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John Skrentny, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, comments on the new illegal immigrant in-state tuition law.
Illegal immigration from Mexico continues decline
John Skrentny, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, and Wayne Cornelius, co-director of the University of California's Center on Migration and Health, comment on the decline of undocumented immigration from Mexico.
Better Lives for Mexicans Cut Allure of Going North
CCIS associate director David FitzGerald and director emeritus Wayne Cornelius's research on migration was mentioned recently in a New York Times article about the suppression of illegal immigration in Mexico.
Economic, demographic and social changes in Mexico are suppressing illegal immigration as much as the poor economy or legal crackdowns in the United States.
AGUA NEGRA, Mexico — The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive.
A growing body of evidence suggests that a mix of developments — expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families — are suppressing illegal traffic as much as economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the United States.
Here in the red-earth highlands of Jalisco, one of Mexico's top three states for emigration over the past century, a new dynamic has emerged. For a typical rural family like the Orozcos, heading to El Norte without papers is no longer an inevitable rite of passage. Instead, their homes are filling up with returning relatives; older brothers who once crossed illegally are awaiting visas; and the youngest Orozcos are staying put.
"I'm not going to go to the States because I'm more concerned with my studies," said Angel Orozco, 18. Indeed, at the new technological institute where he is earning a degree in industrial engineering, all the students in a recent class said they were better educated than their parents — and that they planned to stay in Mexico rather than go to the United States.
Douglas S. Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at Princeton, an extensive, long-term survey in Mexican emigration hubs, said his research showed that interest in heading to the United States for the first time had fallen to its lowest level since at least the 1950s. "No one wants to hear it, but the flow has already stopped," Mr. Massey said, referring to illegal traffic. "For the first time in 60 years, the net traffic has gone to zero and is probably a little bit negative."
The decline in illegal immigration, from a country responsible for roughly 6 of every 10 illegal immigrants in the United States, is stark. The Mexican census recently discovered four million more people in Mexico than had been projected, which officials attributed to a sharp decline in emigration.
American census figures analyzed by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center also show that the illegal Mexican population in the United States has shrunk and that fewer than 100,000 illegal border-crossers and visa-violators from Mexico settled in the United States in 2010, down from about 525,000 annually from 2000 to 2004. Although some advocates for more limited immigration argue that the Pew studies offer estimates that do not include short-term migrants, most experts agree that far fewer illegal immigrants have been arriving in recent years.
The question is why. Experts and American politicians from both parties have generally looked inward, arguing about the success or failure of the buildup of border enforcement and tougher laws limiting illegal immigrants' rights — like those recently passed in Alabama and Arizona. Deportations have reached record highs as total border apprehensions and apprehensions of Mexicans have fallen by more than 70 percent since 2000.
But Mexican immigration has always been defined by both the push (from Mexico) and the pull (of the United States). The decision to leave home involves a comparison, a wrenching cost-benefit analysis, and just as a Mexican baby boom and economic crises kicked off the emigration waves in the 1980s and '90s, research now shows that the easing of demographic and economic pressures is helping keep departures in check.
In simple terms, Mexican families are smaller than they had once been. The pool of likely migrants is shrinking. Despite the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, birth control efforts have pushed down the fertility rate to about 2 children per woman from 6.8 in 1970, according to government figures. So while Mexico added about one million new potential job seekers annually in the 1990s, since 2007 that figure has fallen to an average of 800,000, according to government birth records. By 2030, it is expected to drop to 300,000.
Even in larger families like the Orozcos' — Angel is the 9th of 10 children — the migration calculation has changed. Crossing "mojado," wet or illegally, has become more expensive and more dangerous, particularly with drug cartels dominating the border. At the same time, educational and employment opportunities have greatly expanded in Mexico. Per capita gross domestic product and family income have each jumped more than 45 percent since 2000, according to one prominent economist, Roberto Newell. Despite all the depictions of Mexico as "nearly a failed state," he argued, "the conventional wisdom is wrong."
A significant expansion of legal immigration — aided by American consular officials — is also under way. Congress may be debating immigration reform, but in Mexico, visas without a Congressionally mandated cap on how many people can enter have increased from 2006 to 2010, compared with the previous five years.
State Department figures show that Mexicans who have become American citizens have legally brought in 64 percent more immediate relatives, 220,500 from 2006 through 2010, compared with the figures for the previous five years. Tourist visas are also being granted at higher rates of around 89 percent, up from 67 percent, while American farmers have legally hired 75 percent more temporary workers since 2006.
Edward McKeon, the top American official for consular affairs in Mexico, said he had focused on making legal passage to the United States easier in an effort to prevent people from giving up and going illegally. He has even helped those who were previously illegal overcome bans on entering the United States.
"If people are trying to do the right thing," Mr. McKeon said, "we need to send the signal that we'll reward them."
Hard Years in Jalisco
When Angel Orozco's grandfather considered leaving Mexico in the 1920s, his family said, he wrestled with one elemental question: Will it be worth it?
At that point and for decades to come, yes was the obvious answer. In the 1920s and '30s — when Paul S. Taylor came to Jalisco from California for his landmark study of Mexican emigration — Mexico's central highlands promised little more than hard living. Jobs were scarce and paid poorly. Barely one of three adults could read. Families of 10, 12 and even 20 were common, and most children did not attend school.
Comparatively, the United States looked like a dreamland of technology and riches: Mr. Taylor found that the wages paid by the railroads, where most early migrants found legal work, were five times what could be earned on farms in Arandas, the municipality that includes Agua Negra.
Orozco family members still talk about the benefits of that first trip. Part of the land the extended family occupies today was purchased with American earnings from the 1920s. When Angel's father, Antonio, went north to pick cotton in the 1950s and '60s with the Bracero temporary worker program, which accepted more than 400,000 laborers a year at its peak, working in the United States made even more sense. The difference in wages had reached 10 to 1. Arandas was still dirt poor.
Antonio, with just a few years of schooling, was one of many who felt that with a back as strong as a wooden church door, he could best serve his family from across the border.
"I sent my father money so he could build his house," Antonio said.
Legal status then meant little. After the Bracero program ended in 1964, Antonio said, he crossed back and forth several times without documentation. Passage was cheap. Work lasting for a few months or a year was always plentiful. So when his seven sons started to become adults in the 1990s, he encouraged them to go north as well. Around 2001, he and two of his sons were all in the United States working — part of what is now recognized as one of the largest immigration waves in American history.
But even then, illegal immigration was becoming less attractive. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration added fences and federal agents to what were then the main crossing corridors beyond Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. The enforcement push, continued by President George W. Bush and President Obama, helped drive up smuggling prices from around $700 in the late 1980s to nearly $2,000 a decade later, and the costs continued to climb, according to research from the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. It also shifted traffic to more dangerous desert areas near Arizona.
Antonio said the risks hit home when his nephew Alejandro disappeared in the Sonoran Desert around 2002. A father of one and with a pregnant wife, Alejandro had been promised work by a friend. It took years for the authorities to find his body in the arid brush south of Tucson. Even now, no one knows how he died.
But for the Orozcos, border enforcement was not the major deterrent. Andrés Orozco, 28, a middle son who first crossed illegally in 2000, said that while rising smuggling costs and border crime were worries, there were always ways to avoid American agents. In fact, while the likelihood of apprehension has increased in recent years, 92 to 98 percent of those who try to cross eventually succeed, according to research by Wayne A. Cornelius and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego.
A Period of Progress
Another important factor is Mexico itself. Over the past 15 years, this country once defined by poverty and beaches has progressed politically and economically in ways rarely acknowledged by Americans debating immigration. Even far from the coasts or the manufacturing sector at the border, democracy is better established, incomes have generally risen and poverty has declined.
Here in Jalisco, a tequila boom that accelerated through the 1990s created new jobs for farmers cutting agave and for engineers at the stills. Other businesses followed. In 2003, when David Fitzgerald, a migration expert at the University of California, San Diego, came to Arandas, he found that the wage disparity with the United States had narrowed: migrants in the north were collecting 3.7 times what they could earn at home.
That gap has recently shrunk again. The recession cut into immigrant earnings in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, even as wages have risen in Mexico, according to World Bank figures. Jalisco's quality of life has improved in other ways, too. About a decade ago, the cluster of the Orozco ranches on Agua Negra's outskirts received electricity and running water. New census data shows a broad expansion of such services: water and trash collection, once unheard of outside cities, are now available to more than 90 percent of Jalisco's homes. Dirt floors can now be found in only 3 percent of the state's houses, down from 12 percent in 1990.
Still, education represents the most meaningful change. The census shows that throughout Jalisco, the number of senior high schools or preparatory schools for students aged 15 to 18 increased to 724 in 2009, from 360 in 2000, far outpacing population growth. The Technological Institute of Arandas, where Angel studies engineering, is now one of 13 science campuses created in Jalisco since 2000 — a major reason professionals in the state, with a bachelor's degree or higher, also more than doubled to 821,983 in 2010, up from 405,415 in 2000.
Similar changes have occurred elsewhere. In the poor southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca, for instance, professional degree holders rose to 525,874 from 244,322 in 2000.
And the data from secondary schools like the one the Orozcos attended in Agua Negra suggests that the trend will continue. Thanks to a Mexican government program called "schools of quality" the campus of three buildings painted sunflower yellow has five new computers for its 71 students, along with new books.
Teachers here, in classrooms surrounded by blue agave fields, say that enrollment is down slightly because families are having fewer children, and instead of sending workers north, some families have moved to other Mexican cities — a trend also found in academic field research. Around half the students now move on to higher schooling, up from 30 percent a decade ago.
"They're identifying more with Mexico," said Agustín Martínez González, a teacher. "With more education, they're more likely to accept reality here and try to make it better."
Some experts agree. Though Mexicans with Ph.D.'s tend to leave for bigger paychecks abroad, "if you have a college degree you're much more likely to stay in Mexico because that is surely more valuable in Mexico," said Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center.
If these trends — particularly Mexican economic growth — continue over the next decade, Mr. Passel said, changes in the migration dynamic may become even clearer. "At the point where the U.S. needs the workers again," he said, "there will be fewer of them."
Praying for Papers
The United States, of course, has not lost its magnetic appeal. Illegal traffic from Central America has not dropped as fast as it has from Mexico, and even in Jalisco town plazas are now hangouts for men in their 30s with tattoos, oversize baseball caps and a desire to work again in California or another state. Bars with American names — several have adopted Shrek — signal a back and forth that may never disappear.
But more Mexicans are now traveling legally. Several Orozco cousins have received temporary worker visas in the past few years. In March, peak migration season for Jalisco, there were 15 people from Agua Negra at the border waiting to cross.
"And 10 had visas," said Ramón Orozco, 30, another son of Antonio who works in the town's government office after being the first in his family to go to college. "A few years ago there would have been 100, barely any with proper documents."
This is not unique to Agua Negra. A few towns away at the hillside shrine of St. Toribio, the patron saint of migrants, prayers no longer focus on asking God to help sons, husbands or brothers crossing the desert. "Now people are praying for papers," said María Guadalupe, 47, a longtime volunteer.
How did this happen?
Partly, emigrants say, illegal life in the United States became harder. Laws restricting illegal immigrants' rights or making it tougher for employers to hire them have passed in more than a dozen states since 2006. The same word-of-mouth networks that used to draw people north are now advising against the journey. "Without papers all you're thinking about is, when are the police going to stop you or what other risks are you going to face," said Andrés Orozco.
Andrés, a horse lover who drives a teal pickup from Texas, is one of many Orozcos now pinning their hopes on a visa. And for the first time in years, the chances have improved.
Mexican government estimates based on survey data show not just a decrease in migration overall, but also an increase in border crossings with documents. In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, 38 percent of the total attempted crossings, legal and illegal, were made with documents. In 2007, only 20 percent involved such paperwork.
The Mexican data counts attempted crossings, not people, and does not differentiate between categories of visas. Nor does it mention how long people stayed, nor whether all the documents were valid.
Advocates of limited immigration worry that the issuing of more visas creates a loophole that can be abused. Between 40 and 50 percent of the illegal immigrants in the United States entered legally with visas they overstayed, as of 2005, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
More recent American population data, however, shows no overall increase in the illegal Mexican population. That suggests that most of the temporary visas issued to Mexicans — 1.1 million in 2010 — are being used legitimately even as American statistics show clearly that visa opportunities have increased.
Easing a Chaotic Process
One man, Mr. McKeon, the minister counselor who oversees all consular affairs in Mexico, has played a significant role in that expansion.
A lawyer with a white beard and a quick tongue, Mr. McKeon arrived in the summer of 2007. And after more than 30 years working in consular affairs in China, Japan and elsewhere, he quickly decided to make changes in Mexico. Working within administrative rules, State Department officials say, he re-engineered the visa program to de-emphasize the affordability standard that held that visas were to be denied to those who could not prove an income large enough to support travel to the United States.
In a country where a person can cross the border with a 25-cent toll, Mr. McKeon said, the income question was irrelevant. "You have to look at everyone individually," he said in an interview at his office in Mexico City. "I don't want people to say, here's the income floor, over yes, lower no."
This led to an almost immediate decrease in the rejection rate for tourist visas. Before he arrived, around 32 percent were turned down. Since 2008, the rate has been around 11 percent.
Mr. McKeon — praised by some immigration lawyers for bringing consistency to a chaotic process — was also instrumental in expanding the temporary visa program for agricultural workers. Called H-2A, this is one of the few visa categories without a cap.
Around 2006, as the debate over immigration became more contentious, employers concentrated in the Southeast began applying for more workers through the program. Mr. McKeon began hosting conferences with all the stakeholders and deployed new technology and additional staff members. The waiting time for several visa categories decreased, government reports show. For H-2As, Mexican workers can now receive their documents the same day that they apply.
Mr. McKeon also pushed to make the program more attractive to Mexicans who might otherwise cross the border illegally. Two years ago, he eliminated a $100 visa issuance fee that was supposed to be covered by employers but was usually paid by workers. And he insisted that his staff members change their approach with Mexicans who had previously worked illegally in the United States.
"The message used to be, if you were working illegally, lie about it or don't even try to go legally because we won't let you," said one senior State Department official. "What we're saying now is, tell us you did it illegally, be honest and we'll help you."
Specifically, consulate workers dealing with H-2A applicants who were once illegal — making them subject to 3- or 10-year bans depending on the length of their illegal stay — now regularly file electronic waiver applications to the United States Customs and Border Patrol. About 85 percent of these are now approved, Mr. McKeon said, so that in 2010 most of the 52,317 Mexican workers with H-2A visas had previously been in the United States illegally.
"It's not easy to go through this process," Mr. McKeon said, "and I think people who are willing to go through all of that and risk going back to the United States where they have to pay taxes, and withholding, I think we should look favorably on them."
Speaking as the son of a New Jersey plumber, he added: "My bias is toward people who sweat at work because I really think that's the backbone of our country. With limited resources, I'd rather devote our efforts to keeping out a drug kingpin than trying to find someone who works a couple of months at Cousin Hector's body shop."
A Divisive Topic
In the heated debate over immigration, however, this topic is inevitably divisive. Pro-immigrant groups, when told of the expansion to legal immigration, say it still may not be enough in a country where the baby boomers are retiring in droves.
Farmers still complain that the H-2A visa program is too complicated and addresses only a portion of the total demand. As of 2010, there were 1,381,896 Mexicans still waiting for their green-card applications to be accepted or rejected. And the United States currently makes only 5,000 green cards annually available worldwide for low-wage workers to immigrate permanently; in recent years, only a few of those have gone to Mexicans.
On the other side, Steven A. Camarota, a demographer at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which favors reduced immigration, said that increasing the proportion of legal entries did little good.
"If you believe there is significant job competition at the bottom end of the labor market, as I do, you're not fixing the problem," Mr. Camarota said. "If you are concerned about the fiscal cost of unskilled immigration and everyone comes in on temporary visas and overstays, or even if they don't, the same problems are likely to apply."
By his calculations, unskilled immigrants like the Orozcos have, over the years, helped push down hourly wages, especially for young, unskilled American workers. Immigrants are also more likely to rely on welfare, he said, adding to public costs.
The Orozco clan, however, may point to a different future. Angel Orozco, like many other young Mexicans, now talks about the United States not as a place to earn money, but rather as a destination for fun and spending.
Today he is just a lanky, shy freshman wearing a Daughtry T-shirt and living in a two-room apartment with only a Mexican flag and a rosary for decoration.
But his dreams are big and local. After graduating, he said, he hopes to work for a manufacturing company in Arandas, which seems likely because the director of his school says that nearly 90 percent of graduates find jobs in their field. Then, Angel said, he will be able to buy what he really wants: a shiny, new red Camaro.
Former CCIS Researcher Whitney L. Duncan's new work on mental health issues in Mexico highlighted by UC Global Health Institute
Former CCIS Researcher Whitney L. Duncan's new work on mental health issues in Mexico highlighted by UC Global Health Institute.
Whitney L. Duncan, MA
PhD Candidate, Anthropology
UC San Diego
To tackle formidable problems in global health, scholars come from a wide range of disciplines. PhD candidate Whitney Duncan never guessed as an English Literature major at Columbia University that she would be conducting studies on mental health and migration in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Duncan worked as a freelance writer and editor for several years after graduating. Her experience at El Diario, a Spanish language newspaper in New York, combined with growing involvement with the migrant farmworker community in the Hudson Valley, solidified her interest in working with the Latino community.
"I wanted a deeper understanding of the issues I was drawn to journalistically, particularly migration and mental health," says Duncan. "I felt strongly about approaching these problems through long-term research on both sides of the border."
She decided to pursue a PhD in anthropology, and says she was fortunate to be able to do so in San Diego. "Because of the large Mexican migrant population in the area, I was able to begin volunteering and researching early on in graduate school," she says.
Her Master's thesis was based on work with an support group for Mexican migrant women. While completing her thesis, Whitney began volunteering at the Bayside Community Center, which offers English and Spanish courses for Mixteco (indigenous people from the region of La Mixteca) migrants, setting the stage for her research in Oaxaca. While in Oaxaca on a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship to study the Mixtec language, Whitney was drawn to what seemed like a proliferation of psychiatric and psychological services.
"Oaxaca is known for its thriving tradition of indigenous medicine," she says. "The new popularity of mental healthcare struck me as a historical change that was probably impacting local culture and understandings of illness in important ways. I also wondered if and how the shift was related to migration."
She received a National Science Foundation grant to conduct fieldwork on the changing landscape of mental health in Oaxaca, and is currently writing her dissertation.
Reflecting on her research, Whitney recalls meeting patients—many of them former migrants—who traveled long distances to seek care at a psychiatric hospital outside Oaxaca City.
"Many people came from communities over eight hours away for a 30-minute appointment," says Duncan. "Clearly, despite the sudden growth in services, access to mental healthcare remains an issue." Whitney's work highlights the importance of understanding the social determinants of health as well as the risks and benefits of globalizing approaches to health care.
Duncan presented findings from her research at the first-ever UC Global Health Day last November (see video).
In addition to conducting her own research, Whitney has collaborated with the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies (CCIS) at UCSD. From 2007-2008 and in 2011, she worked with the Center's Mexican Migration Field Research Program (MMFRP) in San Miguel Tlacotepec, Oaxaca. They are currently writing their second book about the effects of migration on the community.
"UC San Diego turned out to be the best place for what I am doing – and CCIS has been a great resource," says Duncan.
Migration Policy Institute Internships
The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank dedicated to the study of national and international migration policies.
To view internship opportunities, visit the MPI website.
Claire Adida wins awards from the American Political Science Association
CCIS Research Associate and current UCSD Assistant Professor of Political Science Claire Adida has won the "Best Field Research Award" of the American Political Science Association's Comparative Democratization Section and the "Best Dissertation Award" from the Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.
Congratulations to Claire!
South Carolina Latest State To Enact A Controversial Immigration Law
As a Republican-controlled state, South Carolina has been added to the list of states being sued over their controversial immigration laws.
In the meantime, Congress has been deadlocked on immigration reform, with no major changes after a reform effort fell apart in 2007.
CCIS Director John Skrentny provides background.
WASHINGTON — Gov. Nikki Haley added South Carolina to the list of Republican-controlled states to implement harsh immigration laws when she signed her state's copycat bill to Arizona's SB 1070 on Monday despite objections from a coalition of 21 faith and civil rights groups.
South Carolina is now poised to join Arizona, Georgia and Texas, all of which are being sued over their immigration measures, with lawsuits threatened by the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Law Center and other advocacy groups.
"It invites racial profiling," said Victoria Middleton, director of the ACLU of South Carolina. "And it basically will subject anyone who looks or sounds foreign to discrimination."
The South Carolina legislation was modeled off of the infamous SB 1070 Arizona immigration enforcement law, empowering local police to ask for documents to prove a person's legal status. Police can check the status of anyone they suspect to be in the country illegally during an arrest or a traffic stop for anything other than speeding.
Also on Monday, a federal judge in Georgia blocked parts of the state's similar immigration crackdown law — including the provision that allowed local police to check a person's legal status and a measure that punished anyone who knowingly harbored an illegal immigrant.
U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Thrash questioned the intent of the Georgia government and whether it could effectively carry out an immigration overhaul as a state. He ultimately wrote that the state was entering federal jurisdiction.
"I mean, you are not going to have 50 systems of immigration regulation," Thrash said last Monday in court. "In Georgia, you are going to have 159. Every county, every municipality is going to decide what its immigration policy is going to be under this law."
South Carolina and Georgia are two of the 26 states to introduce bills copying Arizona's SB 1070, but so far none have been successfully implemented, according to the Latino advocacy organization National Council of La Raza. Many states sought various immigration reforms this year, emboldened by the Republican sweeps in legislatures and governor's offices throughout the country in 2010, but the reforms were wiped out in legislatures that focused on the economy and other issues during their sessions.
In the meantime, Congress has been deadlocked on immigration reform, with no major changes after a reform effort fell apart in 2007. Even incremental changes to the immigration system, such as the DREAM Act to legalize some undocumented young people who came to the United States as children, have been unable to pass the Senate.
Instead, the government continues to ramp up enforcement along the border to appease "restrictionists" who refuse to sign onto anything that includes legalization of the immigrants already in the U.S. until the border is completely sealed, said John D. Skrentny, director at the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and a professor of sociology at University of California-San Diego.
"And so we keep throwing resources at the border and meanwhile advocates for immigrants keep saying, 'Well look, this is bad for immigrants, they're being exploited, it's bad for American workers, they can be undercut. We gotta legalize these people, and many of them have been here for many years,'" Skrentny said. "So they're at a deadlock on this."
This led to frustration at the state level, where some legislatures have attempted to tackle illegal immigration on their own.
"Obviously this comes out of a frustration that I think everybody has over the broken immigration system," said Elena Lacayo, immigration field coordinator for La Raza. "Everyone, I think, on both sides of the issue are very, very frustrated with what we have now. The status quo is clearly terrible for a lot of people — immigrants I think, especially — but a lot of other folks are concerned about what the consequences of the undocumented population [are]."
Other state-level proposals included cutting off public benefits and in-state tuition assistance for illegal immigrants. But states have also gone the other way, such as Maryland expanding tuition assistance and several opting out of the Secure Communities program, which checks for legal status whenever someone is detained.
"I'm not sure that there was any one thing that triggered state and local governments to get involved," said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Mehlman argued states have acted because in the absence of Congressional action, they are the ones paying for immigrants' education, emergency health care, and other services removed from the federal government's eye.
"You have this dichotomy here where the federal government is charged with responsibility of making and enforcing immigration laws; state and local governments wind up bearing the burdens of illegal immigration," he said.
But states are also getting entangled in expensive legal fees as these tough immigration laws get challenged in court. Farmers Branch, Texas, a town of about 26,000, spent more than $3 million defending a 2006 ordinance that fines landlords who rent to illegal aliens and allows local authorities to screen illegal aliens in police custody. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) assisted the town, as well as one in Pennsylvania in a similar battle.
Alabama passed a law like the Farmers Branch ordinance, which would potentially place a landlord in prison for up to 20 years if caught knowingly renting to undocumented immigrants. The Alabama law landed the state with a lawsuit from the ACLU.
Beyond costly lawsuits, though, there are other monetary risks to implementing a controversial immigration law modeled after Arizona's, Lacayo said.
Religious groups, civil rights activists and the Mexican government have all actively petitioned against South Carolina's new law, arguing the bill spends $1.3 million to create a statewide immigration police force, in addition to the legal costs to defend the lawsuit.
"We see a coalition of religious groups, business groups, that have really seen the impact of SB 1070's law on Arizona's economy and tourism and industry, and they're really saying, 'Well, we don't want that in our state,'" she said. "And also the fact that a lot of states are facing budget problems and these measures aren't free."
The Politics of Naturalization in Europe, Asia, and North America
Introduction and Panel 1. Europe
Panel 2. North America
Panel 3. Asia
UC San Diego. May 20, 2011.
The Weaver Conference Center.
How do liberal states make immigrants into nationals? For some observers, a postnational future beckons in which universal rights of personhood strip national identity of its relevance for claiming the rights of citizenship. According to others, transnational migrants can pick and choose their affiliations to multiple polities. For still others, differences between liberal states are becoming obsolete either because official multiculturalism renders the idea of national core cultures illegitimate or the universalistic qualities of liberalism strips states of their national distinction. Even among scholars of nationality and citizenship, the issue of making national difference is often elided by a focus on those features of nationality law that are converging across liberal states.
To what extent is there a convergence in naturalization policies among liberal states that receive large numbers of immigrants? What explains the variation or convergence?
The Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, will host a conference to assess these questions on Friday, May 20, 2011. Funding is provided by a UCSD International, Comparative, and Area Studies (IIACAS) and Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) International Collaborative Research grant.
In order to RSVP for the event, please contact Ana Minvielle at firstname.lastname@example.com.
"The Politics of Naturalization in Europe, Asia, and North America"
May 20, 2011 at CCIS
SCHEDULE (Rooms subject to change):
David FitzGerald, UC San Diego
Maarten Vink, Universiteit Maastricht, on national variation in the EU
Sara Wallace Goodman, UC Irvine, on citizenship tests in the EU
Alberto Martín-Pérez, University of Barcelona
Discussant: Jon Fox, University of Bristol
Hiroshi Motomura, UCLA, on the U.S. case
Catherine Dauvergne, University of British Columbia, on the Canadian case
Discussant: Irene Bloemraad, UC Berkeley
Kamal Sadiq, UC Irvine
John Skrentny and Gary Lee, UC San Diego
Discussant: Mara Loveman, University of Wisconsin
Ruben J. Garcia – Labor's Approach to Immigration: How Does Law Matter?
Labor's Approach to Immigration: How Does Law Matter?
Seminar to be held in ERC 115 at 2:00 pm.
While many U.S. and Canadian unions historically marginalized immigrant workers, by the early 1990s, key unions achieved success organizing immigrant workers and adopted more progressive immigration policies. North America's major labor federations also made significant changes. The Canadian Labour Congress created a National Anti-Racism Task Force in 1994 to address, among other issues, the links between racism and Canadian immigration policies. In 2000, the AFL-CIO reversed its previous support for legislation that contributed to the discrimination and intimidation of immigrants. Then in 2003, a coalition of major U.S. unions, NGOs and community groups organized the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride to call attention to the rights of immigrants.
This paper argues that shifts in union immigration policies emerge not only out of demographic changes that generate the need to organize immigrant workers, but also reflect larger changes wrought by processes of economic integration. It also suggests that unions' adoption of less draconian immigration policies provide new political arenas for transnational labor collaboration. A 1997 campaign conducted by the Teamsters, UFW, and Mexican labor activists to defend the rights of migrant farmworkers who had left their community in Mexico to work in the Washington apple industry provides one example. Another example is advocacy in favor of labor rights for undocumented workers by the AFL-CIO and affiliated unions in court cases. We believe these and other examples will show that transnational links and amicus advocacy led official federation policy on immigration reform. These examples show how social change occurs in large, diffuse organizations.
Ruben J. Garcia is Professor of Law at California Western School of Law in San Diego, where he has taught since 2003. He has held visiting appointments at the University of California, Davis School of Law and at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Garcia received an A.B. from Stanford University, a J.D. from UCLA School of Law, and an LL.M. from the University of Wisconsin Law School. His research and teaching focus on the ways that race, gender, immigration and globalization impact the law of work. Professor Garcia's scholarly work has appeared in a number of publications, including the University of Chicago Legal Forum, Hastings Law Journal, Florida State Law Review, Florida Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law, the First Amendment Law Review, and the Journal of Gender, Race and Justice. He is currently finishing a book for New York University Press, titled Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and Leave Them Without Protection (2011).
John Skrentny on immigration politics at "The Hill"
John Skrentny writes on winning strategies for immigration reform in a political climate of distrust.
Immigration reform: From distrust to direction
What accounts for this distrust? The answer is obvious: the federal government's long-term record is one of highly visible failure.
The lowlight was the bipartisan Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. That law promised to seal the Mexican border, clamp down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, and legalize nearly three million then in the country. For many, this grand bargain became a tragic broken promise, making a mockery of rule of law and cheapening American citizenship. The number of illegal immigrants soared. New industries, notably meatpacking, restaurants and landscaping, joined agriculture in becoming heavily reliant on illegal immigrant labor. Yet the public image of "immigration" is often not of hard-working people tolerating bleak working conditions and low pay, but of news reports showing grainy footage of Mexicans streaming across the border.
Even Obama's record-setting deportations and unprecedented crackdown on employers have done little to convince restriction-minded voters and lawmakers that the border is or even can be controlled. In this climate, even the targeted legalization bill known as the DREAM Act, which would benefit law-abiding young people who grew up in America and attended college or served in the military, has repeatedly failed.
On Tuesday, Obama hinted—but did not emphasize – something new: change coming from conservative business leaders (he even quoted Rupert Murdoch) and conservative Christian groups as forces for immigration reform.
Why rely on conservative groups? Reformers can learn from the stunning legalization bill passed in March in the deeply red state of Utah. Business and Christian groups in that state re-branded immigration reform as conservative and persuaded the Republican legislature to pass a bill to turn Utah's illegal aliens into temporary, legal guest workers.
It happened after leaders in the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce witnessed convention business fleeing the restrictionist climate in Arizona for Utah. They saw an immigrant-friendly Utah as good for business. The conservative Mormon church joined the cause because its leaders believed that religious and moral teachings dictated welcoming strangers from foreign lands. Their "Utah Compact" pledged support for business- and family-friendly immigration policies guided by a "spirit of inclusion."
Utah's story shows reform is possible when change is led not by government or established immigration reform leaders, but by conservative religious groups with moral clout and business leaders with political and economic power.
The other lesson of the Utah story may be harder for reformers to accept: give up on citizenship as a goal. Unlike his July, 2010 speech, when Obama called for illegal immigrants to "earn their citizenship," on Tuesday he only said they must "get in line for legalization." This would be smart political strategy for results-oriented reformers.
The legislators in Utah could not offer U.S. citizenship, but national reformers can learn from Utah's strategy of providing work visas. For years, reformers sought citizenship for the great majority of millions of illegal immigrants, failing under both Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses. The DREAM Act's narrowly-targeted pathway to citizenship has similarly failed. Since 1986, many voters strongly resist the full rights of American membership for people they perceive as lawbreakers. Reformers in Washington can follow Utah by providing people without papers with a work- or family-related visa.
Arguably, this is simply kicking the can down the road if these visas are made temporary. But as Obama said on Tuesday, most immigrants come to the U.S. to find work. This lesser prize protects workers from exploitation and American wages. Most importantly, it may break the congressional logjam, making other badly needed immigration reform – such as allowing more foreign talent, streamlining the visa process, reforming temporary visas for tech and agricultural workers—finally possible.
John D. Skrentny is Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego and a contributor to Reaching for a New Deal: Ambitious Governance, Economic Meltdown, and Polarized Politics in Obama's First Two Years.


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By Jhoni Jackson from the SonicBids Blog.
There's no arguing about the importance of social media in expanding and maintaining a fanbase. It's common knowledge that all of the mainstay platforms – Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram – are crucial tools, albeit each with its own particular uses.
What's maybe less widely understood, though, is that it's not just listeners who are affected by your band's online presence. It plays a role in your chances of getting press, too.
Unsurprisingly, the degree of influence varies depending on the outlet in question. After personally polling a handful of music writers, a few conclusions can be drawn.
Stats could be indicative of progress
If you have a considerable internet following but have yet to receive proportionate press, your numbers could help bridge that gap. Today's profound accessibility of music can be a double-edged sword, in that the abundance of bands and artists means some are inadvertently overlooked by writers and editors. Presenting your case with impressive data is a great way to pique their interest.
Beverly Bryan, MTV Iggy's Editorial Director, somewhat echoes that sentiment: Social media numbers matter because they help tell the story of a group or artist. They can show that an indie band is putting in the work to promote themselves or attest to the quietly swelling underground fanbase of a little-known producer. Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and YouTube plays can be faked, but it's still useful information," she says.
The less underground an outlet, the more likely numbers matter
Newer outlets, those with smaller readerships and the type that live happily in a very specific niche, are more inclined to spotlight bands based on sound rather than staggering numbers. We've touched on this a bit before when discussing the possible reasons you might not hear back from the press. If you're just starting out, hitting up Spin might be futile. A cool blog that runs stories on bands not unlike yours, however, could be very interested in sharing your music.
Some outlets are looking for a mutually beneficial relationship
A higher-up at a prominent indie music website told me that, although it's not a factor in deciding on lengthier stories, she has approved coverage of bands that aren't really her style based on their strong following. It's not the end-all, be-all, of course – quality is forever paramount. Still, she also expressed hopes that a band's big numbers will boost their own content.
Additionally, a couple of writers told me their editors either require a band's statistics to be included in their pitches or ask for them when they're not already familiar. It's fair to assume that their reasons have something to do with the hope for a symbiotic relationship.
Numbers don't match your ambitions? You're not entirely out of luck
Plenty of publications are interested in showcasing fledgling acts, so long as they've got the chops. The same aforementioned higher-up recalled a recent piece written about an artist with a negligible following – and it performed quite well. A 1,000-word piece is less likely than, say, a spot on a "best new music" list or mixtape, but none of those feats are impossible.
Considering the prevalence of an emphasis on numbers in the bigger outlets, it's more likely that you'll have to work your way up the food chain. And there's nothing wrong with that. Some of the best, most well-written outlets aren't household names like Rolling Stone. Really, any level of press can help you find new listeners and build up to the big leagues. Plus, it's pretty admirable to work hard to attract fans through live shows, social media, and other means of self-promotion. Eventually, if all goes well, you may not have to seek out press on your own so often – writers might start coming to you directly.
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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Polyamory not like push for gay marriage
While 2013 was a year of major victories for same-sex marriage in America, a controversial court ruling at the end of the year addressed another thorny marriage question: a federal judge in Utah struck down a part of the state's polygamy ban. Many conservatives saw vindication of their fears gay marriage would lead to legalized polygamy. In fact, the decision is limited in scope and does not actually change marriage law. But it also highlights a push for the acceptance of non-monogamous relationships that could change marriage -- and not for the better.
The ruling, which involves a fundamentalist Mormon man and his four "sister wives," does not require the state to validate multiple marriages: Legally, the husband only has one wife. It simply says such arrangements cannot be criminalized, particularly in a way that discriminates on the basis of religion (so that a man can live with several women and not face legal problems unless he calls them his wives in a spiritual marriage).
The Utah case represents a traditional, patriarchal version of polygamy. But there are also egalitarian, socially liberal subcultures in this country that embrace alternatives to monogamy: open marriage and polyamory (multiple intimate relationships with everyone's consent). These lifestyles have been gaining visibility, thanks in part to the discussions of same-sex marriage and new frontiers of tolerance.
Last August, Salon.com published an article titled My Two Husbands, whose author -- living with her longtime husband and her boyfriend -- lamented widespread prejudice against families such as hers. A month later, Slate.com ran a pseudonymous piece by a man bemoaning the hardships of "the polyamory closet."
While the polyamorists often liken their cause to gay rights, the parallel fails in key ways.
First, in seeking marriage equality, gays could make a strong case that they simply wanted the same thing as heterosexuals. It would be much harder to make that argument for non-monogamous marriage. Sexual difference as a feature of marriage waned in importance due to the move away from strictly gender-based roles. But the idea of marriage as an exclusive union of two people is built into Western culture. (Indeed, monogamy was arguably the basis for the shift from patriarchal authoritarianism to affectionate partnership that eventually made same-sex marriage feasible.) The legal benefits of two-person marriage would be almost impossible to replicate with multiple partners.
The non-monogamists mostly want cultural acceptance rather than legal reform. But even that is fraught with problems.
Same-sex marriage, as its proponents have pointed out, does not directly change or affect heterosexual marriage: It's extremely unlikely that a previously straight, married person will suddenly decide to get a divorce and marry someone of the same sex just because it's now legal. But a person in a monogamous marriage may well decide to renegotiate the "forsaking all others" part if non-monogamy gains cultural approval.
While polyamory and open marriage require mutual consent, first-person accounts often cast doubt on how freely given such consent may be. The Salon.com author acknowledged her husband was hurt and angry when she decided she couldn't be "fulfilled" without extramarital liaisons. She claims he eventually overcame jealousy and found their open relationship "liberating." Or maybe he simply didn't have the heart to face a breakup and a child custody battle.
If monogamy becomes merely one valid option -- a preference rather than a norm -- it will be much harder for people who want a sexually exclusive marriage to insist on one.
In a free society, multi-partner relationships should not be criminalized. But neither should they lose their stigma in the name of tolerance.
Cathy Young is a regular contributor to Reason magazine and the website RealClearPolitics.
-- Newsday
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 16, 2014 A13
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Just Falafel
277 Church St ~ PH: n/a
Inexpensive-- Vegan-friendly, Lacto, Middle Eastern, Fusion, Fast food, Take-out--- Additional Info: Part of international franchise chain offering falafel sandwiches in different flavors. Build your own option. Dairy and cheese is used, so vegans should specify. Call for hours - tell us.-- Rating: 4 HappyCow(s)
Taj Indian
Shop 5040 Level 5, 159-175 Church Street ~ PH: 02-96333233
Inexpensive-- Lacto, Indian, Fast food, Take-out--- Additional Info: Located inside Parramatta Westfield, opposite Coles. It has a wide selection of Indian food including chaat, North Indian and South Indian food. Mon-Sun 11:00am-9:00pm.-- Rating: 3.5 HappyCow(s)
Mars Hill Cafe
331 Church St ~ PH: 02-9893-9888
Moderate-- Ovo, Lacto, Australian, Western, Non-veg--- Additional Info: Serves meat, veg options available. Centrally located. Marks the vegetarian choices, a few which could be made vegan. Has outdoor seating. Accepts credit cards. Mon 3:00pm-11:00pm, Tue-Fri 5:00pm-11:00pm, Sat 9:00am-11:00pm.-- Rating: 3.5 HappyCow(s)
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