That Indian worker hauling crates on a truck at Sabzi Mandi in Jackson Heights in New York, or the busboy in a restaurant in Cerritos area in California, or even a professional worker who flits back and forth between home in India and the United States on a tourist visa to earn some extra money, are part of a million illegal immigrants who live and work in the United States, according to a new report by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) based in Washington, D.C.
The report titled “Unauthorized Migrants Living in the U.S.” is part of reports done by the institute through their Migration Information Source (MIS), on the subject of workers who are undocumented or not legally entitled to work in the United States.
Kirin Kalia, editor at MIS, says that though there are definite and accurate numbers on the South Asian break-up in the one million total listed as undocumented, of that most are from India, China, Korea and the Philippines.
Although the majority of unauthorized migrants come from Mexico, significant minorities come from other countries in Latin America and other regions of the world. As of 2004, nearly six million, or 57 percent of all unauthorized migrants, were born in Mexico.
Kalia says that the project has been in the pipeline for quite a while, and the Institute started to plan in March to bring out reports on the illegal migrants.
“There has been a lot of talk of border enforcement in the United States, but there is not a lot of information to provide,” says Kalia.
The report says unauthorized migration, especially unauthorized migration originating in Mexico, remains a “lightning rod” issue in the United States, often galvanizing public opinion and attracting the attention of U.S. policymakers, especially during times of slow job growth.
The MPI report says major concerns have always been that unauthorized migrants undercut wages, particularly among unskilled workers, and that the unanticipated enrollment of their children in large numbers at local schools raises educational costs and disrupts instructional programs. Recently added to this list are issues of national security.
The report was done by Jennifer Van Hook of Bowling Green State University, Frank D. Bean of the University of California, Irvine and Jeffrey Passel of the Pew Hispanic Center. The MPI report took into account, while making the report, careful analysis and triangulation of multiple data sources, including U.S. and international census and survey data and birth, death, and legal immigration records. It is thus the most up-to-date and systematically assembled assessments currently available.
The report points out that in 2004, the foreign-born population in the United States reached 35.7 million persons, comprising approximately 12 percent of the U.S. population. The remaining legally resident foreign-born group includes naturalized citizens (32 percent), legal permanent residents who have not yet become citizens (29 percent), refugees (7 percent) and temporary legal residents (3 percent).
The report also looks at global migration. Most international mobility – regardless of legal status, whether permanent, temporary or circular, or whether for work or to join families – also preoccupies the less developed countries, albeit from different perspectives, it says. For them, movement is an essential lifeline to both their citizens and their economies because of remittances, now probably approaching $150 billion per year.
At the root of these sets of contradictory interests and reactions is the fact that this phenomenon’s reach is nearly universal. When the UN Population Division releases its latest estimates of the stock of those currently living outside their country of birth for a minimum of one year (its definition of an immigrant) in late 2005 or early 2006, that number will likely be between 190 and 200 million.
Of that 190 to 200 million, about 30 percent are likely to be in the Americas, with Canada and the United States probably accounting for about 42 million immigrants, the MPI report says. Continental Europe’s share will probably be a little more than 20 percent, though the uncertainty level is higher because European states do not always include unauthorized in their statistics. The other half is spread across the world, with Asia having the largest number.
Kalia says that a migration expert, Muzaffar Chisti, who works at the New York University Law School, has been in India for nearly a year, advising the Indian government on research and effecting the connection between development and migration. The government is expected to put out comprehensive figures soon on global remittances from its citizens.
