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Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future (2006)

Chapter: 2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait

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Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
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Kathy Vargas

Este Recuerdo (2001)

Copyright by the artist; used with permission.

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

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Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

2
Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait

Hispanics are a highly diverse population representing 20 Spanish-speaking nationalities as well as some of the earliest settlements in what is now the United States. Differences among these groups in social and economic status, political behavior, and health magnify their diversity, as discussed in Chapter 3. The dramatic increase over the past 50 years in the size of the Hispanic population has been driven by a combination of immigration and births. Today nearly half are foreign-born, many among them undocumented. These demographic dimensions of the Hispanic population are significant for Hispanics’ social, economic, and political integration in the United States (discussed in Chapter 5).

In 1950, approximately 4 million Hispanics lived in the United States, most of them in California, Texas, New York, and Florida. By 2004 there were more than 40 million—a 900 percent increase in half a century—scattered throughout the country. (See Chapter 4 for a discussion of the dispersal of the Hispanic population.) Hispanics share a language, origins on two continents, and, since the mid-19th century, an immigration history. Yet, there is enormous diversity among nationality groups. Together, eight countries—Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador—plus Puerto Rico account for some 90 percent of all U.S. Hispanics. The remainder have their origins in Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Spain. Hispanics also include those long-term natives who can trace their roots back centuries, long before the United

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

States became a sovereign nation. Mexicans and their descendants far outnumber any other Hispanic group—over 60 percent of those who identify themselves as “Hispanic” or “Latino” are of Mexican origin. In fact, the sheer numbers of people of Mexican origin—22.3 million in 2000—render generalizations about the Hispanic population problematic as they may in fact be characterizing the experience of Mexicans—a group dominated by large numbers of low-skilled, low-income immigrants.1

Excluded from the Hispanic rubric are Latin Americans who are not Spanish speaking, notably English- and French-speaking Guyanese and Dutch-speaking Surinamese. Brazilians also are not Hispanic—and do not consider themselves to be—although they are Latin American.2 In general, moreover, Portuguese-speaking people originating in Portugal and Brazil are excluded from the Hispanic category, which evolved from the Spanish-origin and Spanish-language population constructs used in 1970 by the U.S. government (as discussed below).

Currently, more Hispanics reside in the United States and its territories than in Colombia—the largest Spanish-speaking country in South America—or in Spain itself. Only Mexico, with a population exceeding 100 million, has a larger Hispanic population than the United States.

In contrast to other ethnic groups in the United States, Hispanics are both an indigenous and an immigrant community. Indeed, the Spanish roots of the United States are actually older than those of any other European group, antedating by over a century the creation of a permanent English colony in North America. No understanding of the contemporary Hispanic population can ignore its historical and geographic roots. The indelible imprint of these roots remains evident even today across the southern rim of the United States, from San Diego to Sarasota.

HISPANIC ROOTS

The Spanish origins of what is now the United States date to 1513, when Juan Ponce de León first explored La Florida.3 Spain claimed much of the American south and the entire southwest—at least half of the present U.S. mainland—and governed these areas for well over two centuries, a period longer than the United States has existed as an independent nation.

By the time of the American Revolution in the late 1700s, Spain’s cultural reach extended from San Diego to San Francisco on the west coast; throughout the southwest from Tucson to Santa Fé, El Paso, and San Anto-

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

nio; along the Mississippi River from St. Louis to New Orleans; and eastward through towns that stretched to Florida’s Atlantic coast by way of Mobile, Pensacola, and Tallahassee. The names of thousands of locales, from Sacramento to Cape Cañaveral—including several states—attest to the nation’s Spanish beginnings.

In 1848, the Mexican War ended with the United States expanding its territory by a million square miles while severing nearly half of Mexico’s. At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Spain ceded its last colony, Puerto Rico, to the United States in the Treaty of Paris, which consolidated the status of the United States as a global power. The peoples of the conquered territories, some of whom were native to the land now called the United States, were subjected to laws and practices similar to the Jim Crow apartheid system that discriminated against blacks after the Civil War. Rooted most deeply in Texas, these injustices caused U.S.-born Mexican Americans living in the Southwest to see themselves as foreigners in their own country.

Since the end of the 19th century, Mexicans have been the dominant Hispanic group living in the United States. When, in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo ceded the lands of the Southwest to the United States, there were perhaps 75,000 inhabitants of Mexican origin residing in that vast territory—nearly three-fourths of them (called “Hispanos”) in New Mexico, with smaller numbers living in Texas (“Tejanos”) and California (“Californios”). Until the Civil Rights era, these Mexican Americans, especially those in Texas, endured pervasive social and economic discrimination, reflected, e.g., in segregated schools, churches, and residential neighborhoods.4

In the 1910 census, Mexicans numbered some 220,000—a figure that more than doubled by 1920 and trebled a decade later, when the U.S. Bureau of the Census classified Mexicans as a separate race. By the early 1900s, railroad lines linked the interior of Mexico with Texas and other states, shuttling significant numbers of Mexican laborers to the copper and coal mines of Arizona and Colorado and the steel mills and slaughterhouses of Chicago, Detroit, and Pittsburgh. By 2000, more than 22 million Hispanics of Mexican descent were living in the United States—a striking increase over the 8.7 million counted in the 1980 census.

Along with Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans formed the Hispanic mosaic in the United States until a few decades ago. Whereas Mexicans settled largely in five Southwestern states (California, Texas, Arizona, New

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

Mexico, and Colorado), Puerto Ricans lived in the Northeast (in particular New York City), while Cubans lived mainly in south Florida and the New York/New Jersey region.

Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and therefore are free to travel and settle on the U.S. mainland. Some 3.5 million Puerto Ricans resided on the mainland in 2000, making them the nation’s second-largest Hispanic group.5 At the end of World War II, high unemployment in Puerto Rico, combined with inexpensive airfares, boosted travel between San Juan and New York City, making Puerto Ricans the first airborne migrants in U.S. history. Most of the early migrants settled in the East Harlem area of New York City, while far smaller numbers populated urban neighborhoods in Chicago, Detroit, and other northern cities. Although Puerto Ricans have begun settling in new enclaves outside the barrios of the northeast, in 2000 there were still twice as many Puerto Ricans living in New York (more than 850,000) as in San Juan. Roughly half of all Puerto Ricans live on the mainland, the other half on the island.

Like other former Spanish colonies, Cuba did not escape a turbulent past. As Spanish rule became more repressive, and after the Ten Years War broke out in 1868, Cubans began emigrating, first to New York and later to Florida. Many of these new arrivals had been successful business owners in Cuba and represented a new class of Latin American immigrants in the United States. A much larger wave of Cuban immigrants—political refugees—began arriving in Florida when, in 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista. From the first waves of the 1960s, to the Marielitos of 1980, to the balseros (rafters) of the 1990s, successive waves of Cuban exiles have established a sizable presence in Florida, their visibility magnified by their residential concentration in the Miami area. In 2000, Cuban-origin Hispanics numbered 1.3 million—a significant increase of 1.2 million over their 1960 population of just 70,000. Cuban transplants have even recreated their homeland in Little Havana, a Miami enclave reminiscent of pre-Castro Cuba. As growing numbers of Central Americans and Puerto Ricans relocate to Florida, Cubans continue to enjoy political power and economic dominance and maintain a distinctive voice within the Hispanic community.

A CONTEMPORARY PROFILE

In the summer of 2003, the Census Bureau announced that the U.S. Hispanic population, numbering just shy of 39 million in April of that

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

year, had edged out non-Hispanic blacks as the nation’s largest minority population.6 Moreover, Hispanics were now the country’s fastest-growing ethnic minority—increasing at a rate 4 times faster than the total population and 14 times faster than that of whites.7

Several features distinguish the Hispanic population from African Americans. First is the diversity noted earlier. Second, nearly half of all Hispanics living in the United States today were born elsewhere, including the sizable number that are undocumented. Finally, Hispanics are a particularly youthful population: in 2000, their median age was just 27.

In 1960, when the baby boom swelled the U.S. population to 186 million, Hispanics accounted for a mere 4 percent of the total—just under 7 million. By 2000, 1 of every 7 U.S. residents self-identified as “Hispanic” or “Latino” in the census. Persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban descent currently represent 77 percent of the Hispanic population. Dominicans and those who trace their roots to one of the Spanish-speaking countries of Central or South America, or to Spain itself, make up the remaining 23 percent.

Hispanics are the largest foreign-born population in the country—a milestone reached in 1990 when, for the first time, immigration from Latin America exceeded the combined flows from Asia and Europe. By 2000, Mexican immigrants alone were more numerous than all European and Canadian immigrants together, and more than all Asian, African, and Middle Eastern immigrants combined.

Sustaining the growth of the Hispanic population today are both the extremely high flows of Latin American immigrants into the United States and the traditionally high Hispanic birth rates. Among Hispanics in the United States, 1 in 2 was born abroad (compared with 1 in 13 non-Hispanics), and approximately 1 in 3 (31 percent) is a member of a rapidly growing second generation—the U.S.-born children of immigrant parents.

Over time, the relative contribution of immigration and births to the growth of the Hispanic population has shifted. During the 1960s, when the Hispanic population increased by 3.9 million, births outpaced immigrants by about 2 to 1. In the following decade, the two components of growth were nearly equal—approximately 3 million each, with a slight edge for births. During the last two decades, however, immigration has outpaced fertility as the leading component of Hispanic population growth: in the 1980s, 5.5 million immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean were added to the Hispanic population, compared with 4.4 million Hispanic

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

FIGURE 2-1 Hispanic births and net immigration by decade: 1960-1970 to 2020-2030.

SOURCE: Passel (2004).

births, while the 1990s added 8 million immigrants and 7 million births (see Figure 2-1).

Traditionally, Hispanics have big families (see Chapter 5). Currently, the typical Mexican, Puerto Rican, or “other Hispanic” woman bears about one more child than the typical white woman.8 Cuban women are an exception, having a fertility rate nearly identical to that of whites. This difference is due partly to the older average age at which Cuban women begin having children—older than women from other Hispanic subgroups, placing them past their prime reproductive years—and partly to their higher levels of education and rates of labor force participation. More-educated men and women have fewer children. On average, immigrant Mexican, Central American, and Dominican women complete only primary or middle school, but most Cuban women hold high school diplomas or complete some college, which prompts many to postpone marriage and childbearing in order to begin careers.

Over the past 20 years Hispanics have experienced the trend toward increased nonmarital childbearing that has been documented for the general U.S. population, with notable variation by subgroup. In 2000 Cubans were closer to whites (27 percent and 22 percent of births to unmarried mothers respectively), while Puerto Ricans were closer to blacks (59 percent and 69 percent of births to unmarried mothers, respectively). Mexicans and Central and South Americans fell between the extremes, with 41 percent and 44 percent of births to unmarried mothers respectively.

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

While nonmarital childbearing has increased for all groups, there was a substantial decrease in the percentage of births to young teen mothers for almost all groups between 1980 and 2000. However, the decline was smaller for most Hispanic subgroups compared with whites and blacks. In 2000, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and other Hispanic infants were more likely than Cuban and Central/South American infants to have a teenage mother. The figures for the former groups are more similar to that of blacks, while those for the latter are similar to that of whites.9

Foreign-born Hispanic women have higher fertility than their native-born counterparts and non-Hispanic women. In the second generation Hispanic women’s fertility drops significantly. For example, on average, second-generation Mexican women have 2.1 children, while immigrant Mexican women have 2.7.10 Intergenerational increases in educational attainment for women seem to account for some of the decline in Mexican women’s fertility across generations.

Although in recent years immigration has edged out fertility as the chief component of Hispanic population growth, the reverse may soon be true because of the swelling second generation resulting from immigrant fertility. If it is assumed that immigration will continue its current gradual increase, births are likely to surpass immigration as the principal component driving Hispanic population growth because the number of Hispanic women of childbearing age will have grown significantly.11 This scenario is probable even with the declining birth rates of U.S.-born Hispanic women compared to immigrant Hispanic women. As Figure 2-1 shows, this source of demographic momentum is projected to continue well into the current century. After 2020, the ratio of births to immigrants per decade should approximate the proportions attained in the 1960s—nearly 2:1—except that the absolute numbers added will be more than five times larger: 21 million versus 4 million persons added to the population every 10 years.12

Given the influence of immigration in the rapid compounding of the Hispanic population, it is interesting to speculate how the U.S. population would look had national borders been sealed to all immigration after 1960. This exercise also illustrates the extent to which immigration has contributed to the size of the Hispanic population. Figure 2-2 shows a projected comparison of the growth in the total U.S. and Hispanic populations with and without the immigration that has occurred (taking into consideration new arrivals and new births to foreign-born women and their children).13 This projection shows that since 1960, immigrants and their offspring have added approximately 47 million residents to the total U.S. population—

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

FIGURE 2-2 Projected U.S. and Hispanic population without immigration: 1960 to 2000.

SOURCE: Passel (2004).

less than half of the total increase. However, immigration and the fertility of foreign-born women have increased the Hispanic population by more than 170 percent. Thus, had the United States closed its borders to immigrants after 1960, the Hispanic population would have been much smaller—a mere 14 million versus the projected 38 million—and would account for only 6 percent of 241 million U.S. residents rather than 13 percent of 288 million.

Immigration and birth rates vary among Hispanic subgroups and by social class, generation, and legal status. Foreign-born Mexicans doubled their numbers between the 1990 and 2000 censuses, while other subgroups, although smaller in absolute size, grew at even faster rates. As a result of the

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

violence and civil unrest in Central America during the 1980s, immigrant Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Nicaraguans tripled their numbers in the United States in the 1990s. The number of foreign-born Dominicans, Peruvians, and Bolivians doubled in the 1980s, and then doubled again in the 1990s. New migrant streams such as these generally portend increased momentum of immigration because once established, immigrant social networks provide a powerful impetus for future flows. These circumstances also contribute to the growth of undocumented immigration.

LEGAL STATUS

A distinctive feature of Hispanic immigration is the large and growing number of undocumented immigrants. The best contemporary estimate is that close to 11 million undocumented migrants resided in the United States in 2005, 80 percent of them from Mexico and other Latin American countries.14 Mexicans alone account for 57 percent of the entire undocumented population, and more than 80 percent of all Mexican immigrants who arrived in the United States after 1990 were undocumented.15 For perspective, the number of undocumented residents in the United States is larger than the populations of some Latin American countries, such as Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, or Costa Rica.

Many decades in the making, undocumented Hispanic immigration is in part a consequence of both employer demand for cheap, hardworking laborers and failed immigration policy (see Table 2-1).16 Primarily at the behest of American growers, immigration laws in 1921 and 1924 that were designed to exclude immigrants from Asia, Africa, and nonwestern Europe explicitly exempted persons from Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Canal Zone, and the independent countries of Central and South America from the numerical quotas.17 This conveniently permitted unregulated recruitment of Mexican workers as needed and their prompt deportation when they were not, as occurred during the 1930s when about 400,000 (including, as it happened, many U.S. citizens) were repatriated to Mexico. During the mid-1950s, Operation Wetback resulted in the repatriation of even larger numbers of Mexicans—again, legal residents and U.S. citizens among them.18

Several other factors have contributed to the intense flow of undocumented immigration from Mexico. First, the termination in 1964 of the Bracero Accords, which authorized a binational agricultural guestworker program, signaled the closing of an important labor safety valve precisely at

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

TABLE 2-1 Selected Immigration Legislation in the United States

Year

Legislation

Content

1924

National Origins Act

Created a system of national quotas that restricted immigration to 2 percent of national origin groups as of 1890.

1940

Alien Registration Act

Advocated by Senator Joseph McCarthy, required the registration and fingerprinting of all aliens, and enforced laws regarding immigration and deportation.

1952

Immigration and Nationality Act of (McCarran-Walter)

Reinstated the national origins quota system 1924, and limited total annual immigration to one-sixth of 1 percent of the 1920 continental population. Extended the right of naturalization to all races.

1965

Immigration and Nationality Act (Hart-Celler)

Granted priority to family reunification and repealed the national origins quota system.

1978

Worldwide Ceiling Law

A combination ceiling of both Eastern and Western Hemispheres totaling 290,000. It also extended the 20,000 per country maximum to Western Hemisphere countries.

1980

Refugee Act

Established to harbor people fleeing Vietnam; granted asylum to politically oppressed refugees.

1986

Immigration Reform and Control Act

Sanctioned employers who hired undocumented workers; granted amnesty to approximately 3 million undocumented residents.

1990

Immigration Act

Promoted immigration, particularly for highly skilled professionals.

1996

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act

Increased criminal penalties for immigration-related offenses, authorized increases in enforcement personnel, enhanced enforcement authority, and made immigrant sponsorship legally enforceable.

1998

American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act

Increased H-1B visa quotas from 1999 to 2002 for skilled information technology workers. H-1B visas allow foreign nationals with special skills to work in the United States.

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

Year

Legislation

Content

2000

American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act

Raised the annual limit for H-1Bs in fiscal years 2000 through 2003 from the previous 115,000 to 195,000.

2000

Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act

Permitted the reunion of families long separated by delays in the processing of immigrant visas.

2001

Extension of 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act

Allows immigrants who entered the United States without inspection or who overstayed their visas to adjust their status to lawful permanent residence without having to leave the United States, provided they pay a $1,000 penalty and are beneficiaries of family- or employment-based visa petitions filed on or before a certain date.

2001

Patriot Act

Broadened the grounds for excluding terrorists and aliens with ties to terrorist organizations and detaining immigrants thought to be involved in terrorist activities.

2002

Border Security and Visa Reform Act

Increased the number of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) personnel and authorized appropriations for INS, Border Patrol, and consular personnel, training, facilities, and security-related technology.

 

SOURCES: Jasso and Resenzweig (1990) and Kuck (2005).

a time that demographic and economic pressures were mounting in Mexico. Many immigrants went through the process of legalization with the help of their employers. Others, planning to be in the United States only temporarily, decided not to legalize to avoid the bureaucratic delays involved and stayed in the country illegally.

Second, the 1978 amendment to the Hart-Celler Act that tightened requirements for legally authorized immigration from Mexico inadvertently increased pressure for undocumented entry into the United States to skirt the requirements. Finally, legislation designed to curb the flow of undocu-

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

FIGURE 2-3 Apprehensions of undocumented immigrants in the United States, 1951 to 2003.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2003).

mented immigrants during the 1980s and 1990s actually had the opposite effect.19

Flows of undocumented immigrants peaked in the mid-1980s, declined briefly following the enactment of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), again rose gradually during the 1990s, and then accelerated after the mid-1990s, despite passage of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) (see Figure 2-3). IRCA provided amnesty for undocumented immigrants who met specific residence requirements. It also imposed sanctions on employers who hired undocumented workers and launched what would become a series of initiatives to close the border through various surveillance measures. Ironically, once again, some aspects of the legislation actually encouraged unauthorized migration, particularly from Mexico. For example, provisions that gave growers a 2-day warning prior to labor inspections provided a window for an unabated flow of unauthorized workers that was enabled by the strong social networks among farmworkers.

Additionally, IRCA’s amnesty program practically guaranteed future immigration. After adjusting their legal status, legalized immigrants could

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

sponsor husbands and wives, children, parents, and siblings in accordance with the extant visa preference system that authorizes legal immigration. The sheer numbers of undocumented immigrants legalized under IRCA—nearly 3 million, the majority from Latin America—demonstrated that employer sanctions and enhanced border control, which were originally intended to reduce illegal migration flows into the country, had been highly inefficient.

In contrast to IRCA, whose effects generally benefited Hispanics, the 1996 IIRAIRA constituted a serious blow to immigrant communities. Undocumented workers were banned from a wide range of publicly funded support programs and services, including access to in-state college tuition for undocumented youths who graduated from U.S. high schools.20 Resident immigrants who had work permits but were not citizens also saw their access to social benefits threatened. Ironically, because this was not the intention, by sharpening the divide between legal immigrants and citizens, IIRAIRA triggered an upsurge in naturalization applications. For example, in 1996, the year IIRAIRA was enacted, a record number of Mexican migrants applied for naturalization—triple the number from the year before.21

Despite intensified surveillance efforts along the 2000-mile U.S.-Mexican border, which have added another dimension of risk to unlawful entry, and more punitive measures for those who succeed in crossing, the undocumented population continues to grow. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (now U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services of the Department of Homeland Security) estimated net annual undocumented immigration at 350,000 immigrants during the 1990s, but the Census Bureau and others estimate the number at almost half a million per year, on average.22 For the most part, undocumented immigrants reside in a handful of states, although there are signs this may be changing. Currently, undocumented immigrants make up more than 40 percent of the foreign-born population in 10 states.23 Clandestine crossings along the southern border involving Mexicans and Central Americans are responsible for more than half of the continued flow, but the remainder become undocumented by overstaying tourist visas.

The key lesson to be learned from the persistent growth in the size of the undocumented U.S. population is that restrictive immigration policies have repeatedly proven ineffective in sealing the southern border in the face of strong social networks that overcome all sorts of physical and legal barriers to finding jobs.24 Human ingenuity makes quick work of barriers erected between willing workers and employers hungry for cheap labor. Sanctions

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

against employers who hire undocumented workers have proven ineffective in stemming the tide of workers who readily fill low-wage, low-skill jobs largely because they have not been enforced.

Formidable social risks await the large numbers of undocumented Hispanics forced to live in the shadows of mainstream America. Negative public perceptions of undocumented workers stigmatize legitimate low-wage Hispanic workers by conflating their social and legal status, and since September 11, 2001, associating illegal status with criminal status. Such views also compromise the life chances of the U.S.-born children of the undocumented. National boundaries are rendered meaningless in complex families in which some members are citizens and others are undocumented. The problems U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants confront dramatize the social and economic risks of illegal status, and particularly the asymmetries between the children and their parents.25

In the United States, about 10 percent of children live in households in which at least one parent is a noncitizen and one child is a citizen. Legislation limiting the rights and benefits of noncitizen adults disadvantages these children, who are among the nation’s poorest as well. For example, children living with noncitizen parents constitute about a fifth of children nationwide who are uninsured. In addition, both legal and illegal noncitizen parents may be reluctant to approach public or publicly funded institutions for services, despite their children’s citizenship and eligibility.26 The result is that children of immigrants use public benefits less often than children of natives, despite higher rates of economic hardship.27

CONCLUSION

The Hispanic population in the United States, highly diverse in its origins, today represents the nation’s largest and fastest-growing minority, one characterized by a particularly youthful age structure. Its growth is fueled by both immigration and high fertility.

A large and growing number of undocumented immigrants is another distinctive feature of the Hispanic population. Against the reality of the need for and supply of unskilled workers, the social question regarding undocumented migration is not about simply stopping the flow, for its course is dictated largely by intertwined regional economies. Rather, the core questions concern the terms of admission for those who enter legally, the treatment of those who enter and work without the protection of legal

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

status, and whether (and how) the offspring of undocumented workers will gain access to mainstream institutions.

To answer these questions, later chapters consider where Hispanics are positioned in the social mainstream, and their prospects for participating in mainstream American institutions in the nation’s current economy. First, however, it is essential to understand how 40 million culturally diverse people from a score of countries came to be classified under the panethnic label “Hispanic.” The next chapter addresses this question.

NOTES

1  

Although the 2000 U.S. census put the figure at 20.9 million, the adjusted estimate given here includes persons classified as “Hispanic, other” who were born in Mexico or indicated Mexican ancestry but who merely checked “Hispanic” without specifying further. See Appendix A. Statistics based on the 2000 census reported herein are based on adjusted counts.

2  

Rumbaut, 2006:5.

3  

St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565, is the oldest city in the United States.

4  

Montejano, 1987.

5  

The 4 million Puerto Ricans living on the island are not considered in this report because their social, political, and economic circumstances differ in profound ways from those of their mainland counterparts. For example, the term “Hispanic” has no resonance on the island of Puerto Rico.

6  

U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2003.

7  

U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2004a.

8  

“Other Hispanic” refers collectively to groups other than Cuban, Mexican, and Puerto Rican.

9  

Landale et al., 2006.

10  

Durand et al., 2006.

11  

Suro and Passel, 2003; Passel, 2004.

12  

These projections set the level of immigration for 2005-2010 at a little over 7 million. For subsequent periods, continuing increases in immigration are assumed, albeit at relatively low levels—namely 5 percent over each 5-year period in the baseline projections. More details are provided in Passel, 2004.

13  

Passel, 2004.

14  

Estimates of the undocumented population vary from 8 to 12 million. Annual increases have been revised upward from 350,000 to 500,000 (Passel, 2005). The Center for Immigration Studies claims that half of the 4.3 million increase in the foreign-born population between 2000 and 2004 involves undocumented immigrants and a rising share of Mexicans in the total estimated flow from 28 percent in 2000 to 31 percent in 2004 (Camarota, 2004).

15  

Passel, 2005.

16  

Massey et al., 2002.

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×

17  

Tienda, 2002.

18  

Public Broadasting Service, The Border. Available: http://www.pbs.org/kpbs/theborder/index.html [accessed December 5, 2005].

19  

Massey et al., 2002.

20  

This measure has been abrogated in several states that have passed legislation to override the restriction. See Tienda, 2002.

21  

Durand et al., 2006.

22  

Immigration and Naturalization Service, 2003; Passel, 2005.

23  

Passel, 2005.

24  

Massey et al., 2002.

25  

Fix and Zimmermann, 2001.

26  

Fix and Zimmermann, 2001.

27  

Capps et al., 2005.

Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
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Page 18
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 19
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 20
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 21
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 22
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 23
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 24
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 25
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 26
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 27
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 28
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 29
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 30
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 31
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 32
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 33
Suggested Citation:"2 Multiple Origins, Hispanic Portrait." National Research Council. 2006. Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies: Hispanics and the American Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11314.
×
Page 34
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Given current demographic trends, nearly one in five U.S. residents will be of Hispanic origin by 2025. This major demographic shift and its implications for both the United States and the growing Hispanic population make Multiple Origins, Uncertain Destinies a most timely book. This report from the National Research Council describes how Hispanics are transforming the country as they disperse geographically. It considers their roles in schools, in the labor market, in the health care system, and in U.S. politics.

The book looks carefully at the diverse populations encompassed by the term “Hispanic,” representing immigrants and their children and grandchildren from nearly two dozen Spanish-speaking countries. It describes the trajectory of the younger generations and established residents, and it projects long-term trends in population aging, social disparities, and social mobility that have shaped and will shape the Hispanic experience.

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