The changing demography of latino immigrants in the united states  (Page 3/8)

The Immigration Act of 1965 marked a significant shift in U.S. immigration policy with the establishment of provisions that allowed for the reunification of families. This 1965 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the nation-origin quotas and established the annual access of 170,000 visas for eastern hemisphere immigrants. While the United States was overhauling its immigration policy in 1965, the Mexican government established a program to allow foreign corporations —most of these from the United States— to set up assembly plants (i.e., maquiladoras ) along its northern border and to hire Mexican labor. The Border Industrialization Program (BIP) was quite popular and resulted in much growth. However, because the assembly plants tended to prefer female —rather than male— employees, BIP served to expand the labor force rather than reduce the border region’s unemployment rate.

About two decades later, the U.S. passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) which had three basic provisions: (a) the creation of an amnesty program (including an amnesty program for agricultural workers), (b) the guarantee of a sufficient agricultural workforce, and (c) sanctions against employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants. Approximately 2.3 million Mexicans participated in the IRCA program. One of the unintended consequences of IRCA is that it led to a shift in employer-employee relations —introducing a middle tier consisting of subcontractors who were hired by employers to hire and supervise workers, many of whom were undocumented immigrants.

The last two decades have seen major debates over immigration; these deliberations focus on Mexican immigration. The polemic involves the opposing struggle between forces of globalization and nationalism (Richardson&Resendiz 2006). For example, the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 symbolizes the erasing of international borders involving Canada, Mexico, and the United States, at least in an economic sense. This measure advocates the opening of borders in the exchange of capital across international boundaries. Naturally, such forces of globalization stimulate the movement of people across international perimeters. However, there have been numerous nationalistic counter forces that pushed to close borders and/or restrict immigration, especially Mexican immigration. These forces have included the passage of Proposition 187 in California in 1994; efforts to make English the official language and to ban bilingual education; the rise of vigilante groups (e.g., the Minutemen Project) and the militarization of the U.S. southern border; the rise of measures to secure this border following 9-11; and ongoing debates over proposals to seal the border (e.g., the building of a wall).

The prevalence of immigration from Latin America and Mexico was well established in the United States over the last four decades (see Saenz et al. 2004). Data from the March 2000 Current Population Survey (U.S. Census Bureau 2001) indicate that 28.4 million foreign-born individuals were living in this country at the time, representing about one-tenth of the national population. Of the foreign-born, about one of every two (51%) was born in Latin America. However, Mexicans, in particular, dominate the immigrant population with 28 % of all foreign-born persons in the United States in 2000 being born in Mexico. Note that this level of prominence by a single country has not been witnessed since 1830 when Germany accounted for 30 % of all foreign-born individuals in the United States.