Reports: Immigration-Citizenship
- A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the U.S.
By: Jeffrey S. Passel, Senior Demographer and D’Vera Cohn, Senior Writer
Organization: Pew Hispanic Center
Unauthorized immigrants living in the United States are more geographically dispersed than in the past and are more likely than either U.S. born residents or legal immigrants to live in a household with a spouse and children. In addition, a growing share of the children of unauthorized immigrant parents—73%—were born in this country and are U.S. citizens. Download PDF here
- Between Here and There: How Attached are Latino Immigrants To Their Native Country
By: Roger Waldinger, UCLA
Organization: Pew Hispanic Center
Most Latino immigrants maintain some kind of connection to their native country by sending remittances, traveling back or telephoning relatives, but the extent to which they engage in these transnational activities varies considerably. Those who have been in the U.S. for decades and those who arrived as children appear less attached than those who arrived more recently or migrated as adults. There are also significant differences by country of origin, with Colombians and Dominicans maintaining more active connections than Mexicans, and with Cubans having the least contact. Download PDF here
- Crime, Corrections, and Immigration: What does Immigration Have to Do with It?
By: Kristin F. Butcher and Anne Morrison Piehl with research support from Jay Liao
Organization: Public Policy Institute of California
In this issue of California Counts, we examine the effects of immigration on public safety in California. In our assessments, we use measures of incarceration and institutionalization as proxies for criminal involvement. We find that the foreign-born, who make up about 35 percent of the adult population in California, constitute only about 17 percent of the adult prison population. Thus, immigrants are underrepresented in California prisons compared to their representation in the overall population. In fact, U.S.- born adult men are incarcerated at a rate over two-and-a-half times greater than that of foreign-born men. Download PDF here
- How Immigrants Affect California Employment and Wages
By: Giovanni Peri
Organization: Public Policy Institute of California
This edition of California Counts analyzes the effect of the immigration inflow on the employment, population, and wages of U.S. natives in California, using the decennial Censuses and American Community Survey data spanning the period 1960–2004. It presents the size, trends, and composition of immigration in California, compares these with national averages, and estimates how native workers’ behavior and wages respond to the inflow of immigrant workers across age and education groups over that period. Download PDF here
- The Myth of Immigrant Criminality and the Paradox of Assimilation: Incarceration Rates among Native and Foreign-Born Men
By: Rubén G. Rumbaut, Ph.D. and Walter A. Ewing, Ph.D.
Organization: Immigration Policy Center
Because many immigrants to the United States, especially Mexicans and Central Americans, are young men who arrive with very low levels of formal education, popular stereotypes tend to associate them with higher rates of crime and incarceration. The fact that many of these immigrants enter the country through unauthorized channels or overstay their visas often is framed as an assault against the “rule of law,” thereby reinforcing the impression that immigration and criminality are linked. This association has flourished in a post-9/11 climate of fear and ignorance where terrorism and undocumented immigration often are mentioned in the same breath. Download PDF here
- Just the Facts: Immigrants and Crime
Organization: Public Policy Institute of California
IMMIGRANT ADULTS HAVE LOWER INCARCERATION RATES THAN U.S.-BORN ADULTS IN CALIFORNIA … The incarceration rate for foreign‐born adults is 297 per 100,000 in the population, compared to 813 per 100,000 for U.S.‐born adults. The foreign‐born, who make up roughly 35% of California’s adult population, constitute 17% of the state prison population, a proportion that has remained fairly constant since 1990. Download PDF here
- Latino Children: A Majority are U.S. Born Offspring of Immigrants
By: Richard Fry, Senior Research Associate and Jeffrey S. Passel, Senior Demographer
Hispanics now make up 22% of all children under the age of 18 in the United States—up from 9% in 1980—and as their numbers have grown, their demographic profile has changed. A majority (52%) of the nation’s 16 million Hispanic children are now “second generation” meaning they are the U.S.-born sons and daughters of at least one foreign-born parent, typically someone who came to this country in the immigration wave from Mexico, Central America and South America that began around 1980. Some 11% of Latino children are “first generation”—meaning they themselves are foreign-born. And 37% are “third-generation or higher”—meaning they are the U.S.-born children of U.S. born parents. Download PDF here
- Mexican Immigrants: How Many Come? How Many Leave?
By: Jeffrey S. Passel, Senior Demographer and D’Vera Cohn, Senior Writer
Organization: Pew Research Center
The flow of immigrants from Mexico to the United States has declined sharply since mid-decade, but there is no evidence of an increase during this period in the number of Mexican-born migrants returning home from the U.S., according to a new analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of government data from both countries. Download PDF here
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