Tuesday, October 27, 2009

New Data



The following , just released by the Department of Homeland Security should be of interest to us in this class about Immigration. The most important “revelation” of this data is that not all foreign born residents of the United States are interested in acquiring the US citizenship. A large segment of the current stock of “permanent legal resident” have been in the country for over thirty years and yet they have not applied for US citizenship although they are legally entitled to do so. The data also makes it very clear that the states of California and New York are still the major destination for LPR’s. Another noteworthy statistic is the fact that although Mexican LPR’s form the largest ethnic group within the LPR’s yet the next three groups are from Asia. Hispanics are the largest group but yet they do not form a majority that is expected to be feared,
You should also note that the Department of Homeland Security considers all those who have entered into the US prior to 1980 to be eligible for legal residency. Please also note that the data has been adjusted to account for mortality and emigration.


Total number of legal permanent residents as of January 1, 2008:……………12,600,000
One half of the above obtained LPR status after the year 2000

LPR’s who have met all conditions that are required to naturalize……………8,200,000

LPR’s by country of birth:
Mexico...............................................26.9 %
Phillipines...........................................4.5%
India.................................................4.1%
China.................................................4.0%

Almost 2/3 of the LPR’s live in Californa, New York, Texas and Florida

7 comments:

  1. I actually find this article rather funny, because my family has been LPR's since 1996 up until 2006, and the whole time we've lived in New York. Also, a lot of my relatives live in New York and Florida. This is actually interesting to see how similarly majority of LPR's think. NY, CA, TX, and FL are not the only states which offer opportunities for movement and monetary opportunities, however that is the image people are presented with. And many people do not get citizenships for several reasons, like if they don't have kids they do not bother with the expensive, long process. I know we had to get our citizenship becuase my sister and I were going away to college and in order to get scholarships and financial aid from certain things we needed to be citizens.
    Also it's not really shocking to see that the Mexican LPR's are larger nearly x6 that of the philipenes and other areas. The concentration of the hispanics/Mexicans has been increasing for the past several years, and I do believe that it'll keep increasing until the US does something about their legal status. - Justyna Sokol

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  2. I agree with Justyna in the above comment that the concentration of hispanics and mexicans will only continue to increase unless the United States takes some sort of action. I also find it interesting that the article states that although Mexicans have the largest population of citizens here in the United States, that they are not the group of people that is to be "feared." The article states that the next three groups are from Asia. This makes perfect sense considering the the population of Asians in thier own country has gotten out of control and that they have had to instill laws in order to maintain population control. Therefore, it is quite a possibility that these Asian immigrants will begin to travel over here more and more. Americans have already criticized the amount of Mexican immigrants in this country. Are they ready to deal with a large inflow of Asian immigrants as well?

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  3. If the United States is so willing to grant LPR's, why would anyone want to apply for citizenship besides for reasons such as Justyna's? It surprises me that a large amount of the population of the United States are not even technically citizens. The increase in Asian immigration is also surprising and I agree with Jen, are we ready to deal with a large population of Asian immigrants? What will happen once the most populated areas, New York and California, become overcrowded? How far can the government of the United States be pushed until they put a cap on immigration and LPRs's?

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  4. What has been occurring in terms of "criticizing the amount of Mexican immigrants in this country" is that it has long since been about the actual number; although clearly there is an extremely large Mexican population in the U.S. For a very long time, in my opinion, this entire issue has been one of class. No one is going to make a lot of noise about the Asian population, because stereotypical they are our mathematicians and they are doctors and dentists and members of high society. The Mexicans on the other hand, are "using up" all of the welfare and the social services in the states. In my opinion, the U.S. does not need to create a policy in order to keep out these numbers, but an entire reevaluation of the federal budget. The reason there is such an uproar about Mexican immigrants is because they are utilizing already sparse resources, and because psychology tells us that when one is oppressed they do not frequently blame their oppressor but the person they need to share a cell with. It is easy for the hurting working and lower class americans to blame the mexicans for taking their jobs, and devaluing their children's schools, because it would be harder to fight a system that is flawed and that leaves these areas heavily underfunded to begin with. Of course we can't figure out this immigration thing, because we don't even know how to sustain aid to those we consider among the "ours" and "us."
    By the way, have you taken a look at the citizenship test lately? Dr. Werner mentioned in class the other day, but take a gander for yourself. If I could make a bet, I would say that we'd all fail; at least I would. In my opinion this data is flawed, or at least is incredibly ignorant to the fake that the process of becoming a citizen is incredibly unjust and non-reflective of the American population. If these questions cannot be answered by the majority of existing american citizens, why would one need to answer them to become one? For example: Name the senators from your state? or How many representatives are there in the congress? On top of these stupid questions, although to be fair some aren't that bad- Who is Martin Luther King Jr? (Oh america you really are just FOUNDED on civil liberty and non prejudice right? ) , the process of becoming a citizen takes so long that these eligible LPR's from the 80's are probably still trying to get it.

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  5. I agree completly with Liv in what she wrote above. I also add however that just because an LPR is eligable for citizenship does not mean they have tried or plan on ever trying to get citizenship. Many immigrants to this country, as the social and economic aspects have shown us, come in search of economic prosperity to thelp their families. Once they become financially secure many of these men, women and children believe that they will be returning to the native lands of their ancestors. They have no desire to become American, does that make them a bad person? Does working 18 hours a day to raise money for your children back home, before returning to be with them once again make you a burden on the US economy. Even if 100% of these LPRs were using some sort of welfare do we understand how insignificant that is in the annual expenditures of our country? Welfare takes up from 2-3% of our national budget as opposed to 21% on defense before we look at the Pentagon's Black Budget.
    If money is the issue, we need to look somewhere other than immigration to pinch pennies.

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  6. I agree completly with Liv in what she wrote above. I also add however that just because an LPR is eligable for citizenship does not mean they have tried or plan on ever trying to get citizenship. Many immigrants to this country, as the social and economic aspects have shown us, come in search of economic prosperity to thelp their families. Once they become financially secure many of these men, women and children believe that they will be returning to the native lands of their ancestors. They have no desire to become American, does that make them a bad person? Does working 18 hours a day to raise money for your children back home, before returning to be with them once again make you a burden on the US economy. Even if 100% of these LPRs were using some sort of welfare do we understand how insignificant that is in the annual expenditures of our country? Welfare takes up from 2-3% of our national budget as opposed to 21% on defense before we look at the Pentagon's Black Budget.
    If money is the issue, we need to look somewhere other than immigration to pinch pennies.-VINNIE

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  7. Vinnie,

    You are completely right. I found it laughable a few months ago when the NY times ran an article saying that the government had done a good thing and denied the budget for a billion dollar fighter jet- oh well down feds! Perhaps this is a step in the right direction, or perhaps it is just ridiculous now. I, myself, have forgotten why America is fighting these wars and even more so forgotten why we're spending trillions of dollars we don't have and risking lives that are so precious and so far spent already. I appreciate the statistics you brought into your post-the numbers really speak for themselves. It really just is a matter of who makes the noise-middle and working class people are complaining about losing their jobs to these LPR or illegal migrant workers who work the 18 hours for less pay than an American worker; however, they never seem to make noise about the jobs shipped overseas or the fact that this is the first time in american history that there has been economic downturn and recession during wartime.

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