Crossing the Line

Reading about migration in our text is what really got us thinking about our topic for this project. Rowntree, Lewis, Price, and Wyckoff, in their text Globalization and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World, tell us how today, humans are moving more than in any other time period. More than 190 million people live in a country in which they were not born. The cause of this is mostly today's thriving global economy. These migrants are simply seeking a place to find a job and build a life. The most common destination for these migrants are developed nations such as Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where we focused our studies. People don't just move for money reasons: pull forces (reasons a person would want to go to another country) and push forces (reasons a person would want to leave their country) both come into play here. War and persecution are push forces and better economies, a good health care system, and a general better quality of life would all be pull forces. Many developed nations have a positive net migration rate, which is the number that tells how many people are entering or leaving that particular country. Countries also have different population densities: half of the world's population lives in cities and experts believe that number could rise to 60% by 2025. We are headed for a very urbanized environment in future years since migration does not appear to decline any time soon.

Camino Americano: March for Dignity and Respect Rally at the National Mall

Dr. Battista suggested a useful book that we could use that would help us to find more information about immigration to the United States: John Powell's Library in a Book: Immigration. This is a resource on modern immigration to the nation that lead us to other potentially useful sources. One source we were able to use to put some perspective on the viewpoint of recent immigrants from Latin America was Jose C. Moya's article "A Continent of Immigrants." Postcolonial shifts in the Western Hemisphere. In the article, Moya tells how most immigrants from Latin America see immigration as something positive; it helps to spread democracy and make countries stronger. Both of the Americas, North and South, are viewed as one continent with a shared history. This could explain some of the motive for why there has been so much immigration from Latin America over the past decade.

George J. Borjas' Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy looked at a different point of view when it came to immigration to the U.S. Borjas talks of Chinese immigration to the United States and how we may look at immigration from countries like China as one of humanitarian reasons, not just economical ones that are typically the reason.

From talking amongst ourselves about this information came our original idea concerning the amount of jobs available for immigrants in the United States as opposed to those available for US citizens. Upon beginning our research, we found that there was very little data available for that topic, so we modified it to look at the percentage of US citizens per state that are immigrants. The following table shows some of our information gathered for the immigration percent of population by state in 2010. Next, we fused our information into a map to get a visual of the information found.

Immigration Percent of Total Population in 2010 by State

We originally suspected that border states like Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada would have the highest percentage of immigrant population. We also suspected New York and Florida to have a high percentage. Our information from The Center for Immigration Studies, we found that California had the highest percentage, with 29.2%, New York had 23.6%, and New Jersey had 22.4%. We hadn't thought about New Jersey, but it does make sense since it is on the coast. Florida had 20.6%, Nevada had 20.2%, Hawaii had 19.5%, and Texas had 17.8%. Arizona and New Mexico had 14.4% and 10.7% respectively, but we had expected them to be higher since they're between states like Texas and California.We expected inner states to have a lower percentage, which is true except for Illinois, which had 14.7%. West Virginia had the lowest at 1.3%, followed by Montana and Mississippi tied at 2.2%, North Dakota at 2.6%, South Dakota at 2.9%, and Wyoming at 3.1%.

From here, we moved on to look at the immigrant percentage growth between 2000-2010. We gathered information and put it in the following table.

Immigration Growth from 2000-2010 by State

We found that Alabama had the highest percentage of increase at 92.10% followed by South Carolina at 88.4%. Tennessee had 81.8% and Arkansas had 78.7%. The majority of the highest percentage of increase have been in the Southeast. We found that South Dakota's 64.8% increase to be interesting because in 2010, there were only 2.9% of citizens that were immigrants, so there had to be very few immigrants there to begin with.

From the original map, we began thinking about if there would be any correlation between the Limited English Proficient Population and the states that had the highest percentage of immigrants.

Limited English Proficient Population by State

According to the Migration Policy Institute, the states with the highest percentage of limited English proficient population are California (19.7%), Texas (14.4%), New York (13.5%), Nevada (12.8%), Florida (11.9%), New Jersey (12.6%), Hawaii (12%), Arizona and Illinois (9.6%). This information proved our hypothesis to be correct in that the states that have the highest percentage of limited English proficient citizens are also the states that have the highest percentage of immigrants. Another interesting thing to note is that in all of these aforementioned states but Hawaii, the primary language spoken by the limited English proficient population is Spanish. This is the case in all but a few states: Hawaii (Other Pacific Islander), Alaska (Other Native American), Maine and Vermont (French), and North Dakota (German).

The Migration Policy Institute had much to offer us about the limited English proficient population in the United States. It has continuously grown over the past 20 years. As a whole, these LEP individuals are less educated, more likely to live below the federal poverty line, and work in jobs such as construction, transportation, and service. Many of these LEP persons are immigrants that come from non-English speaking countries and therefore have limited English proficiency, but some are Native born. There are 25.3 million LEP individuals in the United States, which accounts for approximately 9% of total U.S. population above age 5. About 94% of LEP people live in metropolitan areas and 51% of LEP individuals are female. These individuals with LEP are less likely to have a college degree than English-proficient adults and almost half have less than a high school diploma. About 10.9 million children between ages 5 and 17 in the United States live in a household with at least one parent who is limited English proficient. This limited English proficiency is a common factor among many immigrants in the U.S.

Overall, this project taught us quite a bit. It confirmed some of our hypotheses and showed us where we were wrong on a few different things. We learned a lot, and therefore, this project was a success. If we could go in depth in the future, we could look at the difference between the rate of immigrations from two different parts of the world, like comparing how many immigrants are from Latin America compared to those from East Asia.  Another interesting thing, the one that probably stood out the most to us, was the limited English proficient population and what that could mean. Since most of these immigrants come from non-English speaking countries, we would then look at why these immigrants do not become English proficient when they come to the United States.

One thing that could be a factor in these immigrants not being English proficient could be that they are illegal immigrants, or it could be that they are legal immigrants but have not had the opportunity to attend any kind of English lessons. Our research showed that most of these immigrants live below the federal poverty line, so it could be that they could not afford to take English lessons. The fact that children between 5 and 17 living in a household with at least one parent who is limited English proficient could be do to the fact that one of their parents is a recent immigrant to the country. These are all things that could be considered by someone looking at this topic.

Bibliography:

Borjas, George J. Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1999. Print.

Census Bureau. http://www.cis.org/print/2000-2010-record-setting-decade-of-immigration

Migration Policy Institute Tabulations from the US Census Bureau’s pooled 2009-2011 American Community Survey and 2007-2011 ACS, Table B16001 “Language Spoken at Home by Ability to Speak English for the Population 5 Years and over,” available through American FactFinder at http://factfinder2.cesus.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/index.xhtml. Data compiled by Joseph Russell, Jeanne Batalova, and Chhandasi Pandya of MPI. http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=960  

Moya, Jose C. “A Continent of Immigrants: Postcolonial Shifts in the Western Hemisphere.” Hispanic American Historical Review 86:1 (February 2006): 1-28. Print.

Powell, John. Library in a Book: Immigration. New York, NY: Facts On File, Inc., 2007.

Rowntree, Les. Lewis, Martin. Price, Marie. Wyckoff, William. "Migration Patterns." Globalization and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World. 3rd ed. [S.l.]: Pearson, 2011. 15-18. Print.

Whatley, Monica, and Jeanne Batalova. "US in Focus: Limited English Proficient Population of the United States." Migration Information Source: Fresh Thought, Authoritative Data, Global Reach. Migration Policy Institute, July 2013. Web. 6 Oct 2013. http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/display.cfm?ID=960

Group 4: Hannah Elliott, Holly Dillard, Zach Miller, James Grammer