Why Do Migrants Face Obstacles?

1. Why Do Migrants Face Obstacles? Key Issue #3

2. OLD/NEW • OLD obstacles: • Long, and expensive passage over land or by sea • Cramped and unsanitary conditions endured by 19th century immigrants • NEW obstacles: • Gaining permission to a new country • Face hostile attitudes of citizens once they have entered the new country

3. Quota Act of 1921/National Origins Act of 1924 • Quota Act of 1921/National Origins Act of 1924: • Established maximum limits on the number of people who could immigrate to the United States during a 1 year period • For each country that had native-born persons already living in the United States, 2 % of their number (1910 census) could immigrate each year • Limited Eastern Hemisphere to 150,000 per year, virtually all of whom had to be from Europe • Continued until 1960s without modifications

4. Immigration of 1965 • Immigration Act of 1965 • Eliminated quotas for individual countries and placed quotas on hemispheres • 170,000 from Eastern Hemisphere, 120,000 from Western Hemisphere • 1978 Numbers: • hemisphere quota replaced by global quota of 290,000, including a maximum of 20,000 per country • Currently 620,000 global quota, no more than 7% from one country

5. Current Laws • Current Laws: • Permits 480,000 family-sponsored immigrants • 140,000 employment-related immigrants • ¾ of the immigrants admitted to reunify families, primarily spouses or unmarried children of people already living in the United States • Skilled workers and expectionally talented professionals receive most of the remaining 1.4 of the visas • Others admitted by lottery under a diversity category to people from countries that historically sent few people

6. Current of Laws • Does not apply to refugees • Spouses, children, and parents of U.S. citizens are admitted without limit • Many well-educated Asians enter the U.S. under the skilled worker preference • Then bring in family under the family reunification act

7. Brain Drain • Brain Drain: large-scale emigration by talented people • Well-educated young people leave their native country for better job and teaching opportunities in North America and Europe

8. Temporary Migration For Work • Guest Workers: citizens of poor countries who obtain jobs in Western Europe and the Middle East • Take low status and low skilled jobs • Provide essential services such as driving buses, collecting garbage repairing streets and washing dishes • Send money back home; stimulate home economy

9. Time-Contract Workers • Time-Contract Workers: recruited for fixed periods of time to work in mines or on plantations, many settled in their new country

10. Migrant vs Refugee • Migrant vs Refugee • United States, Canada and Western Europe treat refugees and migrants very differently • Migrants: not admitted unless they possess special skills or have a close relative already there’ • Refugees: receive special treatment

11. Cuba • Cuba: • Political refugees since 1959 revolution that brought Communist government of Fidel Castro to power • Settled in Florida, become prominent in politics and economy • 1980: Castro allowed political prisoners, criminals and mental patients to leave Cuba; 125,000 left for United States for political asylum • Processed in Key West and transferred to camps • Sponsors were expected to provide food and shelter • Many lived in Orange Bowl until start of football season and then transferred to army tents under I-95

12. Haiti • Haiti: • Sailed to U.S. to flee “PAPA DOC and BABY DOC’s” dictatorships • U.S. drew lines differently, Castro was an ally of Soviet Union • U.S. officials claimed Haitians migrated for economic advancement, not political refugee • Haitians sue government and govt admits Haitians

13. Vietnam • Vietnam: • Fled South Vietnam after the North captures Saigon • Some were able to leave on U.S. helicopters to escape capture form the North • Others left on boats and drifted to China and Laos • Some drifted out to sea to find U.S. Naval ships • Once aboard ships could claim refugee status for the United States • Another surge left in the 1980s and headed for Maylaysia, Hong Kong and Thailand

14. U.S. Attitudes toward Immigrants • Americans always regarded new arrivals with suspicion but tempered their dislike during the 19th century, helped build and expand the frontier of the United States • Opposition increased when the majority of immigrants ceased to come from Northern and Western Europe • German and Irish faced harsh prejudice from so-called “Native Americans” • Italians , Russians, Poles and other Southern and Eastern Europeans who came in the 1900s faced much more hostility

15. U.S. Attitudes toward Immigrants • 1911 study reflected these ideas towards immigrants: • Racially inferior • “inclined toward to violent crime” • Resisted assimilation • “drove old-stock citizens out of some lines of work”

16. U.S. Attitudes toward Immigrants • More Recent: • California citizens and other states have voted to deny undocumented immigrants to most public services, schools, day-care centers, and health care services • Difficult to enforce: reflects the unwillingness on the part of many Americans to help out needy immigrants

17. Guest Work in Europe • Guest worker in Europe: • Poor social conditions • Young man who arrives in the city alone • Little money for food, housing, or entertainment • Primary job is to send as much money as possible • Lead a lonely life • Unfamiliar language and cultural activities • Spend free time at local railway stations • Disliked by many Western Europeans and oppose government programs to improve their living conditions • Political parties are gaining support that support restrictions on immigrants in may European countries

18. Guest Worker in Middle East • Guest Worker In Middle East: • Fear that increasing number will spark political unrest and abandonment of traditional Islamic customs • Force migrants to return home if they wish to marry and prevent them from returning with wives and children

19. Anti-Immigrants • Anti-immigrants Politicians: • “if all the immigrants were thrown out of the country, then the unemployment rate would drop, and if all the immigrants were cut off from public programs , then taxes would drop” • Little scientific basis and have racist overtones