term migration. Further information on the differences between the lfs and ips is provided in Appendix A and in the paper written by Ker, Zumpe, and Blake for the Office for National Statistics (2009).

Nevertheless, the lfs data can provide additional insights into the foreign workforce in the UK, and the contrast between foreign and native workers can appear stark.

According to the lfs data the recession came to the foreign workforce in the UK later than for the native population, but when it did come, it hit harder (falls of 2-4 percent per quarter, compared to 0-2 percent for native workers). However, its effects lasted only three quarters, whereas for native workers, the drop in employment lasted for six or seven (see Table 5).

Although the timing and extent of changes might be distorted by the coverage issues already mentioned, the pattern revealed by the lfs would seem to reflect the greater flexibility in the foreign workforce, which is one of their potential attractions for employers, particularly vis-à-vis Europeans who could return to their home country more easily when times were hard —and it may be worth noting in this respect that Poland was the only economy in Europe to have positive gdp growth in 2009. However, for employment-related migration, the pattern also appears to be true for non-Europeans.

Is This Response to the Recession as Expected?

Before the end of the recession, Dobson and colleagues published a short paper (Dobson, Latham, and Salt 2009) that looked at the experience of past recessions to see what that might suggest for migration during the current one. Their paper asks the question whether “buffer theory,” which provides a theoretical description of how migrants might be used by an economy to provide greater flexibility, portrays what actually happens in the real world. Drawing on Böhning and Maillat (1974), the paper describes buffer theory as the idea that society might “bring in temporary workers when labor shortages existed, who would then go home during economic downturns.” Dobson and her colleagues found that, in practice, this did not really occur in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, nor did it occur specifically in the UK. In the three earlier recessions they looked at, although there was indeed evidence of “a fall in numbers of foreign migrants entering the UK, albeit for a limited period, . . . there is no evidence of a significant upturn in outflows, contrary to what buffer theory would suggest. In fact, the reverse is true” (13).

Table 5

Change in Employment Compared to Same Quarter Previous Year (percent)

Source: ons (n.d.b).

Drawing on Hatton (2005), Dobson, Latham, and Salt, posit several reasons why this might be anticipated. Firstly, unemployment can be shown to tend to reduce immigration (Hatton estimated a 1 percent rise in unemployment might cause a reduction in net migration of around 5 000 per annum). This is, of course, broadly what happened in the current recession, although the net impact is complicated by the different flows of migration. However, immigration for work reasons certainly fell substantially, and emigration rose, as the chart below shows, looking at the migration patterns for non-British nationals for work-related reasons alone. The net migration of foreign workers fell from just under +100 000 in the year ending December 2007 to +3 000 in the year ending December 2009.

Chart 11

Long-term International Migration by Foreign Citizens Coming For Work-related Reasons, United Kingdom (2001-2011)

Source: ons (2011b).

It is also the case that people classed as “labor migrants” will not only be driven by economic factors. Some of those who come to the UK to work will form relationships or a family and seek to settle, for example. Previous research (for example, Hatton 2005) had found that worsening economic conditions in the UK also tend to lead to falls in emigration by UK citizens. The impact of this was relatively modest in the past, but that was not the case during the current recession, as has already been noted.

However, the most significant reason for the recession in the UK having only a relatively modest impact on migration trends overall was due to the changed composition of the migratory flows to the UK, and specifically the significant rise in student migration over this period. The expected impact on work-related migration did occur within the European free market —that is, for EU nationals. However, work migration represented less than one-fifth of non-European migration to the UK, whereas by the year ending in December 2009, students represented 55 percent of the non-Europeans coming to the UK, rising to 60 percent just one year later.

The reasons for such a strong rise in foreign students are not clear. British universities were active in recruiting foreign students, but evidence also exists of growth in non-compliant student migration, in particular to colleges of further education whose delivery of a high-quality educational service was not confirmed by official inspection. In addition, it is possible that some of the hike in foreign student numbers was linked to the depreciation of the currency and a resultant reduction in the cost of education in the UK —the U.S.-dollar-value of the pound sterling fell by almost one-third between spring 2008 and spring 2009, and against the euro by around one-sixth over the same period.

However, as the above chart shows, unsurprisingly, work has for a long time been more important as a reason for migration inside the European Union than for migrants from outside the EU. As a result, for European migrants the recession had the anticipated effect, the labor market worked as anticipated, and, to a significant extent, buffer theory could be said to have applied.

Chart 12

Proportion of EU and Non-EU Migrants Coming to the UK For Work (2001-2011)

Source: ons (2011b).

For non-European migrants the position is very different. Legal routes to work in the UK had become scarcer over the latter half of the last decade, primarily as a result of the introduction of the Points-Based System, which to a large degree closed the legitimate route for low-skilled workers, and then due to further tightening of entry requirements for other routes under the Coalition Government elected in May 2010. As a result, the last decade saw the proportion of non-EU immigrants to the UK coming to work fall from just under 40 percent at the start of the decade, to around 32 percent in 2005-2006 and then fall sharply to 16-17 percent in 2010-2011. The reduction was in absolute terms also, with an estimated 100 000 non-EU workers arriving in the year ending December 2006, dropping to around half that number three or four years later. The difference was more than made up by numbers of student arrivals from outside the EU.

Appendix A

Differences between the lfs/aps and ips/ltim data

Bibliography

Böhning, W. R., and D. Maillat

1974 The Effects of the Employment of Foreign Workers. Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Dobson, Janet, Alan Latham, and John Salt

2009 On the Move? Labour Migration in Times of Recession-What Can We Learn from the Past? London: Policy Network.

Eurostat Statistics Database

n.d.a Tables tps00176 (Immigration) and tps00176 minus tps00177, combined to get net migration, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/statistics/search_database.

n.d.b Table tsdde220, http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/sta tistics/search_database.

n.d.c Table on unemployment rate (tsdec450), http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/statistics/search_database.

Hatton, T.

2005 “Explaining Trends in UK Immigration,” Journal of Population Economics, 18: 719-740.

hesa (Higher Education Statistics Agency)

2010 Table 2, “First-year postgraduate enrollments,” http://www.hesa.ac.uk/dox/pressOffice/sfr169/1569_SFR169_All_tables.xls.

2000 “First-year postgraduates,” http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php/content/view/925/161/.

n.d. http://www.hesa.ac.uk/content/view/1897/239/.

Home Office UK Border Agency

2010 The Student Immigration System: A Consultation. London: UK Border Agency, December, http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/countries/mexico/?langname=UK%20English&displaypopup=Yes.

House of Commons Library

2014 Migration Statistics-House of Commons Library Standard Note SN06077. Published January 14, http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN06077/ migration-statistics.

Ker, Daniel, Jo Zumpe, and Ann Blake

2009 “Estimating International Migration: An Exploration of the Definitional Differences between the Labour Force Survey, Annual Population Survey, International Passenger Survey and Long-Term International Migration.” London: Office for National Statistics (ons) / Labour Force Survey (lfs) / Labour Market Statistics, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/popu lation-by-country-of-birth-and-nationality/sources-of-international-migration -data/differences-between-sources-of-international-migration-data.pdf.

ons (Office for National Statistics)

2013 “Population by Country of Birth and Nationality Tables, January 2012 to December 2012,” Table 2.3, published August 29, 2013, http://www.ons .gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/population-by-country-of-birth-and-nationality/ 2012/index.html.

2011a “Provisional Long Term International Migration (ltim) Estimates-March 2011,” November 24, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/migration1/migration -statistics-quarterly-report/november-2011/provisional-long-term-interna tional-migration--ltim--estimates.xls.

2011b “Provisional International Passenger Survey (ips) Estimates of Long Term International Migration March 2011,” November 24, http://www.ons.gov .uk/ons/rel/migration1/migration-statistics-quarterly-report/november-2011/ provisional-international-passenger-survey--ips--estimates.xls.

2011c “Migration Statistics Quarterly Report-August 2011,” August, http://www .ons.gov.uk.

n.d.a “Gross domestic product (Seasonally adjusted)” – National Accounts series ybez, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/naa2/quarterly-national-accounts/q3-2013/tsd-quarterly-national-accounts--q3-2013.html.

n.d.b “Labour Force Survey, EMP05: Employment Levels by Country of Birth and Nationality,” http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statis tics/december-2011/table-emp05.xls.

Ruhs, Martin, and Bridget Anderson.

2010 Who Needs Migrant Workers? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

UN Statistics Division

2013 “Principles and Recommendations for a Vital Statistics System,” April, http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sconcerns/migration/migrmethods.htm.

[1] * Home Office Director for Migration and Border Analysis, UK, Jon.Simmons@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.

[2] The replacement fertility rate is around 2.1 births per woman in developed countries, but it can be higher in developing countries where child mortality rates are higher.

[3] Nationals of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and Slovakia could face temporary restrictions on working in another EU country, but for no more than seven years after their countries joined the EU (Bulgaria and Romania joined on January 1, 2007; all the others on May 1, 2004). In practice, only the Bulgarian and Romanian accession had work restrictions imposed in the UK.

[4] According to the Labour Force Survey in 2009 more than half (53 percent) of undergraduates reported working for more than the permitted 21 hours per week (Home Office 2010, 17).

[5] ons changed their method for aligning ips and ltim tables during 2012 which means that the most recent published statistics have been prepared on a slightly different basis. Numbers quoted here are based on comparisons of the statistical tables produced prior to this adjustment. Although consistent comparisons are not available in the latest data, the trends are very similar.

IMMIGRATION TO AND EMIGRATION FROM GERMANY IN THE LAST FEW YEARS

Bernd Geiss*[1]

Germany, Destination for Migrants

Germany is in the middle of Europe and has common borders with nine countries. Therefore, geographically, it is cut out to be a country of immigration and emigration. Of its total population of 82 million, 8.7 percent (7.1 million) are foreigners (holders of only foreign passports), 2.5 million of whom are citizens from other member countries of the European Union (EU). Citizens of EU-member countries have, in addition to national citizenship, what is called a Union citizenship. Except the rights to vote and to run in national elections, EU citizens have the same rights as national citizens. As Germany has been a receiving country for migrants for nearly 60 years, it now has a migrant population (holders of only foreign passports plus naturalized persons) of 15.7 million. One-fifth of the total population has a migrant background.

Europe, a Continent of Internal Migration

France has 64 million inhabitants; the United Kingdom (UK), 62 million; Italy, 60 million; Spain, 45 million; and Poland, 38 million. The whole EU has a population of half a billion, 6.5 percent of whom (32 million) are foreigners. Compared with other regions of the world, these figures are relatively small. In 2010, 3.2 million immigrants entered Europe and 2.2 million emigrants left. The positive migration balance was about one million. In terms of figures, contrary to many Europeans’ impression, Europe is not a big player in the field of international migration. Migration in Europe is mainly internal. The EU still does not have a comprehensive migration policy. However, in May 2009, it agreed on a directive concerning the immigration of high qualified experts. This directive is known as the EU Blue Card and was slated to be turned into national law by July 2012.

Table 1

Immigration and Emigration of Germans and Foreigners (1991-2010)

Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) (2012), 18.

The situation is different for refugees. The EU has a common policy on asylum seekers and other refugees and even a common border security program (Frontex) along the Mediterranean Sea to prevent African refugees from entering Spain, Italy, Malta, and Greece. In February 2012, the European High Court of Human Rights decided that EU member states —it was referring specifically to Italy in this case— are not allowed to refuse refugees entry without having examined their applications for asylum.

Immigration to Germany/Emigration from Germany

In 2010, nearly 798 000 persons immigrated to Germany, while 671 000 emigrated from Germany. Net migration (127 000) was positive. The figure for foreigners was positive (154 000); the figure for Germans was negative (-26 000).

Only in 2008 (-56 000) and 2009 (-13 000), just when the worldwide financial and economic crisis started, was net migration negative. The highest positive balances were recorded in the early 1990s, in 1991 (603 000) and 1992 (782 000). The main reasons for this were the fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to the immigration of ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, which sparked streams of refugees. It is my assessment that the impacts of the recent financial and economic crisis on migration to Germany have been relatively small. There was, of course, a crisis in Germany; but, if you compare it with other economies in Europe, you can say that it lasted for only a short time. Although economic growth decreased, the employment rate remained nearly stable because of a special package of measures.

In this context, I have to mention especially what has been called “short-time-work” money. Instead of dismissing workers, they were paid lower wages for less work. The difference with the former full wage was paid by the government’s Federal Office of Labor. So, workers still had enough money to cover living costs. In macroeconomic terms, this means that the internal demand for goods and services did not drop. At the end of the economic crisis, companies did not have to look for new skilled workers and employees; they could immediately go back to full production and thus achieved a competitive advantage.

In some of the other European economies, circumstances were quite different. The impact of the recent economic crisis on migration was more serious. The UK has lost parts of its industrial structure over the last 25 years. London became one of the most important financial markets worldwide, but is very sensitive to crises. Spain has a real estate crisis and 50-percent unemployment among young people. Italy, Portugal, Ireland, and especially Greece took on large debts.

Chart 1

Immigration and Emigration (Most Frequent Countries of Origin and Destination, 2010)

Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) (2012), 24.

Where Did the Immigrants To Germany Come From in 2010?

Half of the migrants to Germany (400 000) came from other European countries, mainly from Poland (126 000); Romania (75 000); Bulgaria (39 000); Turkey (30 000), previously the main sending country; Hungary (30 000); the United States (30 000); Italy (27 000), the first country after World War II to sign a migration agreement with Germany (1955) to ensure a flow of workers and always an important sending country; Spain (22 000); and France (20 000).

The pie charts for immigrants and emigrants show that the numbers for immigration and emigration are similar for certain countries, for example Poland and Italy. Among the total figures of immigrants, 15.8 percent were Poles; among the emigrants 15.4 percent. But relatively more Romanians and Bulgarians immigrated than emigrated. For Turks, the opposite was the case.

Chart 2

Immigration and Emigration (Most Frequent Countries of Origin, 2010)

Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) (2012), 21.

Chart 3

Immigration and Emigration (Most Frequent Destination Countries, 2010)

Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) (2012).

Mexican Immigrants and Emigrants in Germany

Since this academic forum is taking place in Mexico City, I will present some numbers concerning Mexican immigrants and emigrants in Germany; these numbers were relatively low.

In 2010, 3 670 Mexicans immigrated to Germany and 3 019 emigrated from Germany. The positive net migration was 651. Within the last 20 years, the annual numbers of immigrants increased —though the volume is very low— from 1 143 in 1991 to 2 442 in 2001, and, as I already mentioned, to 3 670 in 2010.

Germany’s Federal Office of Migration and Refugees provided me with some (only partly published) detailed figures on Mexican migrants in Germany.

At the end of 2011, 10 543 Mexicans lived in Germany, among them 1 749 students. Among the 3 670 Mexicans who immigrated to Germany in 2010 were 970 first-year university students, 419 participants in language courses, 95 participants in occupational training, 328 workers (two-thirds of them skilled), 136 persons who were part of the international personnel exchange, and 10 highly qualified experts. In 2010, 280 bi-national marriages, 313 naturalizations, and 269 births of Mexicans were registered, and 604 Mexicans were granted visas for family reunification.

Chart 4

Worldwide Immigration to and Emigration from Germany (2010)

Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) (2012), 20.

In 2010, 585 000 persons from other EU-member countries immigrated to Germany, 110 000 from Asian countries, 65 000 from the Americas and Australia, and only 31 000 from Africa, although it is geographically very close to Europe. The total number of immigrants in 2010 was nearly 800 000. About 493 000 emigrants returned to other European countries, 82 000 to Asian countries (30 000 less than those who immigrated from Asia to Germany); 66 000 emigrated to the Americas and Australia, bringing their net balance close to zero; and 22 000 emigrated to Africa, making its positive balance only 9 000.

Immigration to Different European Countries

The bar chart of migration in different European countries in 2009 shows that Germany, the UK, Spain, and Italy received the highest number of immigrants in Europe. Positive net migration was very high in the UK, Spain, and especially in Italy (443 000 immigrants and only 80 000 emigrants). Spain and Italy changed from being sending to receiving countries.

Chart 5

Immigration and Emigration to and from Selected EU Countries, Plus Switzerland and Norway (2009)

Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) (2012), 142.

The next chart demonstrates the accumulated immigration and emigration between 2000 and 2009 for some European countries. Here again, you can see that Spain and Italy in particular became receiving countries for migrants. In this period, 6.4 million people immigrated to Spain and only 1.2 million emigrated; 4.8 million immigrated to Italy and only 600 000 emigrated from there.

Chart 6

Accumulated Immigration and Emigration to and from Selected EU Countries, Plus Switzerland and Norway (2000-2009)

Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) (2012), 145.

Why Immigrate to Germany?

The biggest group is made up of seasonal workers, mainly from Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, who work in agriculture a few months a year (3 to 6 months) and then return to their home countries (294 000 seasonal workers came and went in 2010). The second biggest group is workers and employees and their families from other European countries (107 000). Sixty-six thousand immigrants were first-year undergraduates, and forty-one thousand, refugees and asylum seekers. (This last figure is quite low in contrast with the early 1990s, when it was quite high: in 1992, 438 000. The main reason for this high figure was the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia.). Forty thousand people immigrated for family reunification, a number that is decreasing. Foreign workers and employees numbered 28 000; contract workers (foreign workers in foreign companies, who are performing commissioned work in Germany), 18 000. Ethnic Germans (2 350) from the former Soviet Union and some other Eastern European countries whose ancestors had once emigrated to Eastern Europe and Russia, continue to immigrate to Germany. These figures are quite low today. In the beginning of the 1990s, every year more than 200 000 ethnic Germans immigrated to Germany.

Another small group of 1 000 Jewish migrants emigrated from Russia, where they were facing anti-Semitism. Finally, only 2 347 IT experts immigrated to Germany. In terms of labor market demand, this figure is far too small, demonstrating that Germany is not attractive enough for them. IT experts, for example from India, prefer English-speaking countries. There are other internal reasons that restrict the immigration of highly qualified migrants: lack of a welcoming culture and structure, restricted permission to remain, restricted work permits for husbands/wives, and finally various obstacles for young migrants and their families.

Migration, a Must

The subject of my presentation was immigration to and emigration from Germany in the last few years. The underlying question was the impact of the recent economic crisis on international migration. As I mentioned above, it had no serious impacts on migration to Germany. This has to be explained by the short duration of the crisis in the country and the good use of special measures. Although Germany was successful in managing the last economic crisis, future challenges involving migration are rather large: by 2030 there will be a shortage of six million skilled workers and employees. The population will decrease from 82 million to 77 million by 2030, and to 65 million by 2060. More serious than the shrinking population will be an even more serious change of the age distribution. Neither Germany nor the EU has developed a modern, comprehensive migration policy until now. The mentality of a closed, homogeneous society and the idea that the country is a fortress, especially against Africa, is not only widespread in Germany. There is a demand for skilled workers: Germany needs, for example, engineers, medical doctors, and health care personnel. I mention this to illustrate that political decisions in the field of migration depend not only on purely economic considerations, but on traditions, mentalities, irrational imaginary scenarios, and, last but not least, the fear of strangers.

Chart 7

Different Groups of Immigrants (1991-2010)

Source: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Federal Office for Migration and Refugees) (2012), 42.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Stefan Ruehl of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Nuremberg, who provided me with data, and Petra Metzger, Cologne Round Table of Integration, who helped me to change the German version of the charts and diagrams into English.

Bibliography

Bundesamtes für Migration und Flüchtlinge

(Federal Office for Migration and Refugees)

2012 “Migrationsberich 2010,” Bundesamtes für Migration und Flüchtlinge (Migration Report 2010, Nuremberg: Federal Office for Migration and Refugees), http://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Publikationen/Migrationsberichte/migrationsbericht-2010.html.

[1] * Former head of the staff of the German Federal Government’s Commissioner on Migration, Refugees, and Integration, nc-geiszbe@netcologne.de.

IMMIGRANT EMPLOYMENT AND MANAGING LABOR MIGRATION IN FINLAND

Paula Kuusipalo*[1]

In this article, I will briefly describe the history of Finland as a country of migration and its current position vis-à-vis international mobility. With its fairly small, aging population of 5.4 million inhabitants, Finland is already facing the need for a mobile work force. Several government actions support recruiting as well as development programs for efficiently integrating newcomers, but many challenges continue to exist for meeting the needs of a multicultural population and coherently managing immigration.

Finland, a Few Facts about the Development Of the Nation-state

Finland is situated in Northern Europe between Scandinavia and Russia. From the thirteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth, Finland was an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Sweden (from about 1200 until 1809) and the Russian Empire (1809-1917). During these periods, Finland experienced the influence of foreign languages, rule, and religion. Despite the extensive period under the rule of other countries, it has preserved its own cultural history and identity, distinctly represented through the Finnish language, which is related neither to Scandinavian nor Slavic languages; its origin is in the Uralic language family, of which the three most spoken languages are Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian. Development of the nation-state accelerated when Finland gained its independence during the 1917 Russian Revolution. Following independence, a cruel and intense civil war took place in 1918.

During World War II, Finland fought against the Soviet Union and strived successfully to maintain independence and sovereignty. In the end, even though Finnish losses were severe both in territory and manpower, the mere act of defending the nation-state has been considered one of the factors that united the opposing fronts of the civil war into one Finnish nation. The years after wwii brought rapid industrialization and urbanization. Development of the metal industry and high technology were boosted by the heavy reparations that Finland paid to the Soviets. Today Finland is one of the Nordic advanced welfare states and member of the European Union since 1995 as well as a member of the eurozone. With the current population of 5.4 million, and a gdp of €35 559 per capita, Finland is among the wealthiest in Europe (Finnish Statistics n.d.).

Changes in Migration Flows

Finland has only recently changed from a country of emigration to an immigrant-receiving one with today’s yearly net immigration of 15 000 people. This development is simplified into three periods in this article following a study by Korkiasaari and Söderling (2003). The first period of emigration was the journey of the landless population mainly to the United States and Canada and to lesser extent to other parts of the world after the famine of 1860 and until the war years (1944). The second period is the emigration from 1945 to 1999, after wwii, especially to Sweden and Central Europe. The third period began in the early 1980s, when Finland first started attracting Finnish returnees and gradually, as a result of economic growth and the need for workers, more and more work-related immigration. Finland’s humanitarian immigration goes back to the signing of the unhcr Refugee Convention in 1968 and receiving its first group of refugees in 1985. Since 2001, the quota of refugees accepted by Finland has been 750 per year (Finnish Immigration Service n.d.).

Table 1

Emigration from Finland (1860-1999)

Source: Korkiasaari and Söderling 2003, 3.

Immigration in Finland

After the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991 and the following crisis in the Balkans, the Ingrian Finns from the former Soviet Union, refugees from the former Yugoslavia, and the first asylum seekers of Somali origin were among the first groups to immigrate to Finland. The Finnish authorities were taken by surprise by this new situation and had to improvise activities, trying their best to adapt the service system to the needs of the refugees and to help the newcomers settle in the country. For the Somalis, integration into the Finnish labor market has taken a relatively long time. They were the first group of asylum seekers to come to Finland, a visible minority that entered the country after a period of very little immigration except for Finnish returnees. At that time, there was no established resettlement program or any Somali community to help the newcomers (Linnanmaki-Koskela 2010, 77).

Since the 1990s, immigration to Finland has steadily grown as the economy has continued to develop positively. Today Finland has a resettlement program for a yearly quota of 750 unhcr refugees, plus a growing number of work-related migrants, international students, and family-related immigrants, with a net immigration of approximately 15 000 persons a year. The number of asylum seekers is linked to international crises, but has stayed at a relatively low level compared, for example, to Sweden. In all, 1 271 of the persons seeking asylum were granted permission to stay in Finland in 2011. The total 3 086 asylum-seekers in Finland in 2011 compared to Sweden’s 29 648 says something about the different policies in the neighboring countries, suggesting that Finnish policy has concentrated more on control and security issues (Salmio 2000).

The current public discussion on immigration issues in Finland is guided, on the one hand, by the concern with a declining population and future labor force needs, and, on the other hand, by the fairly recently voiced populist opinions against foreign influence and some even with racist overtones. The number of immigrants is still expected to grow and to continue at the yearly level of 15 000 net immigration. A report by the Finnish National Board of Education anticipating the long-term demand for labor and educational needs states that the declining supply of labor in Finland will pose significant socio-political challenges. Improving immigrants’ standing in the labor market is necessary in order for the economy and employment to develop positively (Hanhijoki et al. 2012, 62).

Immigrant Employment

The years from 1989 to 1993 were a period when Finland opened up economically, politically, and culturally. The strong links with the Soviet economy and its collapse drove the Finnish economy into a deep recession and spawned massive unemployment. At the same time immigration to Finland started to increase and these unfavorable conditions delayed immigrants’ integration and employment. However, recent research in the Helsinki area shows that over time, even the immigrants with a refugee background have achieved a strong foothold in the labor market (Linnanmaki-Koskela 2010, 79). The study shows that getting settled and learning the language and new skills to find your place in the community is a process that takes time. One factor separating immigrant groups is how long the integration process takes. As a conclusion, immigrants’ integration and employment should not be observed only in cohorts, but over several years, a longer period of time

Figure 1

Immigration, Emigration, and Net Immigration (1971-2011)

Source: Statistics Finland.

The government in Finland has acknowledged and taken seriously the future need for workers given the aging native population. A government program sets overall employment policy goals as well as a framework policy for integration. The revised Integration Act and the National Integration program are based on the assumption that integration is a mutual, two-way development of the society and newcomers. The act applies to all legal immigrants regardless of the grounds for their residence permit. During the initial integration period of a maximum of three years, a variety of support actions are available starting with an information package about Finnish society (www.lifeinfinland.fi). Measures include recommendations for community activities, social services, and the labor market, as well as managing the integration of international students and refugee resettlement. According to the Integration Act, integration training for adult migrants must be provided in compliance with the National Core Curriculum for Integration Training for Adult Migrants adopted by the Finnish National Board of Education. A National Policy Framework for recruiting workers internationally and the employment of immigrants sets the ground rules for actors in the recruiting business.

Managing Labor Migration

Managing labor market needs is no simple task. Varying needs and the local environment in different parts of the country call for local solutions. The Finnish language can be an obstacle when individuals of the mobile international work force are making decisions about choosing their destination country. Even if recruited by an international employer, learning the local language is still considered key to overall integration into Finnish society. The Helsinki metropolitan area is clearly benefitting from mobility, with over 50 percent of the total number of immigrants settling there; it has already been successful in adapting public services to meet the needs of the international work force. The need for labor in the countryside is also becoming obvious, but attracting workers and managing the practicalities can be challenging.

Even after 30 years of immigration, regions still exist in Finland where immigration is not usual and only a few foreign-born inhabitants live. In some rural areas, community service-providers or employers are not familiar with mobility issues. For example, the procedure for applying for residence permits and managing an integration program are not equally well executed as in growth centers. Even some suspicion and mistrust of foreign credentials may exist among employers, causing reluctance to hire foreigners. Education acquired in Finland can be seen as proof of trust in the system and taking on Finnish values. Linnanmaki-Koskela’s study shows that after 14 to 17 years from the year of immigration, 19 percent of all the persons in the group studied had acquired a Finnish diploma, which can be understood as a sign of internalizing the Finnish value of seeing education as an important asset (Linnanmaki-Koskela 2010, 75). There are also good examples of developing smooth initial integration measures even for smaller numbers of immigrants outside growth centers (for example, see the City of Iisalmi Guide for Immigrants, n.d.).

Together with high unemployment rates, certain industries suffer from a constant labor shortage. For example, farmers with livestock report difficulties in recruiting, and this speaks to a serious labor shortage in rural areas. In farming, interest seems to be growing in recruiting a more motivated, well-educated foreign work force. In many cases in remote rural settings, it has already become routine to recruit from abroad, especially from the neighboring Estonia and Russia, as well as from the Ukraine.

Figure 2

Unemployment Rate (2001-2010) (percent)

Source: Statistics Finland.

Public opinion has been somewhat negatively impacted, in part due to the high unemployment rate of newly arrived immigrants. Nevertheless, generally speaking, over the past 30 years of immigration, interaction has increased confidence among members of the community, regardless of the populist political movement.

To attract more labor, Finland can still benefit from the good reputation and high quality of its educational system. It is still a welfare state where equality and safety are important values.

As the research of Linnanmaki-Koskela states, for policymakers and the public alike, it is important to deliver a clear message of the benefits of immigration’s increasing economic solidity over the long term, but that it brings no quick profits.

The current government is committed to an active and anticipatory immigration policy. It recently signed a resolution on the Strategy of the Future of Immigration in Finland 2020, which takes a position on questions of equality, people’s welfare, and economic competitiveness. To enhance immigrants’ chances of improving their standing in the labor market and to achieve all other strategic objectives included in the resolution, the government will prepare a separate action plan to set up goals and measures, as well as to determine the parties responsible and scheduling.

The strategy aims at a more workable and pro-active immigration policy in a situation of emerging global mobility, an aging population, and increasing diversity. To be able to resolve the issue of competitiveness and the balance of resources, immigration issues should become more visible in national policy-making, and Finland should formulate coherent, active policies at the EU level and in other international forums. The strategy’s success depends on the commitment of a wide range of actors across society and among Finnish nationals (Siäasiainministeriö 2013, 25).[2]

Bibliography

City of Iisalmi

n.d. http://www.iisalmi.fi/loader.aspx?id=7d2fac19-1dfb-47d1-86bc-b5934 37e151a.

Finnish Immigration Service (Maahanmuuttovirasto)

n.d. “Quota refugees,” The Finnish Immigration Service, http://www.migri.fi/asylum_in_finland/quota_refugees

Hanhijoki, Ilpo, Jukka Katajisto, Matti Kimari, and Hannele Savioja

2012 Education, Training and Demand for Labour in Finland by 2025, Finnish National Board of Education, http://www.oph.fi/english/publications/2012/education_training_and_demand_for_labour_in_finland_by_2025, accessed July 4, 2013.

Korkiasaari, Jouni, and Ismo Söderling

2003 Finnish Emigration and Immigration after World War II, Siirtolaisuusinstituutti, Turku, Finland, http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/articles/011 _Korkiasaari_Soderling.pdf, accessed June 8, 2012.

Linnanmaki-Koskela, Suvi

2010 “Maahanmuuttajien työmarkkinaintegraatio” [Conclusions. Stronger immigrant foothold on the Finnish Labour Market], http://www.hel2.fi/Tietokeskus/julkaisut/pdf/10_09_28_Tutkimus_2_Linnanmaki_Koskela .pdf, accessed June 8, 2012, 74-79.

Ministry of the Interior

n.d. “Future of Migration 2020 Strategy,” http://www.intermin.fi/en/develop ment_projects/future_of_migration_2020.

National Board of Education

2012 “Core Curriculum for Integration Training for Adult Migrants,” Helsinki, Finland, http://www.oph.fi/english/sources_of_information/core_curricula _and_qualification_requirements/education_for_immigrants, accessed July 4, 2013.

Salmio, Tiina

2000 Kylman sodan loppuminen ja EU-jasenyys muuttivat Suomen maahanmuuttopolitiikkaa, Siirtolaisuusinstituutti. Turku, Finland, http://www.migra tioninstitute.fi/articles/039_Salmio.pdf, accessed June 19, 2012.

Siäasiainministeriö

2013 Valtioneuvoston periaatepäätös Maahanmuuton tulevaisuus 2020-strategiasta, Siäasiainministeriö, http://www.intermin.fi/download/44618_Maahanmuuton _tulevaisuus_2020_.pdf, accessed July 4, 2013.

Statistics Finland

n.d. http://www.stat.fi/index_en.html.

Links to Information about Migration in Finland

The National Framework for Integration: www.tem.fi/.webloc

Information for Newcomers: http://www.lifeinfinland.fi

Finnish Migration Service: www.migri.fi/frontpage.webloc

[1] * Adviser at Immigrat, Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment, paula.kuusipalo@ely-keskus.fi.

[2] For a brief discussion in English of this strategy, see Ministry of the Interior (n.d.).

THE ECONOMIC CRISIS AND OVERSEAS FILIPINOS’ REMITTANCES: LEARNING TO BUILD A FUTURE BACK HOME

Imelda Nicolas*[1]

Introduction

The Philippines has emerged as one of the world’s major migrant-sending countries, together with Mexico, China, and India. Our latest data from the Commission on Filipinos Overseas stock estimates show that as of December 2010, 9.45 million Filipinos are living overseas worldwide, 47 percent of whom (4.42 million) are permanent residents, 45 percent (4.32 million) are temporary migrants, commonly known as overseas Filipino workers (ofws), and 7 percent (705 000) are irregular. They are spread out in more than 210 countries and territories (cfo 2010).

Table 1

Stock Estimate of Overseas Filipinos (as of December 2010)

Source: cfo (2010).

The data likewise demonstrate that the Philippines has gone beyond labor migration. Many Filipinos leave the country for a wide variety of reasons ranging from the intent to marry to family reunification, from educational to professional advancement, from business to investment opportunities.

Remittances and the Philippine Economy

According to the World Bank’s Migration and Development Factbook (2011), the Philippines now ranks fourth globally in terms of remittances, with the top three remittance-receiving countries identified as India, China, and Mexico.

From the same World Bank report, we note that remittances constitute 10.7 percent of the Philippines’ 2010 gross domestic product (gdp), the highest of any country in Southeast Asia and the twenty-first highest in the world.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (bsp, or Philippine Central Bank) reported that remittances in 2011 grew 7.2 percent year-on-year to US$20.11 billion, slightly more than the official central bank forecast of 7 percent for the whole year (n.d.a).

Remittances clearly outrank investment flows (fdi) and official development assistance (oda). In 2009, the country was able to attract less than US$1.9 billion in foreign direct investments, while in 2007, the Philippines received around US$634 million in oda (bsp n.d.b).

Table 2

Top 10 Countries Remittances Are Sent From (as of December 2010, in billions of U.S. dollars)

Source: bsp (n.d.a).

In 2010, the biggest source of remittance transfers to the Philippines is the Americas, with 53 percent (U.S. and Canada); Europe provides 17 percent (United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Norway); the Middle East, 16 percent (Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates); and Asia, 13 percent (Japan and Singapore). Based on the growth rate of overseas Filipinos’ remittances for the past seven years, the Central Bank has described them as “resilient, providing [a] cushion against external shocks” (Guerrero 2012, slide 11).

Chart 1

Volume of Remittances

Source: bsp (n.d.a).

This sustained remittance growth rate is attributed to the following factors: diversity of overseas Filipinos’ skills and expertise in more than 200 countries all over the world, new and broader markets for labor migration, expansion of bank and non-bank services tailor-fit for overseas Filipinos, and the various efforts by the government and civil society organizations to mitigate the effects of the global economic crisis. It has also been reported that the increase in the number of skilled Filipinos deployed usually corresponds to higher remuneration and employment benefits. Some of them even acquire two or three jobs to, at the very least, sustain the usual amount they remit to their families. It is no wonder that many of us feel that our overseas Filipinos are our country’s unsung heroes and heroines.

A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

A crisis, in spite of its bad aspects, is an opportunity to learn important lessons, but that opportunity is wasted if the lessons are missed.

For almost four decades as a sending country, the Philippines has weathered various financial crises, both domestic and international. In surviving them, the country has learned quite a few lessons, especially in relation to remittances:

Improving the remittance environment encourages their continued flow;

Promoting financial education among overseas Filipinos and their families mobilizes remittances toward productive activities and allows our overseas Filipinos to look forward to a financially secure future back home or in their host country;

Return and reintegration initiatives for overseas Filipinos should be multi-sectoral in approach and given more attention by the Philippine government;

Collective remittance models and harnessing the economic development potentials of migration require a business and investment perspective; and,

Diversification of skills, professions, and destination countries translate to resilience in remittance levels.

Improving the Remittance Environment

The combined effect of mediumto long-term loans, a solid investment portfolio, and the remittances of overseas Filipinos minimized the impact of the 1997 Asian crisis on the Philippines (Tenorio, cited in Opiniano 2002).

Learning from this experience, the Philippine Central Bank (bsp) actively sought to improve the remittance environment in three ways: 1) by enhancing transparency and competition to lower remittance charges, 2) by expanding and diversifying channels of remittances, and 3) by exploring low-cost options for fund transfers.

The Central Bank launched an overseas Filipinos portal on its Web site, linking with all the banks’ Web pages on remittance services, fees, and rates. It also required that banks post on their premises and Web sites their remittance charges and other relevant information. This provides overseas Filipinos and their beneficiaries with competitive data, leading to more informed decisions on their choices of channels for transfers.

Furthermore, it improved remittance provider services by facilitating the interconnection of major atm networks. It authorized qualified rural banks and cooperative banks to operate a foreign currency deposit unit (fcdu), which gives overseas Filipinos the option of maintaining foreign currency deposits instead of immediately changing them to pesos. It also standardized the banks’ identification requirements and allowed the use of foreign-issued ids.

Committed to use new technology for low cost options, the bsp likewise set up a local clearinghouse, PhilPaSS, to eliminate the use of couriers in delivering remittances. This initiative reduced charges by as much as 90 to 96 percent and lowered the back-end processing fees to 50 pesos per transaction. From 2004 on, the remittance cost in the Philippines has gone down to 12 percent on average. There is still a way to go to reach the universally desired target of 5 percent. In addition, according to the bsp, 95 percent of all remittances now go through formal channels and only 5 percent through the informal ones (Tetangco 2011).

Very recently, our agency, the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (cfo), partnered with the bsp to establish a multi-stakeholder Remittance for Development Council (redc), an advisory and policy-recommending body, and a venue for regular dialogues and feedback on issues regarding remittances, especially on measures to lower costs; easier, greater, and faster access to remittance channels; and innovative remittance conduits.

Promoting Financial Education

Perhaps the greatest lesson that any overseas Filipino has to learn is that it is not how long they have worked or lived abroad or how high their salaries are that result in a seamless and successful retirement, but how they are able to do fiscal goal-setting and financial planning as a family, before and during their migration phase.

This is why the government and various non-governmental organizations continue to undertake financial literacy campaigns that aim to promote a culture of savings among overseas Filipinos and their families. Atikha, a civil society organization working with and for migrants, has notably developed modules that cover not only money issues, but link them with social and family concerns that drain their resources.

Through the Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (polo), the Philippine embassies and consulates actively conduct financial literacy classes for overseas Filipino workers. International road-shows in countries where there are large numbers of overseas Filipinos have been carried out by various government agencies and civil society organizations.

Because most financial literacy programs are geared toward overseas Filipino workers and their families, the cfo has taken the initiative to develop one for its major clientele, the permanent residents of other countries and those migrating permanently. We are now integrating financial literacy modules in our pre-departure orientation sessions and in our community education programs.

Furthermore, various migration-related organizations in the Philippines have actively worked for the incorporation of lessons in money, savings, and investments in the public school curricula, targeting in particular the children of overseas Filipinos.

Return and Reintegration

In 2008, the large-scale labor displacements in countries such as Taiwan, Korea, and the United Arab Emirates put the government to task. Because of this, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (owwa) established a One-Stop-Help-Desk at our international airport to provide information on services that displaced overseas Filipino workers can avail themselves of. The Department of Labor and Employment also organized quick response teams in its regional offices to look after displaced workers’ needs (Asis 2006).

Soon thereafter, the Filipino Expatriate Livelihood Support Fund (felsf) was created. The fund was designed for overseas Filipino workers displaced by the crisis to be able to take out loans of up to 50 000 pesos with easy terms if they wish to go into business. Applicants had to attend a three-day training program for this purpose.

This became the precursor for Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino’s 2-billion-peso reintegration fund for overseas Filipino workers and their families, triggered last year by the various man-made and natural upheavals in the Middle East and Japan.

These government initiatives required a multi-stakeholder approach as the government assumed varied roles: that of a disaster management expert, a welfare provider, a placement and information officer, and a business consultant and trainer, among others. This underscored the need for government to involve as many stakeholders as possible when it comes to presenting a comprehensive and realistic set of options for reintegration.

Collective Remittance Models For Local Development

The cfo, in partnership with the United Nations Development Program (undp) and the Western Union Foundation, has been working with civil society organizations and the local government leaders of the province of Ilocos Norte and the city of Taguig on a project called “Of-red,” or Overseas Filipinos Remittances for Development. It seeks to increase the effectiveness of collective remittance programs for local development. The four collective remittance models identified by the project are migrant savings and investment schemes, cooperatives, rural banks, and microfinance institutions.

Using the cooperative model, the Philippine-based ngo Atikha developed an investment scheme with one of the largest agriculture-based cooperatives in the country. It introduced the investment format as part of its financial literacy training among overseas Filipinos in Italy, which they organized together with Philippine labor agencies (the owwa and the National Reintegration Centre for Overseas Filipino Workers [ncro] ) and the Italy-based Filipino Women’s Council.

On the other hand, the Migrant Savings and Alternative Investments model was pioneered by Unlad Kabayan, another Philippine-based ngo that espouses migrant entrepreneurship. It organizes migrant workers into savings and investment groups, usually according to the region in the Philippines they come from or by factory. The ngo pools the migrants’ savings while the migrants themselves choose any of the following: invest the funds in microfinance/microcredit institutions, in successful social enterprises that the ngo has helped set up in the Philippines, or start their own businesses (Franco 2009, García, Jr. 2011, and ukmsf n.d.).

Meanwhile, Colayco Foundation has managed to raise millions from contributions from its members in the cooperative, mostly Hong Kong-based household service workers. Their pooled resources are invested in trust funds and mutual funds, leveraging them for higher returns.

On a parallel track, tigra, or the Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action, a U.S.and Mexico-based ngo, forges strategic alliances among remitters, their families and communities, and remittance service providers. By using the consumer power of senders and their beneficiaries, tigra has been able to get commitment from companies to reinvest anywhere from US$1 to US$2.25 per transaction for community-based enterprises.

The lesson that the overseas Filipino community has learned is simple: there is power in numbers, and, more importantly, development and reintegration are integral parts of the migration continuum. And at all times, there is a need to professionalize the management of collective remittance funds to ensure that institutional arrangements are in place, returns on investments are consistent and monitored regularly, and funds are strategically directed toward local development and more productive activities.

Diversification of Migrant Stock and Destination Lends Resilience to Remittance Levels

Remittances to the Philippines grew steadily by over 7 percent in 2011 largely because demand for overseas Filipino workers has remained remarkably stable. In fact, data show that overseas Filipino worker deployments increased by nearly 20 percent between 2008 and 2010 despite the still-raging global financial crisis. The deployment of seafarers, who account for one quarter of overall overseas workers outflow, increased by 33 percent from 2008 to 2010 (poea 2010).

In addition, a growing number of countries allow for permanent residency on the basis of the skilled-work category, including Canada, Australia, and the U.S., while in Europe, countries such as Italy, Spain, Austria, and the UK espouse family reunification among migrants. This shows the importance of destination-country policy changes for the future sustainability of remittance flows to the Philippines. In many of these countries, Filipinos who have acquired residency and contributed social security payments, have now become eligible for workers benefits and family tax credits.

Conclusion

Migration is a complicated and complex issue and concern. It is a development challenge, but one that poses a wide spectrum of opportunities for learning and growth. In his 16-point social contract with the Filipino people and his commitment to transformational national leadership, President Aquino specifically expressed it thus:

From a government that treats its people as an export commodity and a means to earn foreign exchange, disregarding the social cost to Filipino families . . . to a government that creates jobs at home, so that working abroad will be a choice rather than a necessity, and when its citizens do choose to become Overseas Filipino Workers, their welfare and protection will be the government’s priority. (Aquino 2010)

In ending this topic on remittances, let me paraphrase Robert Fulghum (2004), because everything that we needed to know, we learned from understanding migration and the economic crises that come our way.

And this is what we learned:

Share everything. Play fair. Because improving the remittance environment encourages continued flow of remittances and so it is a win-win for everyone.

Be aware of wonder. . . . Learn some and think some. . . . Financial literacy is a must for all migrants and their families if they are to look forward to a secure future whether in their host or home country.

Remember that first book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: “Look.” For when we look hard enough, there are many opportunities to return and reintegrate.

When you go out into the world, watch the traffic, hold hands, and stick together. That is the key for collective remittances for development, which translate to savings, business, and investment, beneficial for the migrants themselves, their families, their communities, and the country.

And finally: Live a balanced life, because, in the end, diversification in migrant skills, professions, profiles, and destination countries leads to resilience in remittance levels.

That is the wisdom learned from the Philippines’ decades-long migration and global crisis experience. This is rooted in Filipinos’ sense of family, love of country, and resilience that weather economic downturns and unexpected crises.

Bibliography

Aquino, Benigno

2010 “Social Contract with the Filipino People,” http://www.gov.ph/about/gov/exec/bsaiii/platform-of-government/.

Asis, Maruja M. B.

2006 How International Migration Can Support Development: A Challenge for the Philippines. Manila: Scalabrini Migration Center.

bsp (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas)

n.d.a “Overseas Filipinos Remittances,” http://www.bsp.gov.ph/statistics/keystat/ofw.htm, accessed March 13, 2012.

n.d.b “Net Foreign Investments,” http://www.bsp.gov.ph/publications/tables/ 2011_10/news-10122011a1.htm, accessed March 15, 2012.

cfo (Commission on Filipinos Overseas)

2010 “Stock Estimate of Overseas Filipinos,” http://cfo.gov.ph/pdf/statistics/Stock%202010.pdf, accessed on 13 March 2012.

Fulghum, Robert L.

2004 All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. New York: Ballantine Books.

García, Jr., Rodrigo

2011 Focus group discussion with ercof, Unlad Kabayan, and Miriam College, March 1, Manila.

Guerrero, Rosabel

2012 “The Overseas Filipinos’ Remittance Environment,” slideshow presentation at second meeting of Remittance for Development Council, January 13.

Opiniano, Jeremaiah M.

2002 Our Future beside the Exodus: Migration and Development Issues in the Philippines. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/philippinen/50083.pdf.

Overseas Filipinos Remittances for Development (OF-Red)

n.d. www.unladkabayan.org.

poea (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration)

2010 “Compendium of ofw Statistics,” http://www.poea.gov.ph/stats/2010_Stats .pdf, accessed March 16, 2012.

Tetangco, Jr., Amando M.

2011 “The Philippine Initiative: Harnessing the Development Potential of Migrants’ Remittances.” Speech at the Policy Forum on Overseas Filipinos-Diaspora Remittance for Development (OF-RED), May 3, Pasig City, Philippines, http://www.bsp.gov.ph/publications/speeches.asp?id=401.

ukmsf (Unlad Kabayan Migrant Services Foundation)

n.d. www.unladkabayan.org.

World Bank

2011 Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

[1] * Cabinet-rank secretary of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (cfo), Office of the President of the Philippines, www.cfo.gov.ph/imelda.nicolas@cfo.gov.ph.

EUROPE’S BACKLASH AGAINST MULTICULTURALISM[1]

Jan Rath*

In summer 2010, the world championship for men’s national soccer teams was held in South Africa, the country that after many years of painful struggle prevailed over Apartheid. Spain won the tournament, but the revelation was Germany. Although Germany’s is historically one of the most successful national teams, the calculating, unimaginative way the team used to play was not always much appreciated. Throughout the 2010 tournament, however, Germany impressed fans by playing an attractive, aggressive soccer game. After the rousing 4-1 victory over England, the Welt am Sonntag (Frommann 2010) exclaimed, “With courage and strength the German footballers were knocking on the gates of heaven. The happy ending for the midsummer fairy tale is getting closer.” The team, interestingly enough, represented the new, multicultural Germany. Five players were born outside the country (in Poland, Yugoslavia, and Brazil), one had dual German-Ghanaian nationality, and several others were second-generation immigrants of Nigerian, Spanish, Tunisian, and Turkish origin. Christian Seifert, ceo of the German Football League, was jubilant: “[Germany] is a multi-cultural society where people come, where people live, where people love to be, and the national team as you see it is very different from those of former days. In 1998, all those who played for Germany had German parents. Right now we have a lot of players with migrant backgrounds. . . . So, today’s German national team is proof of the success of the German national model” (Goal 2010).

Later that summer, German Bundeskanzler Angela Merkel made a public statement saying that the attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany had “utterly failed.” Her comments came amid an intense debate about immigration and multiculturalism or, to be more precise, the death of Multikulti. The polemic first heated up in August when a former Social Democratic senator and senior official at Germany’s central bank, Thilo Sarrazin, published a book with the provocative title Deutschland schabt sich ab (Germany Is Digging Its Own Grave) (2010). He stated that “no immigrant group other than Muslims is so strongly connected with claims on the welfare state and crime.” These immigrant groups would be unwilling and incapable of integrating into the mainstream, something that according to Sarrazin would be due to their gene pool. Many people were appalled to hear such statements 65 years after World War II and accused him of racism and anti-Semitism. But the senator has already sold more than one million copies of the book. Furthermore, various surveys showed that approximately one-third of the German population believed the country had been “overrun by foreigners.” Meanwhile, anti-immigrant political parties (initially Die Republikaner and later Die Freiheit) had been carving out a niche in the German electoral market, while mainstream parties, the Christian Democrats in particular, had become anxious about their electoral position. One really wonders how it is possible that the country that enthusiastically embraced multiculturalism during the World Cup condemned it so loudly less than three months later. So much for the midsummer fairy tale.

Germany is apparently confused about immigration and its resulting ethnic and religious diversity. Two years later, at the European championships, the German soccer team failed to qualify for the finals again. This time the popular German newspaper Bild (2012) struck a different tone, arguing that the players with immigrant backgrounds were to blame for this failure, as they refrained from singing the national anthem. But Germany is not the only country experiencing this: we are witnessing similar situations in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. Governments in these countries, which until recently in various ways and with differing levels of intensity welcomed immigrants and even invited them to settle and allowed or encouraged them to establish their own institutions, shifted gears to embark on restrictive immigration and tougher integration policies, placing increasing emphasis on native norms, values, and behavior and on disciplining the “Other.” The “new realism” that has informed this shift has been accompanied by fierce criticism of the “ethnic minorities industry,” i.e., the self-proclaimed leadership of immigrant ethnic and religious minorities, the native white advocates of multiculturalism, as well as their institutions. In so doing, the political leadership felt it ought to respond to the smoldering discontent among parts of the native white population and to the plethora of populist, anti-immigrant parties that had so successfully won the hearts of the discontented. In several cases, including Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands, these parties even managed to become part of or closely associated with the ruling government. Although bigots, racists, fascists, and neo-Nazis gravitate to these radical parties, it would be too simple to say that each and every supporter is a neo-Nazi in disguise.

What, then, is happening in Europe nowadays? Has Europe been taken hostage by a bunch of twisted political entrepreneurs who have lost their minds, forgotten the lessons of 1933-1945 and the holocaust, and who are trying to gain political influence by trampling on immigrant ethnic and religious minorities? Or is it that Europeans have been too naive with regard to accepting individuals and groups from countries that are —or are seen as— culturally distant from the imagined national centers? Or should the current political mood be explained as a reaction to the politics of obstinate, left-wing lunatics and prophets of boundless multiculturalism?

There are no easy answers. In practice, things are much more complicated than popular wisdom suggests, and a wider perspective is needed to fully comprehend the current developments. Let us briefly examine a number of aspects.

First of all, it remains to be seen that we are dealing with a uniquely European situation. The rise of populist political movements that capitalize on anti-immigrant, anti-multicultural, and anti-government sentiments, religious fundamentalism, and narrow-minded nationalism can also be observed elsewhere. Take the United States. The recent immigration enforcement legislation in Arizona, the rise of the Tea Party with their swipes at minorities, and some of the recent electoral campaigns only serve to demonstrate that Europe is not alone. Australia, a country once notorious for its White Australian policy in days of yore, shifted to multiculturalism in the 1970s, but had already abolished its unconditional embrace of multiculturalism by the 1990s. This coincided with the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. Mrs. Hanson was by no means a friend of immigration and diversity. She was quoted as saying, “I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians,” and, “Of course, I will be called racist but, if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country,” and she complained constantly about “reverse racism” and “political correctness” (The Australian 2010). One Nation never constituted a government, but her influence was unarguably huge. Since the 1990s, Australia has been advocating the idea of a “shared national identity’ (with a remarkably high appreciation of the Anglo-Celtic heritage). Canada has treasured the public acceptance of ethnic and religious difference and support of cultural pluralism as a core element of its identity since the early 1970s. But Canada, too, hit upon the limits of multiculturalism, and the call for what has euphemistically come to be known as “reasonable accommodation” resounds loudly in the public realm today. It is unarguably true that these “classical countries of immigration” are more inclined to accept immigration as a fact of life and are not shocked when newcomers constitute ethnic enclaves. In that sense, everything is relative. For cultural backlash is everywhere and certainly not confined to Europe.

Secondly, it also remains to be seen that we are witnessing a rise of concerns about immigration and cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity. As early as 1968, the British Conservative leader Enoch Powell made a rather controversial speech in which he warned against “rivers of blood” due to what he saw as the continued unchecked immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain and the “race-relations problems” subsequent to that. His speech with its open appeal to racial hatred was declared “evil” at the time, but it inspired Margaret Thatcher (who had become prime minister shortly afterwards) to use the gist of his argument for her immigration and race-relations policies. A noteworthy side-effect was that by adopting a strong position, Thatcher stole the National Front’s thunder, resulting in the demise of this racist party and a further rise of the Tory Party. In France, maverick politician Jean Marie Le Pen rose to prominence in the 1980s. He gained widespread popularity with his nationalist, anti-immigration platform. The very fact that he repeatedly denied the holocaust and put anti-Semitic slurs on Jewish politicians did not prevent numerous French voters from supporting him as candidate for the position of président de la république. Other politicians tried to take the wind out of Le Pen’s sails by reaching out to xenophobic voters. In 1989, President Mitterrand said, “Il y a un seuil de tolérance” (there is a threshold of tolerance), implying that immigrants were a nuisance indeed and that the proportion of immigrants present in a population had to be minimized. Jacques Chirac joined this lamentation by complaining about “du bruit et des odeurs” (the noises and the smells) generated by African immigrants. Many voters grasped the message only too well. In Austria, Jörg Haider was a successful regional politician before he joined the national government in 2000. He was notorious for his offensive statements about immigration and immigrants, Muslim immigrants in particular, whose attitude and behavior were in his eyes incompatible with “Western” ones. In other countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, similar political situations arose. Peculiarly enough, many observers have a rather short memory when it comes to these matters. In the Netherlands, the country that likes to cherish the self-image of tolerance and the live-and-let-live mentality, it is often claimed that problematizing immigration and multiculturalism was not PC until very recently. The government pursued a multicultural policy —so it is believed— but not one single individual dared make any critical comment. Apart from the fact that the Netherlands never pursued such a policy —at best it paid lip service to the maintenance of ethnic and religious difference—, the critics apparently failed to notice the intense media debates in the early 1980s, or the election of dozens of racist politicians to Parliament and local councils since the early 1980s. Perhaps they were beamed up to the Starship Enterprise during these spectacular events. What is relevant here is that concerns about immigration and diversity have been voiced for quite a long time. So, what else is new?

Thirdly, discussions about immigrant ethnic and religious minorities and their relations with the mainstream are often dogged by explicit or implicit references to Europe’s Judeo-Christian tradition and its incompatibility with that of immigrants. Immigrants from Muslim traditions in particular are supposedly incapable of embracing modern norms, values, and behavior, and have little or no understanding of democracy, gender equality, acceptance of homosexuality, and so forth. (This argument is never used in reference to highly-skilled and wealthy immigrants from Japan or visitors from the Vatican.) These references, however, are not unproblematic. To the extent that such a tradition exists, there is a lot to be said against it. It was in the name of Christianity that soldiers and tradesmen sailed the ocean in sunshine, wind, and rain to conquer the rest of the world. Trade wars, looting, slavery, and colonial exploitation were only a few of the blessings of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Judeo-Christian tradition, moreover, could not prevent two world wars, nor the holocaust, nor the troubles in Northern Ireland, nor the mass expulsion of Roma from France. References to the Judeo-Christian tradition, furthermore, fail to appreciate the fact that Europe is rapidly secularizing, or that people of other religions or cultures have historically been subjects of Europe’s nation-states. Islam is often regarded as an immigrant religion, as something entirely new, but this obscures the historical presence of indigenous Muslims in Eastern Europe or the presence of Muslims in (former) colonial areas. The United Kingdom, the French republic and the kingdom of the Netherlands ruled many millions of Muslims in the Middle East, Northern Africa, India and Pakistan, and Indonesia. But even if we imagined a Europe without Muslims —a purely theoretical exercise of course, just for the sake of argument—, we would find immense internal diversity. Those who refer to the Judeo-Christian tradition may pretend that Europe is a cultural unit existing within clear-cut boundaries, but the opposite is true. In fact, all references to this tradition mainly serve the construction of Europe as a coherent and cohesive unit.

Fourthly, discussions about the ethnic or religious Other always pertain to fixed imaginary categories. The category of Muslims, then, invariably encompasses men with long beards in white dresses, silenced women with head scarves or burkas, and agitated young men who make anti-Semitic statements about Jews and Israel and abuse homosexuals. All Muslim immigrants are supposedly ignorant people with insufficient proficiency in the host country’s language, people with unskilled jobs —if they are employed at all—, and people who live in inner-city working class areas or the banlieues, people who, in the words of the Somali anti-Muslim and anti-multiculturalism activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, never read the famous works of Voltaire, in short, folks who do not conform to mainstream norms, values, attitudes, who failed to notice the Enlightenment, who missed the boat to modernity, and who live parallel lives. Sure enough, those people do exist. But there are numerous other Muslim immigrants who do not conform to these inane stereotypes. In fact, the overwhelming majority of “Muslims” in Europe never visit a mosque and do not feel represented by the unworldly imams that journalists are so crazy about. Likewise, something like a cohesive “Muslim community,” to be sure, does not actually exist. Muslims in Europe, like all ordinary people, come in all shapes and sizes. They come from different countries, have different migration histories, different levels of education, different class positions, live in different neighborhoods, and have different political loyalties, life styles, and religious and ethnic identities and feelings of belonging. What’s more, these differences are utterly dynamic; they change continuously, partly under the influence of the specific context in which they live, and this leads to ever more variety. Talking about “the” Muslims or about “the” ethnic minorities, therefore, is increasingly out of sync with everyday reality.

Fifthly, something always seems to be overlooked in these kinds of discussions. There is a more fundamental but rather general discontentment in Europe about the role of the state, the welfare state in particular, and about the elites who have been ruling the country and created the situation that we are now in. For several decades, Europe has been pursuing a neo-liberal course. Competitiveness and economic growth were to be boosted by giving more space to the business sector and by organizing society as if it were a private enterprise. Welfare-state provisions were considered acceptable as long as they served these goals. Since the 1980s and 1990s, all European countries have deregulated the economy and dismantled the welfare state, leading to ever more precarious labor market conditions. Also, a plethora of services once offered by the state or by institutions operating under the aegis of the state have been privatized. So, health care, postal and telephone services, public utilities such as gas, water, and electricity, public transportation, etc., are now available on the private market. So far, so good. The pundits of neo-liberalism slap one another on the back, but numerous consumers —oh, excuse me— citizens fail to acknowledge the blessings of this system: the costs of health care have been soaring, while fewer services have been made available; the telephone market has become hopelessly non-transparent; public transportation has gone downhill; and so forth. More fundamentally, the overall quality of the public sector has seriously deteriorated both in terms of services offered to the public and in terms of quality of working conditions for civil servants. As for the latter, the introduction of output-driven quality-control systems has increased red tape with a rising number of “managers” in a position of control, and de-professionalization looms large. The mindless liberalization of the economy, the impudent pursuit of self-interest, and the perplexing lack of public responsibility and accountability eventually resulted in the current economic crisis . . . and Joe the Plummer is expected to pay the bill. People expect the state to take care of them, but many feel abandoned.

Those who find themselves —rightly or wrongly— on the wrong side of the tracks, are keen to point out the culprit. And there they are: immigrants and the elite. As for the latter, the economic elite have been too busy going for profit; the cultural elite have been on their own in lofty artistic spheres, splashing taxpayers’ money on their own hobbies; the scientific elite —the social sciences in particular— have lost touch with Joe’s reality; the political elite are bickering all the time, indulging in inanities instead of addressing “real” problems. This slanted representation of reality has been propelled by a media industry that is continuously on the lookout for a scoop and a scandal. At this moment, it is easy and rewarding to make a lot of fuss about minorities with little political clout. Moderate local politicians, part of the cursed political elite, are keen to show their credentials to Joe the Plummer. Some, like the deputy mayor of The Hague, Marnix Norder, talk about a “tsunami of immigrants,” referring to labor migrants from EU-member-state Poland, as a means of putting political pressure on the central government for more funding. But in so doing, they are reproducing unfounded suggestions of uncontrollability and irreparable damage. In this political climate, one can easily get the impression that a Turkish girl’s head scarf is a serious problem, while the fact that she dropped out of high school, is excluded from the labor market, and cannot develop her talents to the interest of herself or of society at large is seen as less relevant. For to the extent that there is a cultural backlash in Europe, it is about fear and the lack of social security of mainstream people; it is against the cultural, economic, and political elites who are regarded as responsible for this; and it is manifested by using politically weak minority groups as a convenient scapegoat.

Last, but not least, while there is a lot of fuss about a “cultural backlash,” a miracle is slowly and surely taking shape: ethnic and cultural diversity is becoming commonplace in Europe. In the Netherlands, for instance, while the government was considering banning headscarves in public spaces, the biggest supermarket chain, Albert Heijn, introduced headscarves for the thousands of Turkish, Moroccan, and Pakistani girls and women working as cashiers. They wear the headscarves —in the company color, of course: blue— when they sit behind the cash registers, and nobody has ever bothered about it. Also in the Netherlands, in cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the most popular local radio station, FunX, broadcasts what is called “an urban program,” i.e., a program that reaches out to all ethnic and religious minorities by playing different styles of music and talking about the things that matter for all youngsters, regardless of their ethnic or religious background: school, finding a job, politics, shopping, dating, and so forth. And again in the Netherlands, restaurants, fashion, home decorating, sports, and so forth are all thriving thanks to ethnic influences: ethnic food, clothing, and gadgets sell (Aytar and Rath 2012; Rath 2007). Despite complaints about immigration and diversity, and despite integrationist or assimilationist discourses, “multiculturalism by stealth” is de rigueur. This almost seems like a midsummer fairy tale.

Bibliography

The Australian

2010 “Shadow of Hanson’s Smile on PM’S Face,” July 9, http://www.theaustra lian.com.au/opinion/shadow-of-hansons-smile-on-pms-face/story-e6frg6zo -1225889560977, accessed March 3, 2014.

Aytar, Volkan, and Jan Rath, eds.

2012 Selling Ethnic Neighborhoods. New York: Routledge.

Bild.de

2012 June 29, http://www.bild.de/sport/fussball-em-2012-polen-ukraine/em -2012/memmen-gegen-maenner-schon-bei-der-hymne-hatten-wir-ver loren-24927612.bild.html, accessed August 15, 2012.

Frommann, Stefan

2010 Welt am Sonntag, July 3, http://www.welt.de/sport/wm2010/arti cle8294890/Der-Titel-ist-fuer-Deutschland-jetzt-zum-Greifen-nah.html, accessed August 15, 2012.

Goal

2010 July 11, http://www.goal.com/de/news/1022/interview/2010/07/11/ 2020001/ christian-seifert-ein-spiegelbild-der-gesellschaft, accessed March 3, 2014.

Rath, Jan, ed.

2007 Tourism, Ethnic Diversity and the City (Contemporary Geographies of Leisure, Tourism and Mobility Series). London and New York: Routledge.

Sarrazin, Thilo

2010 Deutschland schafft sich ab: Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.

[1] An earlier version of this article was published by the Harvard International Review, January 6, 2011, http://hir.harvard.edu/debating-multiculturalism?page=0,0.

* Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and researcher at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (imes) and the Center for Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and European chair of International Metropolis, www.janrath.com.

THE RISE OF ANTI-IMMIGRANT SENTIMENTS IN THE U.S.: ARIZONA AND ALABAMA, EMBLEMATIC CASES

Mónica Verea*[1]

Introduction

The new millennium has brought some unexpected circumstances that have led to the rise of anti-foreign/anti-immigrant sentiments all over the world, especially in the main immigrant-receiving countries like the United States. The 9/11 terrorist attacks perpetrated by foreign organized extremist Muslims were a determining factor for attitudes about immigration. At the end of the century’s first decade, global recession brought with it a substantive hike in unemployment rates, fostering the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments and, in some places, a sharp immigration policy backlash.

The severe economic recession, exacerbated by domestic pressure, has encouraged federal and state governments to implement a series of much more restrictive measures in their migratory policy than in the preceding period. The rise of anti-immigrant actions, xenophobic pressures, and discriminatory attitudes are often aggravated in times of economic crisis. In order to understand these attitudes, I present the main legal frameworks that the U.S. government and Congress have approved to manage their undocumented migrant flow from the 1980s until the Obama administration and the recent “Gang of Eight” congressional proposal to reform their broken immigration system.

One of the main factors in this situation has been the growing number of foreign residents and undocumented migrants in the U.S. during the last decade. This has made society more aware of who the immigrants are and how they are constituted as a group, because society perceives irregular immigrants negatively and pressures policy-makers to adopt highly restrictive measures to control the flow. Language, physical appearance, and certain customs that are inherent characteristics and values of certain ethnic groups, embedded in a specific place, have become more visible and evident because of their continued growth and have contributed to fostering anti-immigrant attitudes, especially in some states. I explain how restrictionists have reacted and tried to influence Congress and government to establish a more restrictive immigration policy. Finally, I describe the increasing role the states have played in controlling irregular migration, filling the void the federal government has left due to its resistance to approving immigration reform. I explain how Arizona and Alabama have become emblematic cases because of their anti-immigrant movement and the harsh measures proposed, approved, and in some cases implemented there during recent years.

U.S. Government and Congressional Concerns About How to Manage the Undocumented Migrant Flow since the 1980s

For the last 30 years, the United States has experienced high levels of unauthorized immigration,[2] which has become the main concern in immigration policy-making. The passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (irca), signed into law by President Reagan, reflected that concern and marked a turning point in strengthening enforcement in their migration policy, making the hiring of unauthorized immigrants unlawful for the first time in U.S. history. In addition, it called for bolstering border enforcement and provided for legalizing the migratory status of approximately 2.7 million of the unauthorized immigrant population at that time (2.3 million of whom were Mexicans) via two programs, one for long-term residents and another for seasonal agricultural workers.[3] irca’s legal-status provision combined with employer sanctions —which have been poorly enforced since then—, new funding for border enforcement, as well as encouraging the H2-A and H2-B programs for temporary agricultural and non-agricultural foreign workers, respectively, all policies intended to solve the problem of “illegal immigration,” not only did not solve it, but also did not stop it from continuing to grow.[4]

The 1990s economic boom attracted legal and unauthorized foreign workers to the U.S. labor market, mainly from Mexico and Central America, people who were looking for what their parents and ancestors have looked for and done in the past: the “American Dream,” meaning better job opportunities, due to the great gap in salaries between U.S. and other migrant sending countries. The Clinton administration (1993-2001) implemented a migration policy based on stepped-up border enforcement targeting the reduction of the flow of unauthorized immigration, due to its important growth. It is true that President Clinton pushed for amnesty for thousands of immigrants left in legal limbo by a technical screw-up involving irca and offered a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of Central Americans, but Republicans blocked that effort. Since that time, some attempts have also been made to establish harsher measures, such as barring undocumented immigrants from public schools and limiting legal immigrants’ access to health and welfare services, as with Proposition 187 in California in 1994, which Republicans embraced after their Latino support dropped markedly in the 1996 election (Weiner 2013).

The Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (iirira) was very tough on unauthorized immigrants. It required people living without authorization in the United States to return home and wait for from three to ten years before they were eligible to adjust their status and reenter the United States. iirira also increased funding for border and interior enforcement; launched an employment verification program that was the precursor to E-Verify;[5] and made unauthorized immigrants ineligible for federal grants and loans for post-secondary education, among other measures (Orrenius and Zavodny 2012). But one of the toughest implications has been that the law requires the government to lock up immigrants, including legal permanent residents and asylum seekers, without the right to due process. Therefore, since iirira passed, there has been a dramatic increase in number of people subject to mandatory detention, rising from 70 000 detained annually during the 1990s to about 400 000 today. The U.S. now maintains a sprawling network of detention facilities, comprised of more than 250 federal, state, and private prisons and county jails, at an annual cost of US$1.7 billion to taxpayers. The expansion of the detention system has been accompanied by increasing levels of abuse, ranging from substandard living conditions to over 120 immigrant deaths since 2003 (Le 2011).

The 2001 terrorist attacks presented an opportunity to the Bush administration (2001-2009) to redefine national security priorities, which became intertwined with the establishment of a more restrictive immigration policy and much harsher measures than had been in place before. We saw the birth of a new generation of innovative systems like sophisticated databases to detect immigrants’ origin and location, which has helped to reshape immigration enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels. In order to be more effective in enforcing this immigration policy, the Bush administration established programs to share much more information collection; expanded their immigrant detention policies, much more than what was already in place; and fostered growing state and local involvement in immigration enforcement and policymaking (Verea 2008). So, during the last decade, immigration policy proposals outside the ambit of national security became downgraded amid the intense focus on border security.

Since the terrorist attacks, border management has aimed both to gain operational control over the southern border and to control the flow of people by using highly sophisticated screening mechanisms before their arrival to U.S. territory. This significant securitization process has indeed led to fewer border crossers going through traditional ports of entry, and more of them using much more dangerous crossing points. This has increased the number of border deaths, fostered an important proliferation of migrant traffickers, who charge much more than before, and, unfortunately, brought to an end the traditional circular Mexico-U.S. migration process.

During the second half of the last decade, in the debate about what to do and how to manage illegal immigration, different sectors of society expressed their opinions and explored different policy options. One example was the Comprehensive Immigration Reform (cir) bill, introduced by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2005. It included a regularization program creating paths to citizenship, establishing guest worker programs, increasing the number of visas to meet labor market demands, and, of course, reinforcing the border and establishing highly technical mechanisms to apprehend and deport migrants, the more the better. While the 2006 bill proposed to legalize the status of those who had lived in the United States for at least several years and could demonstrate a strong employment history, a 2007 bill called for legalization of the status of those living in the United States at the time of the bill’s passage only after certain enforcement “triggers” were satisfied. Unlike irca, the 2006 and 2007 bills included major changes to the legal immigration system to manage future permanent and temporary employment-based immigration to the United States (Chishti, Bergeron, and Hipsman 2013). It is true that President Bush pushed for immigration reform, trying to convince Republicans of its importance, but his efforts were not enough. Congress debated about the prospect of a reform, but conservatives constantly warned of the dangers posed by illegal immigration, pushing for an enforcement-only approach (Mittelstadt 2011). Restrictionists started to swing even more to the right and against any possible immigration reform. Along with several pro-labor Democrats, Republicans opposed the legislation, which failed in Congress twice, in 2006 and 2007.[6]

The main reasons for its failure were immersed in the heightened national perception of the government’s inability to detect unauthorized immigrants under the new dimension of national security. The two internal factors that influenced the failure were the lack of an adequate communications infrastructure and an insufficient networking strategy. Also, the inability of business and labor to agree on a plan for temporary guest workers was another important factor. But perhaps the most important element was the ever-expanding and more powerful immigration backlash movement that drowns out the voice of the pro-immigration groups. The anti-immigrant forces mobilized their advocates and the pro-reformers did not (Center for International Policy 2009).

The Obama Administration and Congress’s “Gang of Eight” Approach To Undocumented Immigration Management

After several years of a frozen immigration reform debate, in his 2008 campaign, President Obama promised a comprehensive immigration reform (cir), perhaps to win the Latino vote. During his first year as president, he called immigration reform a priority, but acknowledged that there was too much on his plate to get it done soon (Weiner 2013). By early 2010, Obama faced pressure from immigration advocates to move forward. He pushed for a comprehensive reform, and Senators Chuck Schumer (D/N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R/S.C.) collaborated in this sense. But after a harsh fight over health care and in the face of a tough midterm election, unsurprisingly, the push went nowhere. President Obama acknowledged that “there may not be an appetite for immigration reform in 2010” (Weiner 2013).

Since the White-House-supported Dream Act has not been approved by Congress,[7] at the end of his first term, President Obama implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (daca) program,[8] designed to grant a two-year reprieve from deportation to some qualified unauthorized immigrants, which was highly criticized by Republicans. The debate on immigration emerged again during the last months of his re-election campaign. President Obama’s executive action definitely played an important role in persuading Latinos to vote for him, while Republican candidate Mitt Romney persisted in his re-enforcement policy (Bergeron and Hipsman 2012). It is important to mention that Mitt Romney was pushed by Republican Party activists to be tough on illegal immigration to win the nomination. His promise to encourage unauthorized foreigners to “self-deport” won him Republican supporters against primary opponents that included Texas Governor Rick Perry and Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). After he won the Republican nomination, Romney was unable to move toward the center of the political spectrum on immigration for the general election, thus alienating Latino voters. Simultaneously, the Republican Party platform criticized the Obama administration not because daca was implemented via executive action rather than through legislative channels, but for creating a backdoor amnesty program unrecognized in law. The criticisms were about the president not having the authority to ignore a constitutional comprehensive federal law, and that he put the federal government in the position of helping individuals violate federal law and avoid the sanctions that Congress had established (Spakovsky 2011).

Other important measures implemented by the Obama administration were the use of 287(g),[9] the expansion of Secure Communities,[10]and, in terms of worksite enforcement, supposedly efforts targeting employers who hire unauthorized immigrants. But what the White House has really done is to deport unauthorized immigrants from their work places, prioritizing the deportation of “criminal illegals.” In fact, during his first term, Obama deported more undocumented aliens than President George W. Bush did in both his terms,[11] setting a record of 429 247 in 2011 —it has been estimated that approximately 410 000 foreigners were deported in 2012—, giving Obama the record for the highest number of removals of any president (Preston 2013). During Bush’s first term (2001-2004), 572 000 migrants were deported, and 1 048 000 during his second term (2005-2008).[12] Probably, some of those deported may attempt to return when the U.S. economy improves, because they left family members behind in different states.

Traditionally, electoral concerns push lawmakers to support or reject an immigration reform. The influence of business and labor interests are crucial for the immigration debate. The 2012 elections showed Republicans that they can no longer rely almost entirely on non-Latino voters to win. They also showed that President Obama experienced no backlash over daca, even though it was highly criticized. After he won the elections, Obama called immigration reform his major “long-term” priority for his second term. During the first months of 2013, the immigration reform issue moved into the national debate and in his first State of the Union, he urged Congress to enact immigration reform.

Meanwhile, in Congress a bipartisan group of eight senators, “The Gang of Eight,” four Democrats and four Republicans,[13] unveiled separate proposals for an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, including a legalization program for unauthorized immigrants; the continuation of immigration enforcement; and a broad reform of the legal immigration system. It seems that the “The Gang of Eight” are working on a legalization process for the nearly 11 million undocumented aliens living in the U.S. in 2013, proposing a 10-year wait to get a Green Card and 3 more years to apply for citizenship (Associated Press 2013). They are also proposing that unauthorized immigrants would have to register with the federal government, pay a fine and taxes owed, and pass a background check to receive probationary legal status enabling them to live and work legally in the United States. Individuals with probationary status who pay additional fines, learn English and civics, and demonstrate a history of past work and current employment would ultimately be eligible to apply for lawful permanent residence (lpr).

Some other proposals include having the registration process take place while border security continues to be ramped up. Border security would include an increased number of border patrol agents, the deployment of surveillance equipment, and an end to an entry-exit system that tracks visitors. Reducing visa backlogs is another proposal, especially for familyand employer-sponsored immigrants, and awarding additional visas for those with post-graduate studies in science, engineering, and math at a U.S. university, while reducing those for family reunification. It is interesting that they are considering the possibility of adapting the allocation of visas to labor needs, specifically in agriculture, and a kind of a “guest worker program” for low-skilled workers in case of labor shortages. It will be important to define when and how the country enters into a labor shortage, to import foreign labor.

Simultaneously, President Obama announced a similar proposal: increased border security, a pathway to citizenship for many of the nation’s unauthorized immigrants, mandatory employment verification, and reforms to the current immigration system. The White House proposal would require eligible provisional-legal-status immigrants to wait until current legal immigration backlogs have been cleared before they could apply for lpr status. Also the Obama program would create new criminal penalties aimed at transnational criminal organizations and employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers, and would create a new visa category for employees of federal science and technology laboratories. Finally, the president’s plan would offer an “expedited opportunity to earn their citizenship” for unauthorized migrants who were brought to the United States as children and who attended college or served honorably in the armed forces for two years (Chishti, Bergeron, and Hipsman 2013).

I believe that it is very important that the immigration debate is back again after six years of silence, whether what is being considered is a comprehensive or a piece-meal reform. This may be a more practical way of resolving the issue on a fast track. In order to achieve all these goals, it is important to mention that several obstacles are in the way; the most critical is legalization of status with a path to citizenship. It is believed that the major obstacle to an immigration reform in the Republican-controlled House is a legalization program for the estimated 11 million unauthorized foreigners that would include a path to U.S. citizenship. Even though the Republican Party is aware of its need for Latino support in the next elections, their platform opposes any form of amnesty for people who intentionally violate immigration law, and they believe amnesty to be a reward that encourages more law-breaking.

The Growth of Anti-immigrant Sentiments And Actions in the U.S. during the Last Decade

a) Increased Unauthorized Immigrant Flows and Reinforcement of the Border during the Last Decade

The United States absorbs 20 percent of the world’s migrant population: about one million immigrants and permanent residents were admitted in 2010, 140 000 of them Mexican; and 620 000 immigrants were granted citizenship, 67 000 of them Mexicans. Even though they are insufficient to cover labor market demand, the system allows hiring more foreign temporary workers than any other country in the world.

Immigration and fertility are the factors that have increased the number of Latinos in the United States. The 2010 census counted 50.5 million Hispanics,[14] who represented 16 percent of the total U.S. population (308 million), and accounted for most of the nation’s growth (43 percent, or 35.3 million in 2000) over the last decade. The number of people of Mexican origin living in the U.S. rose to 31.8 million, representing two-thirds of the Hispanic population and 12.5 percent of the U.S. population.[15] Mexicans are the largest group of legal permanent residents, accounting for 3.9 million out of 12 million (González Barrera et al. 2013). Of all those of Mexican descent, 11.7 million are foreign-born (37 percent) (Pew Hispanic Center 2011), which represented 55 percent of Latin Americans and 4 percent of the U.S. population of 311.6 million in 2011.

The United States accounts for the highest number of unauthorized immigrants in the world: nearly 11 million undocumented people lived there in 2013.[16] Of the around 12 million Mexicans who reside in the U.S., by far the largest group of immigrants in the country, 6.1 million (55 percent) are unauthorized. In 2011, 143 000 Mexicans were granted lpr out of 694 193 (14 percent), and 94 000 of approximately one million became U.S. citizens. Clearly, these data suggest that increasing ethno-racial diversity could be perceived by restrictionists as a threat to society, and thus the imperative need to significantly diminish these flows.

Taking into account this important number of unauthorized immigrants living in different states and faced with high unemployment since 2008 due to the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, the government has been establishing a much more restrictive immigration policy. While the immigration-related security measures implemented are intended to minimize risk and facilitate lawful travel, these measures have been key in criminalizing undocumented aliens and thus significantly enhancing exclusion, clear discrimination, exploitation, and repression, angrily denied or ignored by anti-immigrant activists. Unfortunately, undocumented migrants have tolerated this increased discrimination because they fear returning to their homes, where they believe would face a worse situation. An economic crisis affects undocumented migrants far more than legal residents because they are more likely to be fired from their jobs. They respond more quickly to fluctuations in the economy, because they tend to meet employers’ demand not satisfied by legal workers (Papademetriou and Terrazas 2009, 18-20).

Restriccionists believe the southern border is still very porous and that it is essential to keep building an impenetrable fence there, no matter how expensive or effective it would be, since most of them consider government has not been tough enough to stop undocumented flows despite the high federal expenditures on its enforcement-only policy. To give an idea of how the budget increases year by year, between fiscal years 2005 and 2011, the budget of Customs and Border Protection (cbp), which is responsible for border management, more than doubled, rising from about US$1.5 billion to roughly US$3.6 billion (Department of Homeland Security 2011). During this same six-year period, the number of border patrol agents nearly doubled from 11 156 to 21 500 with the support of an important number of National Guard troops.[17] The border patrol made nearly 364 768 apprehensions nationwide in fiscal year 2012, down 50 percent since FY 2008 and 78 percent from the FY 2000, a boom year.[18]

It could be said that the main reasons for this sharp decline have been the remarkable heightened border reinforcement that has not only raised the cost of migration but also sharpened the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, a rise in deportations, the anti-immigrant environment in some states, and, as said long ago, the decline in birth rates and better economic conditions in Mexico. The net migration flow from Mexico to the U.S. has stopped and may have reversed. In 2000, there were 4.6 million undocumented migrants, a number that peaked at 7 million in 2007, and has dropped since then to 6.5 million in 2010 (Passel 2011).[19] During the five-year period from 2005 to 2010, a total of 1.4 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States. Meantime, the number of Mexicans and their children who moved from the U.S. to Mexico during the same period rose to 1.4 million. The trend within this latest period suggests that return flow to Mexico probably exceeded the inflow from Mexico during the past year or two. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, the standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates, and better economic conditions in Mexico (Passel, Cohn, and Gonzalez-Barrera 2012). I will add that at the peak of the economic crisis, the establishment of more restrictive measures like E-Verify for employers, making it harder to hire unauthorized immigrants, combined with immigrants’ fear of losing their jobs and the fact that they have children born in the U.S. and families with deeper and deeper roots, probably had the effect of prompting emigration to other states with less anti-immigrant attitudes and fewer local laws limiting illegal immigrants’ rights, or staying where they were because it is costly and risky to re-enter the U.S. later. The increase/decrease in flows has traditionally been tied to push-pull factors that also respond to economic cycles. So, it is possible that the Mexican immigration wave will resume as the U.S. economy recovers.

b) Reactions about the Growth of Unauthorized Immigrant Flows and Presence

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, migratory flows increased significantly in several states. This generated an upsurge in the diversity of ethnic groups in certain places. Because of the rapid growth of the number of migrants, extremely aggressive movements opposing their entry for different reasons, mainly because they are foreigners, emerged. The growth of ethnic diversity has become more evident and visible and in some cases has been perceived as a threat to society, mainly for economic reasons, but also because most of them are non-white foreigners. Some sectors repeatedly emphasize an important anti-immigrant rhetoric and evoke precisely the importance of maintaining a collective social identity.

The growing presence of “non-white” Latinos, especially Mexicans, is more visible in some southern states, where rejection is even higher. These states have experienced rapid population growth of immigrants, mainly Mexicans, “the brown wave,” who have influenced cultural changes, causing friction among residents. People have asked themselves how to deal with the entry of old and new unauthorized flows of migrants such as those who cross the southern border. These attitudes have sparked the proliferation of extremist restrictionist, principally ultra-conservative members of caucuses in the Republican Party, whose weight has been magnified by the media.

In general, the restrictionists believe that their societies already have enough migrants and that they need to limit immigration anywhere from modestly to significantly.[20] This trend is opposite to the position of the expansionists, who agree with a flexible, open-door policy and that migratory flows must be limited through moderate, periodic increases.[21] Both stances have influenced public opinion, congresses, and governments.

In terms of immigration reinforcement, restrictionists believe their southern border is still porous and that it is essential to keep building an impenetrable fence along the border with Mexico, no matter how expensive or effective it would be, since most of them consider federal government has not been “tough enough” to stop undocumented flows, despite the highly technical securitization process and the high expenditures they have made on their “enforcement-only policy.”

Definitely, restrictionists have influenced public opinion. Their principal arguments are that immigrants, mainly undocumented, displace local workers; that they are willing to work for much lower, sub-standard wages; and that they absorb scarce resources from social welfare programs (education and health services) to the detriment of nationals and in a greater proportion than the taxes they pay. They are also concerned about linguistic unity, religious tolerance, and/or cultural coherence, and are troubled about the introduction of foreign customs and values (Verea 1999, 98). Lately, they have been perceived as a threat to job security and domestic security, invaders, violent people, and potential criminals (Bordeau 2010, 21), among other arguments. The fact is that unscrupulous employers still hire them for much lower wages than locals, without sanctions being applied to most of them, to the benefit of their businesses. The civil offense of “illegal” entry is far more often sanctioned by the administrative process of deportation than an employer’s criminal offense of hiring undocumented people (Gilbert and Kolnick 2012).

It is important to note that these attitudes mainly toward unauthorized immigration vary immensely from state to state, and even in different counties or cities within a state. They reflect the diversity of opinion on this controversial issue, perceived as a problem and not as a very old bilateral phenomenon that includes push-pull factors, among others

Amplified by the media, which often raises awareness of cultural and ethnic diversity, neo-nativist and xenophobic groups with restrictionist principles have shown their anti-immigrant feelings as diversity increases.[22] They are aimed especially toward “non-white migrants,” such as Latinos, “the brown wave,” according to the neo-nativist ideologist Samuel Huntington, with a racial profiling bias.

In general, conservative wasps tend to sometimes stereotype, categorize, and discriminate against “non-white” foreigners, and, unfortunately, no matter what their “migration status” is. The growing presence of “non-white” Latinos, “the brown wave” especially Mexicans, is more visible in some southern states, where rejection is even higher. The obsession with “illegal status” has fed anti-immigrant sentiment to unimaginable levels, without really trying to relate labor market demand to the availability of visas through the current impractical immigration system, which precisely leads to hiring unauthorized foreigners.

These anti-immigrant, and in some border states and localities “anti-Mexican,” feelings have been expressed through brutal, violent attacks, especially on unauthorized immigrants, who are more visible and generally occupy low-skilled jobs that locals refuse to do. A significant change in the last decade has been the role of the mass media that have played an important role in creating an increasingly hostile rhetoric and even “hate speech” against immigrants all over the country. Several radio and television programs and Internet sources have broadcast a number of anti-immigrant messages, characterizing migrants as “criminals and invaders” and a threat to society. On the other hand, a very new phenomenon has developed: highly organized extremist, civilian, nativist “hate groups” have emerged to assist in the detection and deportation of undocumented migrants, mainly Mexicans, spreading the idea of the southern border as a war zone.[23] They have had an important influence over public opinion and certainly helped to create an atmosphere that seems to justify stricter immigration policies. They are convinced that undocumented immigrants are an economic burden for their communities, a danger to the social order, would-be terrorists, and violent criminals, who have no problem stealing and attacking U.S. citizens, and are undeserving of social, political, and economic rights (Bordeau 2010, 21).

Another trend-shaping force is the politically influential Tea Party movement.[24] Its intolerant ultra-conservative activists and council members, who have supported punitive initiatives, focus on the need for local immigration regulation in light of the federal government’s willful abdication of its responsibilities. Many of its exponents are known for their virulent attacks, mostly on undocumented immigrants. They champion restrictive/punitive immigration policies including criminalization and deportation and have targeted influential politicians urging officials to protect their communities from undocumented immigration and its effects.

It is important to mention that rising anti-immigrant sentiments do not reflect the views of most U.S. Americans. Thousands of immigrant rights supporters and civic organization activists have fought against racist, nativist, and xenophobic attitudes and try to ensure that the benefits that immigration has brought to their economy and culture be recognized.

The Increasing Role of the States vs. Federal Government: The Cases of Arizona and Alabama

Different actors have emerged very actively in dealing with the immigration issue, due to the fact that in recent years, the government and Congress have failed to approve a comprehensive immigration reform so longed-for by immigrants and their families. This vacuum has been filled by restictionists at the local level. It has stimulated greater intervention by the states on the immigration issue, like in the case of Arizona and Alabama, which have become emblematic of the U.S. anti-immigrant movement.

Conservative —but also liberal— legislators and assemblies have stepped up to meet constituents’ demands for strong action on immigration. The result has been a harsh debate or even the approval of many cruel state initiatives that have built mistrust and hatred among communities. Table 1 shows that the National Conference of State Legislatures (ncsl) acknowledged that from 2005 through 2012, state legislatures across the U.S. introduced 8 292 bills, 1 905 of which were adopted as laws or resolutions (National Conference of State Legislatures 2012).

Table 1

State Immigrant-Related Legislation (2005-2012)

* Estimates.
**As of June 30, 2012.
Source: National Conference of State Legislatures (2012).

Virtually every state legislature have been discussing for a decade —and in some cases, have passed— very aggressive control measures against the presence of undocumented migrants, leading to a significant increase in anti-immigration feelings and attitudes. Nationwide, there are more state laws seeking to restrict immigrant rights than to expand them. Even though positive initiatives exist for the education or integration of immigrants, the majority of recent state-level bills can be classified as punitive/restrictive. Although the punitive initiatives differ from one state to another, Arizona is one of the most “prolific” and Alabama one of the most aggressive states, perhaps because they have experienced rapid population growth of immigrants, mainly Mexicans, which has influenced cultural changes, causing friction and tensions among residents, reflected in growing anti-immigrant feelings.

Arizona is the country’s sixth-largest state, sharing the longest border with Mexico (322 miles), with a population of 6.5 million, 14.7 percent foreign-born, an increase of 24.5 percent during the last decade, according to the 2010 census. The Latino population has grown from 16.2 percent of the state’s total inhabitants in 1980 to 30 percent in 2010 (1.92 million, 90 percent of Mexican origin). The size of Arizona’s undocumented immigrant population has dropped significantly in recent years and is now near its lowest level in a decade. A report released by the Department of Homeland Security, based on 2010 census data, estimated there were 360 000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona as of January 2011. That is down 110 000 from a year earlier (González 2012).[25] It also is down 200 000 from the peak in 2008, when an estimated 560 000 illegal immigrants lived in Arizona. The factors behind this exodus have been the lack of jobs during the recession, tighter border enforcement, tough immigration laws, and anti-immigrant attitudes and actions. This data suggest that the main corridor for undocumented aliens along the U.S.-Mexican border may not be through Arizona. In fact, Border Patrol apprehensions, an indicator of the number of illegal immigrants crossing the border, are also down in Arizona, falling 41 percent last year compared to 2011. This border state used to be the most active crossing point for unauthorized aliens along U.S.-Mexico border, but now Texas is taking its place (see Table 2).

In response, Arizona’s restrictionists took action during the last decade, and approved restrictions on access to social services by residents without legal status; imposed stricter identification requirements to prevent non-citizen voting in 2004; changed the state Constitution after a successful 2006 citizen’s initiative to make English the state’s official language; and also adopted an anti-smuggling law criminalizing undocumented migrants with the same sentences as the smugglers, among many other punitive initiatives. But, in 2010, Arizona passed the more sweeping and politically polarizing, highly anti-immigrant law, the well-known sb1070, establishing a key precedent. The law requires enforcement personnel to check the immigration status of people whom they suspect to be in the country illegally. It has been declared unconstitutional and suspended by federal courts because of its potential for encouraging racial profiling and the fact that it preempts federal law.[26] Since the law was passed, it has been weakened bit by bit. Federal courts suspended four of the law’s most contentious provisions. In late June 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court reached a landmark decision, rejecting much of Arizona’s immigration law, but allowing one key provision to stand: the Court ruled that federal law did not preempt the state’s instruction to its police to check the immigration status of people they detain. This sets an important precedent.

Table 2

Apprehensions in the Southern Border States (2012)

Source: Department of Homeland Security (2012).

The Court found that several other important provisions of the law conflicted with federal laws. Among them are the provisions that made it a state crime for immigrants not to register with the federal government or to seek or hold jobs without proper documents, and that made possible warrantless arrests of some people suspected of being deportable. The decision was a partial victory for the Obama administration, which had sued to block several provisions in the law. The ruling was, correspondingly, a partial rebuke for state officials who had argued that they were entitled to supplement federal efforts to address illegal immigration.

Recently, a coalition of Democratic state senators and representatives has introduced a bill in each house of the Arizona legislature to repeal Senate Bill 1070. Sen. Steve Gallardo (D-Phoenix) and Rep. Sally Ann Gonzales (D-Tucson) have stated that sb1070 essentially legitimized racial profiling against people of color. Both are aware that the law has also hurt tourism in the state.

Unfortunately, after sb1070 passed in 2010, several copycat bills were introduced in state legislatures across the country; five passed, in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Utah. The aclu and a coalition of civil rights organizations have filed lawsuits against those statutes in all six states.

The case of Alabama is also very illustrative. Driven by a robust economy during the first seven years of the last decade and the possibility of finding jobs and economic prospects that were becoming scarcer in the more crowded, expensive western states, some southern states experienced very sharp increases in Latino settlement. This was the case of Alabama, with a population of 4.8 million, which had the second highest Latino growth rate in the nation (145 percent from 2000 to 2010) during the last decade. The changing demographic face of the South, affected by this rapid growth in some states and especially in Alabama, has triggered a sudden culture clash and a sharp increase in racial frictions. Even though the undocumented population is estimated at only 4 percent of the state (approximately 160 000), tensions have risen significantly.

Like Arizona, Alabama’s law calls for police to detain suspects on a reasonable suspicion that they are in the country illegally. But Alabama went further, making it a crime for undocumented migrants to conduct any business, whether private or with government agencies. It also required schools to collect information on the immigration status of enrolling students and their parents. Alabama’s controversial immigration law, known as hb56, passed in 2011 and was amended slightly by a second bill, known as hb658, last year. As originally passed, the law criminalized many aspects of an undocumented immigrant’s life and gave broad powers to state law enforcement to detain anyone in the country unlawfully.[27]

The Alabama hb658 Act, which went into effect in September 2011, is the toughest in the country. It requires law enforcement to detain any “suspected immigrant” to be questioned by a police officer for being in the country illegally unless the person can provide identification showing that they are in the country legally. It also prohibits illegal immigrants from using public resources, hence barring them from obtaining any assistance for education. This has affected not only authorized children and youngsters, but also those who have U.S. citizenship from smoothly accessing public education. In many cases, their parents are unauthorized, and it is safer for them to prevent their children from accessing public education for fear of being deported. sb56 also bars businesses from taking tax deductions on wages paid to unauthorized immigrants; makes it a crime to knowingly rent housing to an illegal immigrant; prohibits unauthorized immigrants from enrolling in a public college after high school; and obliges schools to publish the immigration status of all students. It also mandates that employers use the federal E-verify system and prohibits business owners from “knowingly” employing illegal immigrants, setting tough penalties for those who do. All this makes for a highly hostile environment.

Even though some provisions of the law are being upheld in court, it has had severe consequences for the economy. A recent cost-benefit analysis has stated that the law has cost the state economy up to a huge US$10.8 billion annually.[28] A federal court in Atlanta said it would wait until the United States Supreme Court decided the constitutionality of Arizona’s strict immigration law before ruling on similar laws in Georgia and Alabama. Meanwhile several growers, business leaders, and even some politicians who originally supported the law have called for its redefinition and retooling, pointing to labor shortages particularly in agriculture, which depends on migrant workers, who have emigrated to other states to avoid this rigid situation that affects their minimum human rights.

States where this type of legislation is popular include those located in politically conservative regions of the country, such as the South, and where immigrant settlement is still considered a recent phenomenon. These state initiatives and local ordinances proposed by restrictionist and neo-nativist groups have had an important influence on public opinion and certainly helped to create an atmosphere that seems to justify stricter immigration policies.

It is important to mention that the system permits states and localities to have a meaningful political voice, even in a sphere traditionally reserved for the federal government. But the states and local authorities have gone beyond that, and this new enhanced role that they are now playing also suggests that constituents may be expecting their state authorities to introduce more bills modeled on Arizona’s and Alabama’s emblematic sb1070 and sb56. The urgent need for federal immigration reform is evident.

Final Remarks

The topic is inevitably divisive and sometimes causes a heated debate, which has increasingly included “hate-speak” in different states, especially Arizona and Alabama. The bills and ordinances approved have been instrumental in spreading the disruptive immigration debate to local communities and reaching out to conservative and nativist sentiments. Even though the power to set immigration policy is a federal responsibility and comes under federal jurisdiction, local lawmakers have been able to create their own legislation, developing policy measures to solve “the problem,” not recognizing that it is a very old, bilateral “labor market phenomenon.”

Meanwhile, conservatives are pushing for reinforcing the border and not creating paths for legalization of the status of millions of irregular immigrants and do not seem aware of the fact that many of them have been working for ages in many states, contributing to their economic development. It has rarely been recognized that it is precisely this illegality that creates unauthorized, cheap labor, which in turn brings enormous benefits to society and the economy through migrants’ hard work, investments, taxes, and spending.

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[1] * Professor and researcher at cisan-unam and cisan founding director (1989-1997), mverea@unam.mx.

[2] Undocumented, unauthorized, or illegal aliens are those foreigners who are unlawfully present in U.S. territory. Most of them entered without inspection or have overstayed their non-immigrant visas. All aliens who have not been inspected or admitted to the United States are inadmissible; therefore, they are removable aliens.

[3] It established a legalization program for around 1.6 million individuals who had been living in the United States for more than five years, granting them temporary and then permanent legal status. An additional 1.1 million aliens who had worked in agriculture were given legal status as special agricultural workers (Verea 2003).

[4] Illegal inflows fell in the years immediately after irca before beginning to rise again in 1990. Apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border fell from 1.6 million in 1986 to about 853 000 in 1989. One plausible explanation is that more family members crossed illegally to join legalization beneficiaries in the United States, and this increased flow replaced the cyclical migration.

[5] The E-verify system is an electronic government database that checks whether new hires are eligible to work in the U.S.

[6] The 2006 bill died in the House after being passed in the Senate. The 2007 bill died in the Senate.

[7] Dreamers are unauthorized youth who seek legal status and a path to U.S. citizenship, which the dream Act would provide (Migration News 2013).

[8] The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program ordered by President Obama allows unauthorized foreigners (15 to 31 years of age), who arrived in the U.S. before age 16, and have been in the U.S. at least five years, to pay US$465 for a two-year work permit. Those eligible for daca must be in school, have graduated from high school, or been honorably discharged from the U.S. Armed Forces. Over 368 000 applications were filed between mid-August and mid-December 2012. During the same period, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reported that over 103 000 unauthorized youth had been granted protection from removal. Mexicans filed almost 70 percent of the daca applications. About 27 percent of daca applications were filed in California, followed by 15 percent in Texas and 6 percent in New York. Analysts estimate that fewer than 10 percent of daca applicants have college degrees. Fewer than half of the unauthorized youth who might otherwise qualify for daca did not graduate from high school.

[9] The use of 287(g) enables states and localities to enter into agreements with the federal government through which state and local law enforcement officers are authorized to enforce certain aspects of immigration law. The Obama administration has scaled back in recent years.

[10] Under the Secure Communities program, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) agents detain and deport unauthorized immigrants who have committed only minor offenses and who previously would never have come to the attention of immigration authorities. It is a separate immigration enforcement program that allows the federal government to electronically and remotely screen the immigration status of individuals in state and local prisons who have been arrested for criminal offenses (Orrenius and Zavodny 2012).

[11] Obama has deported 1.4 million illegal immigrants since the beginning of his administration: that is 1.5 times more immigrants than Bush deported in both his terms, according to official figures from the Department of Homeland Security (South Atlantic News Agency 2011; The Washington Post 2012).

[12] Therefore, during his first term, (2009-2012), Obama deported as many as Bush did in eight years, approximately 1 540 000 immigrants (ice 2012; The Washington Post 2012).

[13] The four Republican senators are Marco Rubio from Florida, John McCain and Jeff Flake from Arizona, and Lindsey Graham from South Carolina. The four Democratic senators are Dick Durbin from Illinois, Robert Menendez from New Jersey, Chuck Summer from New York, and Michael Bennet from Colorado.

[14] The 2010 census registered 40.2 million foreign-born, of whom 14.9 million (37 percent) were naturalized citizens; 31.7 million were legal permanent residents (lpr); 1.5 million, temporary legal residents (tlr); and 11.2 million, undocumented aliens.

[15] Of all those of Mexican descent, 20 percent are U.S. citizens, and 63 percent arrived to the U.S. in 1990 or later (Pew Hispanic Center 2011).

[16] The undocumented population has been traditionally calculated by subtracting the number of legal residents from the total number of foreign-born people living in the U.S.

[17] In 1992, only 5 000 border patrol officers were watching the border at different points.

[18] In fiscal year 2012, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (cbp) prevented nearly 145 000 inadmissible individuals from entering U.S. territory, down from 215 600 in FY 2011 (Department of Homeland Security 2012).

[19] Even if it does not, it has already secured a place in the record books. The U.S. today has more immigrants from Mexico alone (12.0 million) than any other country has from all countries of the world. The next largest sending country, China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), accounts for just 5 percent of the nation’s current stock of about 40 million immigrants (Passel, Cohn, and Gonzalez-Barrera 2012).

[20] For more information about principled and pragmatic restrictionists and expansionists, see Verea (2012).

[21] Principled expansionists believe this policy is favorable for both sending and receiving countries, and that government should not limit migration. In contrast, pragmatic expansionists think that this policy benefits them and is not bad for their societies. The main proponents of this kind of policy are generally businessmen in the destination country who need labor that is cheaper than local labor; ethnic groups or legal foreign residents who want to reunite with their relatives; and unions that want to strengthen their organizations, as well as civic organizations, among others (Schuck 1998a, 4).

[22] Nativism is a U.S. American school of thought that seeks to keep the believer’s nation predominantly white, of European origin and preferably Protestant (wasps), a clearly racist attitude. Nationalists are usually people who feel a special loyalty to their country and perceive their traditions and culture as more important than those of any other nation. Cultural differences are exacerbated by nationalists and often lead to a belief in the superiority of one culture over another (Solomos and Schuster 2000). Nativists think that national citizens should be granted more rights than foreigners, and thus they contribute to the formation of xenophobic thinking. They usually perceive immigrants as potentially problematic, socially and culturally different, and a threat to the nation (Delaet 2000, 24). Xenophobia, as its name implies, expresses a phobia or fear of foreigners, the “otherness,” the “stranger,” in a given community. Often irrational, it can give rise to acute feelings of hatred. In general, xenophobia emerges when a group of people of foreign origin living in a city or community is increasingly visible, sparking rejection because the nationals wish to differentiate themselves from them. Over the years, there have been movements or anti-immigrant xenophobia as a rejection of the growing flow of migrants in a particular place (Verea 2012).

[23] The politically influential border “vigilante groups” like the Minutemen Project have been devoted to monitoring the U.S.-Mexico border and have helped socially construct undocumented immigrants as a threat to U.S. American identity, a view shared by several groups operating in states along the Mexican border, mainly Arizona. These groups include the Poverty Law Center, Ranch Rescue, Border Guardians, and Mothers against Illegal Aliens, among others (Solop and Wonders 2012).

[24] A radical populist nationwide conservative movement, mainly among Republicans, who propose to enhance local political power.

[25] Arizona now ranks ninth out of the 10 states with the largest undocumented populations. California, with an estimated 2.8 million undocumented immigrants, has the largest number, followed by Texas, with 1.8 million, and Florida, with 740 000. Illinois ranks fifth with 550 000 (Gonzalez 2012).

[26] This initiative also penalizes those who provide transportation and shelter to illegal immigrants and requires businesses with more than five employees to use the immigration check program “E-verify,” the use of which has quadrupled in the last two years (McKenzie 2011).

[27] Section 5 of hb658 requires the state to compile and post on a public Web site the names and other information clearly identifying certain immigrants when they are detained on any state charge, no matter how minor, and appear in state court. The plaintiffs in this case and even those charged with minor traffic violations would fall within this requirement and be unconstitutionally added to the “black list” (American Civil Liberties Union 2013).

[28] The study determined that the estimated 40 000 to 80 000 unauthorized immigrant workers fleeing the state has resulted in 70 000 to 140 000 jobs lost and a US$2.3-to-US$10.8-billion reduction in Alabama’s gdp annually. Also, the law is estimated to cost Alabama US$56.7 million to US$264.5 million in reduced state income and sale tax collections, as well as US$20 million to US$93.1 million in local sales tax collections (Addy 2012; Dwoskin 2012).

Impacts of the Recent Economic Crisis (2008-2009) on International Migration. Edited by Elaine Levine and Mónica Verea Published by the unam Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte. Formato digital ePub 2.0, Ciudad de México, octubre 2016