Sunday, July 01, 2012 12:51:08 AM
The (Sort of) New Mitt
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: June 22, 2012
Today: Mitt Romney and immigration.
As you know, American Hispanics are an important and fast-growing voting bloc. Romney has long had a strategy for winning them over. The key, he explained last year, is to tell them “what they know in their heart, which is they or their ancestors did not come here for a handout.”
Hard to get more appealing than that.
This was Primary Mitt, who had a long history of whacking his Republican opponents with soft-on-illegal-immigrants charges. In the 2008 campaign, he accused Rudy Giuliani of making New York a “sanctuary city” and Mike Huckabee of supporting “in-state benefits for illegal immigrants.” One of his ads called John McCain a champion of “amnesty for illegals.” The Romney news release that accompanied the ad’s debut mentioned “amnesty” 17 times.
It didn’t work. McCain won the nomination anyway. That was the earlier version of John McCain, before he lost the presidential race and was abducted by space aliens who took him off to a distant planet and substituted a cranky android with an obsession about border fences.
Last year, Romney tried the same tactics on Rick Perry. “I got to be honest with you. I don’t see how it is that a state like Texas — you go to the University of Texas, if you’re an illegal alien, you get an in-state tuition discount,” he complained during one of the debates.
Perry suggested that when it came to undocumented students who had been brought to the country as children, Romney had no heart. Also, he tried to get some mileage out of the fact that Mitt had once employed illegal immigrants to tend his yard. But it was, you know, Rick Perry, so, of course, nothing worked.
Now Romney is the inevitable Republican nominee, and this week there he was, speaking to a large group of prominent Hispanics. It was his first chance to try out his strategy, but astonishingly, Romney did not tell the audience what they knew in their hearts about in-state tuition and other handouts.
In fact, the word “handout” never came up. Romney did tell the inspiring story of his father’s emigration from Mexico at the age of 5, although not the part about how the family had gone down there in the first place to avoid American laws against polygamy.
And there was quite a bit about the economy. You certainly can’t blame Romney for mentioning it every chance he gets. But not everybody would choose to follow “liberty’s torch can burn just as brightly for future generations of immigrants” with a call to lower the corporate tax rate.
Plus, standard Mittspeak. We are going to have a lot of this in the coming months, people. Let’s pause for a minute while you test your ability to be a Mitt Romney speechwriter:
“Though each of us walks a different path in life, we are united by one great, overwhelming passion. We love ...
A) heavily sugared soft drinks.”
B) attractive young women who marry into the British royal family.”
C) cat videos.”
D) America.”
“This isn’t an election about two people. This isn’t an election about being a Republican, Democrat or an independent. This is an election about ...
A) lowering the corporate tax rate.”
B) lowering the individual marginal tax rates.”
C) keeping dogs off the car roof.”
D) the future of America.”
O.K., the Ds. And not the most stirring speech in the history of the world. Obama, who followed up on Friday, got a warmer reception. But let’s try to figure out what Romney actually said. Except when it came to certain lawn-mowing episodes, he’s always talked very tough on illegal immigration. Now that he’s sniffing around for Hispanic voters, is he going to change his tune?
Answer: Romney vowed to address the problem “in a civil and resolute manner.” That was a surprise. I really thought he’d go for “impolite yet wishy-washy.”
Like many of our big policy debates, immigration reform has dwindled away to an argument about something less than sweeping. In this case, it’s the Dream Act, the popular plan to let people who were brought here illegally as kids become citizens if they get a college degree or serve in the military.
Primary Mitt was going to veto it.
General Election Mitt will take the military service part, “and if you get an advanced degree here, we want you to stay here.” (Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses bearing Ph.D.’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering or computer science. ...)
As for the mere college graduates, whom Obama has now announced he will protect from deportation under an executive order, Romney was, um, vague. But whatever he does will be “long-term.”
Also, he seems to have banished “self-deportation” and “amnesty” from his vocabulary. Unless it looks as if they’ll come in handy somewhere down the line.
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Related News
Obama Draws Contrast With Romney in His Turn Before Hispanics (June 23, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/us/politics/obama-draws-contrast-with-romney-in-his-turn-before-hispanics.html
Romney Exhibits a Change in Tone on Immigration (June 22, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/politics/romney-exhibits-a-change-in-tone-on-immigration.html
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© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/collins-the-sort-of-new-mitt.html [with comments]
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Como se dice 'awkward' en Espanol?
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-horsey-court-immigration-20120627,0,3993167.story
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Romney’s Nixonian Secret Plans
Mitt Romney
(Photo by Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)
by Bill Buck
June 22, 2012 12:57 PM
Does Mitt Romney understand the job he is interviewing for?
After the speech he gave to Hispanic legislators yesterday in Orlando the answer clearly is no.
Like a financier spinning fanciful scenarios to investors, Romney referred to the Obama Administration’s actions as a stopgap measure and insisted a Romney Presidency would provide an immediate and permanent solution.
He continued to avoid commenting [ http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/06/21/romney-latino-vote-softens-stance-on-immigration/ ] on the implementation of the DREAM Act by executive order, as though it would not be an issue he would have to deal with. He provided no details, not even a hint, of what Mitt Romney’s Immigration Plan is.
Either this is a lousy sales job, which is bad, or he has no idea there’s a difference between running Bain Capital and running the nation, which is worse.
Like Richard Nixon’s secret plan to end the Vietnam War in 1968, this is a total con job.
Romney’s secret plan for immigration joins his secret plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act as president. In both cases he provides no details about these plans. He has shared no thoughts about how he would deal with those affected by his plans.
All he gives is his ironclad guarantee that he can just put something in place immediately that will fix all the problems. Maybe that works in Mitt Romney’s delusional world.
At Bain Capital this kind of sales-job-slash-con-job may work. People desperate for him to turn around their company may not have worried about all the details.
At Bain Capital, Romney was able to do as he wished by putting a bunch of his buddies on an acquired company’s board to rubber stamp his plans.
Is Mitt Romney’s real secret plan to abolish Congress and set up a United States Board of Directors to rubber stamp his other secret plans?
Not going to happen.
But without such a rubber stamp his words are a fantasyland of empty promises.
Even Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has grown tired of the lack of details [ http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/06/20/gop-wont-say-if-immigration-plan-is-amnesty/target= ]. This week he complained that Senators were waiting for their leader to provide guidance on his immigration plans.
The voters may not be happy with the economy, but they aren’t going to settle for secret plans.
©2012 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc.
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/06/22/romneys-nixonian-secret-plans/ [with comment]
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Mitt Romney’s immigration headache becomes a full-on migraine
By Lee Hockstader
Posted at 11:56 AM ET, 06/25/2012
The Arizona immigration law that Romney hailed as a “model” [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/romney-arizona-immigration-law-a-model/2012/02/23/gIQA8ULZVR_blog.html ] for the nation was mostly gutted by the Supreme Court [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-rules-on-arizona-immigration-law/2012/06/25/gJQA0Nrm1V_story.html ] on Monday. The court made it clear that the one key section of the law still standing — the check-your-papers provision — may yet be struck down if it turns out to promote racial profiling and discrimination. Which, in the case of Arizona, where the immigrant-baiting sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, is on a one-man crusade against Hispanics, is more than a little likely.
In Etch a Sketch mode, Romney once said that he wasn’t recommending the entire Arizona immigration statute be copied by other states, just the employment verification parts. But the court invalidated the parts of the law dealing with employment verification — criminalizing immigrants who seek or hold jobs without proper documents, for instance. Oops.
For the last week, Romney ducked and dodged any cogent response to President Obama’s order allowing some 800,000 undocumented youths to apply for work permits — a form of amnesty that enrage the Republican base.
Politically, his motives were obvious. Oppose the president’s move, and he further alienates Hispanic voters for whom the Republican brand is already highly toxic. Embrace it and kiss Tea Party voters goodbye. So Romney devised a neither-here-nor-there stance. Call it The Great Mumble. Asked whether he’d revoke or extend Obama’s order, he said he’d simply preempt it with comprehensive immigration reform.
That would be the same comprehensive immigration reform that both President Bush and President Obama have failed to enact, despite multiple attempts. In other words, Romney’s response to the Obama order was fiction. And not very artful fiction.
Next, we are likely to see more ducking and dodging from the Romney campaign, which will try to explain what it meant, or might have meant, or didn’t mean, when he called the now mostly gutted Arizona statute a “model.” As political messaging goes, it will be great entertainment. But don’t expect anything resembling clarity, coherence or transparency.
© 1996-2012 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/mitt-romneys-immigration-headache-becomes-a-full-on-migraine/2012/06/25/gJQAl0tv1V_blog.html [with comments]
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3 Reasons Mitt Romney's 'No Comment' Campaign Is Unsustainable
On Monday, this Romney spokesperson managed to chew gum and deflect questions on Romney's position on the Supreme Court's immigration ruling at the same time [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9k_0MjY4GU ]:
By Garance Franke-Ruta
Jun 27 2012, 9:40 AM ET
"When is Romney going to look like a challenger? Seems to play everything safe, make no news except burn off Hispanics," media mogul Rupert Murdoch tweeted Sunday [ https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/217009901078196225 ].
It's been the plaintive cry of worried supporters and the shrewd observation [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60444.html ] of reporters for going on a year now: Mitt Romney's favored strategy for pursuing the presidency this cycle is to hide in plain sight, avoiding hot-button issues except when forced to articulate positions on them, as during debates, and then reverting to close-lipped type. He's declined to release tax returns [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2012/01/23/gIQAj5bUMQ_story.html ] dating to before 2010. He doesn't make his bundlers known [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-romneys-secret-bundlers/2012/06/09/gJQAkAqkQV_story.html ]. He tells his donors more about his policy ambitions than the public [ http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/15/11216845-romney-offers-policy-details-at-closed-door-fundraiser ], as reporters discovered in April when his remarks were "overheard by reporters on a sidewalk below" the room where he was speaking. He holds "secret meetings [ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/05/mitt_romney_claims_to_hold_secret_meetings_with_everyday_americans_.html ]" with voters to collect campaign anecdotes. Most recently, he's avoided taking a firm stand on the Supreme Court's decision [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/the-supreme-courts-arizona-decision-makes-romneys-life-more-difficult/258956/ ] partially overturning Arizona's strict immigration law. But as in the primary, where Romney's cautious style caused worry he was setting himself up for a protracted battle -- something that in fact came to pass -- there are real dangers in his approach.
"You're running for president and there's a golden opportunity for a challenger, given the economy, given the many failed initiatives of the Obama administration. It's somewhat confusing as to why he's playing it so close to the vest," conservative Republican strategist Keith Appell told Politico's Ben Smith [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60444.html ] last August.
Plus ça change. Here's why it could be good tactics but bad strategy for Romney to stay too far above the fray in the general:
1. It makes Romney look weak.
Former President Clinton famously said after the 2002 midterm elections, in which the Republicans, the party in power, anomalously picked up seats, "When people are insecure, they'd rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who's weak and right." Failing to take stands on the major issues of the day because they are controversial makes Romney look like he lacks the courage of his convictions. That reemphasizes the attack on Romney that he lacks convictions at all. But a say-nothing candidate is actually not the same as a say-anything one; the latter looks craven, the former, afraid.
And to the extent that President Obama makes bold moves [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/obamas-game-changer-on-young-illegal-immigrants/258550/ ] on potentially divisive social issues, Romney's fear of coming too distinctly into view -- his "attack-and-dodge strategy [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/22/policy-black-hole-mitt-romney-keeps-his-ideas-to-himself.html ]" -- is cast into even greater relief.
2. It makes him look like he has something to hide.
Between the overseas bank accounts [ http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-01-20/romney-offshore-accounts/52700400/1 ], the lack of financial disclosure, and the destruction of his gubernatorial records [ http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/us-usa-campaign-romney-computers-idUSTRE7B500X20111206 ] in Massachusetts, it already looks like Romney is trying to hide his record and the true extent of his vast wealth. Failing to takes stands on major issues besides makes Romney look like he must believe something terrible in his heart of hearts.
The perception that Obama contained multitudes, even if he did not, worked for him in 2008. He was a newcomer on the scene onto whom voters projected their fantasies, hoping he would be a less conventional political actor than he in fact has been. But there's a real risk for Romney, who is better defined in the public mind than Obama was, that attempts to remain a bit of a cipher will just make him look sneaky.
"Trust me" is not a compelling campaign message for our our low-trust era.
3. It gives new weight to the argument he has no core and doesn't believe in anything except his own success.
All of this adds up to the idea that we can't know who Romney is. This is just anecdata, but a year ago, a number of Democrats of my acquaintance looked at Romney and saw a credible alternative to a president they were mad at -- a well-educated moderate Massachusetts Republican for whom they could vote without fear or embarrassment. Today, that warmth has passed and I hear a growing nervousness about him, a fear he would be worse than George W. Bush in office because of his lack of core convictions and the greater fractiousness and power of grassroots Republican activists, whom he seems open to indulging.
They are worried, in short, that "he who stands for nothing will fall for anything [ http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/51287.Alexander_Hamilton ]."
Romney's issue positions look increasingly like the negotiations of an attorney trying to close a deal -- he'll say what he needs to say, he'll tack and trim, and he'll change course if need be in order to get the result he wants at the great public bargaining table. But once in office, how will such a man govern? Romney's campaign is trying to play it safe by not revealing too much. But there's a real risk people also will look at that caution and develop some hesitations of their own.
Copyright © 2012 by The Atlantic Monthly Group
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/3-reasons-mitt-romneys-no-comment-campaign-is-unsustainable/258934/ [with comments]
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American Children, Now Struggling to Adjust to Life in Mexico
Video [embedded]
Jeffrey’s Difficult Move: Jeffrey Isidoro, 10, moved to Mexico after his father was deported from the United States. He is part of a new generation of young immigrants blurring the line between Mexican and American.
Jeffrey Isidoro, 10, misses Houston and has had a hard time making friends at school in Izúcar de Matamoros in central Mexico.
Shaul Schwarz for The New York Times
"There are all these drug addicts, drug dealers, people who do nothing in the United States, and you're going to kick me out." — TOMÁS ISIDORO, Jeffrey's father, deported after living 25 years in the United States
Shaul Schwarz for The New York Times
A family photo of Jeffrey in front of their home in Virginia, where they lived before moving to Texas and then Mexico.
Shaul Schwarz for The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: June 18, 2012
IZÚCAR DE MATAMOROS, Mexico — Jeffrey Isidoro sat near the door of his fifth-grade classroom here in central Mexico, staring outside through designer glasses that, like his Nike sneakers and Nike backpack, signaled a life lived almost entirely in the United States. His parents are at home in Mexico. Jeffrey is lost.
When his teacher asked in Spanish how dolphins communicate, a boy next to him reached over to underline the right answer. When it was Jeffrey’s turn to read, his classmates laughed and shouted “en inglés, en inglés” — causing Jeffrey to blush.
“Houston is home,” Jeffrey said during recess, in English. “The houses and stuff here, it’s all a little strange. I feel, like, uncomfortable.”
Never before has Mexico seen so many American Jeffreys, Jennifers and Aidens in its classrooms. The wave of deportations in the past few years, along with tougher state laws and persistent unemployment, have all created a mass exodus of Mexican parents who are leaving with their American sons and daughters.
In all, 1.4 million Mexicans — including about 300,000 children born in the United States — moved to Mexico between 2005 and 2010, according to Mexican census figures. That is roughly double the rate of southbound migration from 1995 to 2000, and new government data published this month suggest that the flow is not diminishing. The result is an entire generation of children who blur the line between Mexican and American.
“It’s really a new phenomenon,” said Víctor Zúñiga, a sociologist at the University of Monterrey, in Nuevo León State, which borders Texas. “It’s the first time in the relationship between Mexico and the United States that we have a generation of young people sharing both societies during the early years of their lives.”
Critics of immigration have mostly welcomed the mass departure, but demographers and educators worry that far too many American children are being sent to schools in Mexico that are not equipped to integrate them. And because research shows that most of these children plan to return to the United States, some argue that what is Mexico’s challenge today will be an American problem tomorrow, with a new class of emerging immigrants: young adults with limited skills, troubled childhoods and the full rights of American citizenship.
“These kinds of changes are really traumatic for kids,” said Marta Tienda, a sociologist at Princeton who was born in Texas to Mexican migrant laborers. “It’s going to stick with them.”
Jeffrey’s situation is increasingly common. His father, Tomás Isidoro, 39, a carpenter, was one of the 46,486 immigrants deported in the first half of 2011 who said they had American children, according to a report by Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ http://www.scribd.com/doc/87388663/ICE-Deport-of-Parents-of-US-Cit-FY-2011-2nd-Half ] to Congress. That is eight times the half-year average for such removals from 1998 to 2007.
Mr. Isidoro, wearing a Dallas Cowboys hat in his parents’ kitchen, said he was still angry that his 25 years of work in the United States meant nothing; that being caught with a broken taillight on his vehicle and without immigration papers meant more than having two American sons — Jeffrey, 10, and his brother, Tommy Jefferson, 2, who was named after the family’s favorite president.
As for President Obama, Mr. Isidoro uttered an expletive. “There are all these drug addicts, drug dealers, people who do nothing in the United States, and you’re going to kick people like me out,” he said. “Why?”
White House officials have said that under a new policy focused on criminals, fewer parents of American children are being deported for minor offenses. On Friday, the Obama administration also announced that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came to United States as children would be allowed to stay [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/us/us-to-stop-deporting-some-illegal-immigrants.html ] without fear of deportation. The policy, however, does not grant legal status, and because nearly half of the country’s 10.2 million illegal immigrant adults have children, experts say that inevitably more families will be divided — especially if deportations over all hold steady around 400,000 a year.
But for Jeffrey, the impact of his father’s removal in June last year was immediate. His grades dipped. His mother, Leivi Rodríguez, 32, worried that he had become more distant, from both his friends and his studies. Almost every day, Jeffrey told her he wanted to see his father.
So six months after her husband’s deportation, she sent Jeffrey to live with his father in Mexico, and she followed with Tommy a few months later. It was December when he arrived here in a hill town south of Mexico City, surrounded by fields of swaying sugar cane. On Jeffrey’s first night, he noticed something strange in his bed. “Dad, what’s that?” he asked.
“A scorpion,” his father said.
School here presented new challenges, as well. Jeffrey went hungry at first because neither he nor his father realized that without a cafeteria, students relied on their parents to bring them food at recess.
In class, Jeffrey’s level of confusion rises and falls. His teacher said she struggled to keep him from daydreaming. “His body is here, but his mind — who knows where it is,” she said.
Houston — that is where Jeffrey’s thoughts typically drift. There, he had friends, McDonald’s, the zoo. It is where he lingered at the library at Gleason Elementary to catch up on his favorite series of books, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” There, his school had a playground; here, there is just a concrete slab. There, computers were common; here, there are none.
“It was just better,” Jeffrey said.
The educational disparities between Mexico and the United States are not always so stark. At the elementary level, some of Mexico’s schools are on par with, or even stronger than, the overcrowded, underfinanced American schools that serve many immigrant children, education experts say.
But Mexican schools lag when it comes to secondary education. In many areas of Mexico, especially places where the tradition of migration is not as well established, Mexico’s educational bureaucracy can make life difficult for new arrivals like Jeffrey. It is not uncommon for American students to be barred from enrollment for a year or more because they lack proper documents.
“The established rules for registration don’t need to be so severe,” said Armando Reynoso Carrillo, a state legislator from Malinalco, a rural area in Mexico State where dozens of American children have arrived in recent years.
The problems extend beyond registration. Mexicans have a long history of greeting returnees with skepticism — for abandoning Mexico, or because they resent the United States, or view those who moved there as materialistic, culturally out of touch and arrogant. The prejudice often extends to their children.
Graciela Treviño González said that when she returned to Malinalco three years ago, after more than a decade in California, she could not get her American son onto a soccer team because the coaches refused to accept him without Mexican identification. “He felt rejected by everyone,” she said. “The kids called him ‘leche,’ ‘gringo’ — it was awful.” Leche means milk and gringo can range from a neutral reference to a foreigner to a slur.
Here in the central state of Puebla, Mexican children are especially likely to see transnational students as different, according to surveys by Mr. Zúñiga, the sociologist. Some have come to Mexico because of deportations. Others arrived because relatives were sick or without work.
But regardless of the cause, Mexican students tend to see their American-educated colleagues as strangers. Jeffrey’s experience is typical: He is friendly and quick to open up in English, but quieter at school, where Spanish is the only language one hears.
At one point this spring, as Jeffrey sat at the edge of the playground, a larger boy approached from behind and asked if he was from Florida or Houston. When Jeffrey pulled away because the boy had leaned into him, the bigger boy seemed surprised. “Are you mad?” he asked.
Later, other boys tested Jeffrey on his English, asking him in Spanish to translate various body parts.
“How do you say foot?” one asked. “Finger?”
“Eye?”
Jeffrey provided one-word answers without enthusiasm. At home, a three-room concrete box with furniture hauled from Houston, he said that many of the children called him Four Eyes. He said he was starting to feel more comfortable academically and socially, but even in a school with 11 other children born or educated in the United States (out of 296) he is still a foreigner. Sometimes, he confuses the Mexican pledge of allegiance with the American version.
Ms. Tienda, at Princeton, said children of Jeffrey’s age were more likely to struggle with such a difficult transition. “This is the age where they start to be aware of each other’s differences,” she said. “They’re preadolescents and their identity is being crystallized.”
She added that how these students fared over the long term will probably vary widely. Some will make the transition easily while others will suffer setback after setback. It will depend on their language skills, school and family dynamics.
Jeffrey, like many other children whose parents have moved them to a country they do not know, seems to be teetering between catching up to his classmates and falling further behind. His parents are struggling to find work and keep their marriage together. Jeffrey, in quieter moments, said he was just trying to endure until he could go home.
“I dream, like, I’m sleeping in the United States,” he said. “But when I wake up, I’m in Mexico.”
Shaul Schwarz contributed reporting.
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Immigration Upended
Articles in this series are exploring the changing patterns of immigration between the United States and Mexico.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/americas/immigration-upended-series.html
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© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/world/americas/american-born-children-struggle-to-adjust-in-mexico.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/world/americas/american-born-children-struggle-to-adjust-in-mexico.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]
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Don’t Shut the Golden Door
By JOHN M. MacDONALD and ROBERT J. SAMPSON
Published: June 19, 2012
IMMIGRATION [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/immigration/index.html ] is in the headlines again, with President Obama’s decision last week to stop deporting young illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, and the Supreme Court’s approaching decision on the constitutionality of Arizona’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.
But too much of the public debate has focused on the legality of immigration without considering a more fundamental question: What effects has mass immigration had on American society?
As a result of the 1965 immigration act, which opened the door widely to non-European immigrants, 40 million foreign-born immigrants now live in the United States. They make up 13 percent of the population, the largest such proportion since the 1920s. More than half of these migrants are from Latin America and the Caribbean, although a study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that Asians overtook Hispanics in 2009 as the fastest-growing group of immigrants.
For the May issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, we commissioned some of the most meticulous research done to date about the effects of immigration on a cross section of American communities — urban, suburban and rural.
The scholars who participated were in remarkable agreement: while new immigrants are poorer than the general population and face considerable hardship, there is no evidence that they have reshaped the social fabric in harmful ways.
America is neither less safe because of immigration nor is it worse off economically. In fact, in the regions where immigrants have settled in the past two decades, crime has gone down, cities have grown, poor urban neighborhoods have been rebuilt, and small towns that were once on life support are springing back.
Scholars can’t say for sure that immigration caused these positive developments, but we know enough to debunk the notion that immigrants worsen social ills.
For example, in rural counties that experienced an influx of immigrants in the 1980s and ’90s, crime rates dropped by more than they did in rural counties that did not see high immigrant growth. Higher immigration was associated with reductions in homicide rates for white, black and Latino victims. In both Hazleton, Pa., which has a recent history of hostility toward immigration, and St. James, Minn., a much more welcoming community, migrants have also bolstered dwindling populations and helped to reverse economic decline.
In large gateway cities, immigration has been associated not only with a decrease in crime but also with economic revitalization and reductions in concentrated poverty. Data from the 2005 American Community Survey showed, for example, that the income of blacks in the New York City borough of Queens surpassed that of whites for the first time, a development driven largely by immigration from the West Indies.
Scholars found that immigrant youths in Los Angeles were involved in less crime and violence than their native-born peers in similar economic circumstances. Research also has shown that an increase in immigration in cities like San Antonio and Miami did not produce an increase in the homicide rate. Furthermore, social scientists found that people in immigrant communities in New York were less cynical about the law than were people in less diverse communities; they were also more likely to indicate that they would cooperate with the police.
If migration has had such beneficial effects, why, then, has there been such a persistent backlash?
Part of the answer surely lies in the social changes — language, political attitudes, religious mores — that immigrants bring, in addition to the effects of the recession. The leveling-off of migration, especially from Mexico, may bring a sense of relief to opponents of these social changes, but if the new research is any guide, the consequences of the slowdown may be the opposite of what the critics intend.
Comprehensive immigration reform — last attempted during the second term of President George W. Bush — should be a priority for whoever wins in November. Mr. Obama’s decision to exempt undocumented children who were brought to the United States by their parents from harsh deportation rules is an overdue, but welcome, first step.
Establishing a clear path to citizenship for undocumented adults, creating a more permissive guest-worker program, reducing unwarranted police stops of immigrants and preserving families rather than separating them through deportation are controversial ideas, but they deserve a hearing.
John M. MacDonald [ http://www.crim.upenn.edu/faculty/profiles/macdonald.html ] is an associate professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. Robert J. Sampson [ http://scholar.harvard.edu/sampson/ ] is a professor of the social sciences at Harvard.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/opinion/the-beneficial-impact-of-immigrants.html
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Immigrants Are Crucial to Innovation, Study Says
Wenyuan Shi, a native of China, earned a patent in 2011 for the active ingredient in a lollipop that can help prevent tooth decay.
U.C.L.A. School of Dentistry
By ANDREW MARTIN
Published: June 25, 2012
Arguing against immigration [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration_and_refugees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier ] policies that force foreign-born innovators to leave the United States, a new study [ http://www.renewoureconomy.org/index.php?q=patent-pending ; also http://renewoureconomy.org/university-letter , http://renewoureconomy.org/not-coming and http://renewoureconomy.org/aeireport ] to be released on Tuesday shows that immigrants played a role in more than three out of four patents at the nation’s top research universities.
Conducted by the Partnership for a New American Economy [ http://www.renewoureconomy.org/ ], a nonprofit group co-founded by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, the study notes that nearly all the patents were in science, technology, engineering and math, the so-called STEM fields that are a crucial driver of job growth.
The report points out that while many of the world’s top foreign-born innovators are trained at United States universities, after graduation they face “daunting or insurmountable immigration hurdles that force them to leave and bring their talents elsewhere.”
The Partnership for a New American Economy released a paper in May saying that other nations were aggressively courting highly skilled citizens who had settled in the United States, urging them to return to their home countries. The partnership supports legislation that would make it easier for foreign-born STEM graduates and entrepreneurs to stay in the United States.
“Now that we know immigrants are behind more than three of every four patents from leading universities, the federal laws that send so many of them back to their home countries look even more patently wrong,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement.
But some worry that the partnership’s ideas for immigration reform would undermine similarly skilled American workers while failing to address broader problems with immigration policy.
“No one is asking what is in their best interest, the American worker,” said Eric Ruark, director of research for the Federal for American Immigration Reform, an advocacy group that is pushing for reduced immigration. “It’s what is best for the employers. What is best for the foreign workers. It’s not as if the foreign workers aren’t skilled. What’s being ignored is we already have a domestic work force that has the same skills.”
The most recent study seeks to quantify the potential costs of immigration policies by reviewing 1,469 patents from the 10 universities and university systems that had obtained the most in 2011. The schools include the University of California system, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Patents, the study maintains, are a gauge for a nation’s level of innovation and an important way for the United States to maintain an edge in STEM fields.
In one illustration of the issue, the study notes that nine out of 10 patents at the University of Illinois system in 2011 had at least one foreign-born inventor. Of those, 64 percent had a foreign inventor who was not yet a professor but rather a student, researcher or postdoctoral fellow, a group more likely to face immigration problems.
Some of the patents that were reviewed for the report have become business ventures. Wenyuan Shi, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, earned a patent for an ingredient in a lollipop he developed that works as a dental treatment for children. A native of China, Mr. Shi has created a company to commercialize his inventions.
But current immigration laws can make it difficult for foreign-born students to remain in the United States after graduation. And employers may be wary of hiring them because green cards, allowing for permanent residency status, are limited and the process of obtaining one is cumbersome and expensive.
Under the current system, foreign-born students are allowed to stay in the United States for 12 to 29 months after graduation, provided they find a job or internship in their field.
After that, more permanent visas are difficult to obtain, restricted by factors like country quotas. The study notes that China is entitled to the same number of visas as Iceland.
Dr. Ashlesh Murthy came to the United States from India in 2001 to pursue a master’s degree in molecular biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Working with his professors there, he developed a vaccine for the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia, which obtained patents in 2011 and 2012.
Nonetheless, Dr. Murthy had to negotiate a bureaucratic maze to remain in the United States, and at one point was stuck in India for an extra month because American officials in India doubted a previously approved visa.
Noting that university officials petitioned a congressman to intervene on his behalf, Dr. Murthy, said, “If I was not in a position where they really wanted me, I seriously doubt I would have gotten back.”
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/business/immigrants-played-role-in-majority-of-us-technical-patents-study-finds.html
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(linked in):
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=76806245 and following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=76992448 and following
By GAIL COLLINS
Published: June 22, 2012
Today: Mitt Romney and immigration.
As you know, American Hispanics are an important and fast-growing voting bloc. Romney has long had a strategy for winning them over. The key, he explained last year, is to tell them “what they know in their heart, which is they or their ancestors did not come here for a handout.”
Hard to get more appealing than that.
This was Primary Mitt, who had a long history of whacking his Republican opponents with soft-on-illegal-immigrants charges. In the 2008 campaign, he accused Rudy Giuliani of making New York a “sanctuary city” and Mike Huckabee of supporting “in-state benefits for illegal immigrants.” One of his ads called John McCain a champion of “amnesty for illegals.” The Romney news release that accompanied the ad’s debut mentioned “amnesty” 17 times.
It didn’t work. McCain won the nomination anyway. That was the earlier version of John McCain, before he lost the presidential race and was abducted by space aliens who took him off to a distant planet and substituted a cranky android with an obsession about border fences.
Last year, Romney tried the same tactics on Rick Perry. “I got to be honest with you. I don’t see how it is that a state like Texas — you go to the University of Texas, if you’re an illegal alien, you get an in-state tuition discount,” he complained during one of the debates.
Perry suggested that when it came to undocumented students who had been brought to the country as children, Romney had no heart. Also, he tried to get some mileage out of the fact that Mitt had once employed illegal immigrants to tend his yard. But it was, you know, Rick Perry, so, of course, nothing worked.
Now Romney is the inevitable Republican nominee, and this week there he was, speaking to a large group of prominent Hispanics. It was his first chance to try out his strategy, but astonishingly, Romney did not tell the audience what they knew in their hearts about in-state tuition and other handouts.
In fact, the word “handout” never came up. Romney did tell the inspiring story of his father’s emigration from Mexico at the age of 5, although not the part about how the family had gone down there in the first place to avoid American laws against polygamy.
And there was quite a bit about the economy. You certainly can’t blame Romney for mentioning it every chance he gets. But not everybody would choose to follow “liberty’s torch can burn just as brightly for future generations of immigrants” with a call to lower the corporate tax rate.
Plus, standard Mittspeak. We are going to have a lot of this in the coming months, people. Let’s pause for a minute while you test your ability to be a Mitt Romney speechwriter:
“Though each of us walks a different path in life, we are united by one great, overwhelming passion. We love ...
A) heavily sugared soft drinks.”
B) attractive young women who marry into the British royal family.”
C) cat videos.”
D) America.”
“This isn’t an election about two people. This isn’t an election about being a Republican, Democrat or an independent. This is an election about ...
A) lowering the corporate tax rate.”
B) lowering the individual marginal tax rates.”
C) keeping dogs off the car roof.”
D) the future of America.”
O.K., the Ds. And not the most stirring speech in the history of the world. Obama, who followed up on Friday, got a warmer reception. But let’s try to figure out what Romney actually said. Except when it came to certain lawn-mowing episodes, he’s always talked very tough on illegal immigration. Now that he’s sniffing around for Hispanic voters, is he going to change his tune?
Answer: Romney vowed to address the problem “in a civil and resolute manner.” That was a surprise. I really thought he’d go for “impolite yet wishy-washy.”
Like many of our big policy debates, immigration reform has dwindled away to an argument about something less than sweeping. In this case, it’s the Dream Act, the popular plan to let people who were brought here illegally as kids become citizens if they get a college degree or serve in the military.
Primary Mitt was going to veto it.
General Election Mitt will take the military service part, “and if you get an advanced degree here, we want you to stay here.” (Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses bearing Ph.D.’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering or computer science. ...)
As for the mere college graduates, whom Obama has now announced he will protect from deportation under an executive order, Romney was, um, vague. But whatever he does will be “long-term.”
Also, he seems to have banished “self-deportation” and “amnesty” from his vocabulary. Unless it looks as if they’ll come in handy somewhere down the line.
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Related News
Obama Draws Contrast With Romney in His Turn Before Hispanics (June 23, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/us/politics/obama-draws-contrast-with-romney-in-his-turn-before-hispanics.html
Romney Exhibits a Change in Tone on Immigration (June 22, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/us/politics/romney-exhibits-a-change-in-tone-on-immigration.html
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© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/opinion/collins-the-sort-of-new-mitt.html [with comments]
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Como se dice 'awkward' en Espanol?
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-horsey-court-immigration-20120627,0,3993167.story
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Romney’s Nixonian Secret Plans
Mitt Romney
(Photo by Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)
by Bill Buck
June 22, 2012 12:57 PM
Does Mitt Romney understand the job he is interviewing for?
After the speech he gave to Hispanic legislators yesterday in Orlando the answer clearly is no.
Like a financier spinning fanciful scenarios to investors, Romney referred to the Obama Administration’s actions as a stopgap measure and insisted a Romney Presidency would provide an immediate and permanent solution.
He continued to avoid commenting [ http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/06/21/romney-latino-vote-softens-stance-on-immigration/ ] on the implementation of the DREAM Act by executive order, as though it would not be an issue he would have to deal with. He provided no details, not even a hint, of what Mitt Romney’s Immigration Plan is.
Either this is a lousy sales job, which is bad, or he has no idea there’s a difference between running Bain Capital and running the nation, which is worse.
Like Richard Nixon’s secret plan to end the Vietnam War in 1968, this is a total con job.
Romney’s secret plan for immigration joins his secret plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act as president. In both cases he provides no details about these plans. He has shared no thoughts about how he would deal with those affected by his plans.
All he gives is his ironclad guarantee that he can just put something in place immediately that will fix all the problems. Maybe that works in Mitt Romney’s delusional world.
At Bain Capital this kind of sales-job-slash-con-job may work. People desperate for him to turn around their company may not have worried about all the details.
At Bain Capital, Romney was able to do as he wished by putting a bunch of his buddies on an acquired company’s board to rubber stamp his plans.
Is Mitt Romney’s real secret plan to abolish Congress and set up a United States Board of Directors to rubber stamp his other secret plans?
Not going to happen.
But without such a rubber stamp his words are a fantasyland of empty promises.
Even Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has grown tired of the lack of details [ http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/06/20/gop-wont-say-if-immigration-plan-is-amnesty/target= ]. This week he complained that Senators were waiting for their leader to provide guidance on his immigration plans.
The voters may not be happy with the economy, but they aren’t going to settle for secret plans.
©2012 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc.
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/06/22/romneys-nixonian-secret-plans/ [with comment]
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Mitt Romney’s immigration headache becomes a full-on migraine
By Lee Hockstader
Posted at 11:56 AM ET, 06/25/2012
The Arizona immigration law that Romney hailed as a “model” [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/romney-arizona-immigration-law-a-model/2012/02/23/gIQA8ULZVR_blog.html ] for the nation was mostly gutted by the Supreme Court [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/supreme-court-rules-on-arizona-immigration-law/2012/06/25/gJQA0Nrm1V_story.html ] on Monday. The court made it clear that the one key section of the law still standing — the check-your-papers provision — may yet be struck down if it turns out to promote racial profiling and discrimination. Which, in the case of Arizona, where the immigrant-baiting sheriff of Maricopa County, Joe Arpaio, is on a one-man crusade against Hispanics, is more than a little likely.
In Etch a Sketch mode, Romney once said that he wasn’t recommending the entire Arizona immigration statute be copied by other states, just the employment verification parts. But the court invalidated the parts of the law dealing with employment verification — criminalizing immigrants who seek or hold jobs without proper documents, for instance. Oops.
For the last week, Romney ducked and dodged any cogent response to President Obama’s order allowing some 800,000 undocumented youths to apply for work permits — a form of amnesty that enrage the Republican base.
Politically, his motives were obvious. Oppose the president’s move, and he further alienates Hispanic voters for whom the Republican brand is already highly toxic. Embrace it and kiss Tea Party voters goodbye. So Romney devised a neither-here-nor-there stance. Call it The Great Mumble. Asked whether he’d revoke or extend Obama’s order, he said he’d simply preempt it with comprehensive immigration reform.
That would be the same comprehensive immigration reform that both President Bush and President Obama have failed to enact, despite multiple attempts. In other words, Romney’s response to the Obama order was fiction. And not very artful fiction.
Next, we are likely to see more ducking and dodging from the Romney campaign, which will try to explain what it meant, or might have meant, or didn’t mean, when he called the now mostly gutted Arizona statute a “model.” As political messaging goes, it will be great entertainment. But don’t expect anything resembling clarity, coherence or transparency.
© 1996-2012 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/mitt-romneys-immigration-headache-becomes-a-full-on-migraine/2012/06/25/gJQAl0tv1V_blog.html [with comments]
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3 Reasons Mitt Romney's 'No Comment' Campaign Is Unsustainable
On Monday, this Romney spokesperson managed to chew gum and deflect questions on Romney's position on the Supreme Court's immigration ruling at the same time [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9k_0MjY4GU ]:
Welcome to the Mittness Protection Program, general-election style: The man accused of having no core beliefs thinks the way to win is to play his views close to the vest.
By Garance Franke-Ruta
Jun 27 2012, 9:40 AM ET
"When is Romney going to look like a challenger? Seems to play everything safe, make no news except burn off Hispanics," media mogul Rupert Murdoch tweeted Sunday [ https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/217009901078196225 ].
It's been the plaintive cry of worried supporters and the shrewd observation [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60444.html ] of reporters for going on a year now: Mitt Romney's favored strategy for pursuing the presidency this cycle is to hide in plain sight, avoiding hot-button issues except when forced to articulate positions on them, as during debates, and then reverting to close-lipped type. He's declined to release tax returns [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2012/01/23/gIQAj5bUMQ_story.html ] dating to before 2010. He doesn't make his bundlers known [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mr-romneys-secret-bundlers/2012/06/09/gJQAkAqkQV_story.html ]. He tells his donors more about his policy ambitions than the public [ http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/15/11216845-romney-offers-policy-details-at-closed-door-fundraiser ], as reporters discovered in April when his remarks were "overheard by reporters on a sidewalk below" the room where he was speaking. He holds "secret meetings [ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/05/mitt_romney_claims_to_hold_secret_meetings_with_everyday_americans_.html ]" with voters to collect campaign anecdotes. Most recently, he's avoided taking a firm stand on the Supreme Court's decision [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/the-supreme-courts-arizona-decision-makes-romneys-life-more-difficult/258956/ ] partially overturning Arizona's strict immigration law. But as in the primary, where Romney's cautious style caused worry he was setting himself up for a protracted battle -- something that in fact came to pass -- there are real dangers in his approach.
"You're running for president and there's a golden opportunity for a challenger, given the economy, given the many failed initiatives of the Obama administration. It's somewhat confusing as to why he's playing it so close to the vest," conservative Republican strategist Keith Appell told Politico's Ben Smith [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60444.html ] last August.
Plus ça change. Here's why it could be good tactics but bad strategy for Romney to stay too far above the fray in the general:
1. It makes Romney look weak.
Former President Clinton famously said after the 2002 midterm elections, in which the Republicans, the party in power, anomalously picked up seats, "When people are insecure, they'd rather have somebody who is strong and wrong than someone who's weak and right." Failing to take stands on the major issues of the day because they are controversial makes Romney look like he lacks the courage of his convictions. That reemphasizes the attack on Romney that he lacks convictions at all. But a say-nothing candidate is actually not the same as a say-anything one; the latter looks craven, the former, afraid.
And to the extent that President Obama makes bold moves [ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/obamas-game-changer-on-young-illegal-immigrants/258550/ ] on potentially divisive social issues, Romney's fear of coming too distinctly into view -- his "attack-and-dodge strategy [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/22/policy-black-hole-mitt-romney-keeps-his-ideas-to-himself.html ]" -- is cast into even greater relief.
2. It makes him look like he has something to hide.
Between the overseas bank accounts [ http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-01-20/romney-offshore-accounts/52700400/1 ], the lack of financial disclosure, and the destruction of his gubernatorial records [ http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/us-usa-campaign-romney-computers-idUSTRE7B500X20111206 ] in Massachusetts, it already looks like Romney is trying to hide his record and the true extent of his vast wealth. Failing to takes stands on major issues besides makes Romney look like he must believe something terrible in his heart of hearts.
The perception that Obama contained multitudes, even if he did not, worked for him in 2008. He was a newcomer on the scene onto whom voters projected their fantasies, hoping he would be a less conventional political actor than he in fact has been. But there's a real risk for Romney, who is better defined in the public mind than Obama was, that attempts to remain a bit of a cipher will just make him look sneaky.
"Trust me" is not a compelling campaign message for our our low-trust era.
3. It gives new weight to the argument he has no core and doesn't believe in anything except his own success.
All of this adds up to the idea that we can't know who Romney is. This is just anecdata, but a year ago, a number of Democrats of my acquaintance looked at Romney and saw a credible alternative to a president they were mad at -- a well-educated moderate Massachusetts Republican for whom they could vote without fear or embarrassment. Today, that warmth has passed and I hear a growing nervousness about him, a fear he would be worse than George W. Bush in office because of his lack of core convictions and the greater fractiousness and power of grassroots Republican activists, whom he seems open to indulging.
They are worried, in short, that "he who stands for nothing will fall for anything [ http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/51287.Alexander_Hamilton ]."
Romney's issue positions look increasingly like the negotiations of an attorney trying to close a deal -- he'll say what he needs to say, he'll tack and trim, and he'll change course if need be in order to get the result he wants at the great public bargaining table. But once in office, how will such a man govern? Romney's campaign is trying to play it safe by not revealing too much. But there's a real risk people also will look at that caution and develop some hesitations of their own.
Copyright © 2012 by The Atlantic Monthly Group
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/3-reasons-mitt-romneys-no-comment-campaign-is-unsustainable/258934/ [with comments]
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American Children, Now Struggling to Adjust to Life in Mexico
Video [embedded]
Jeffrey’s Difficult Move: Jeffrey Isidoro, 10, moved to Mexico after his father was deported from the United States. He is part of a new generation of young immigrants blurring the line between Mexican and American.
Jeffrey Isidoro, 10, misses Houston and has had a hard time making friends at school in Izúcar de Matamoros in central Mexico.
Shaul Schwarz for The New York Times
"There are all these drug addicts, drug dealers, people who do nothing in the United States, and you're going to kick me out." — TOMÁS ISIDORO, Jeffrey's father, deported after living 25 years in the United States
Shaul Schwarz for The New York Times
A family photo of Jeffrey in front of their home in Virginia, where they lived before moving to Texas and then Mexico.
Shaul Schwarz for The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: June 18, 2012
IZÚCAR DE MATAMOROS, Mexico — Jeffrey Isidoro sat near the door of his fifth-grade classroom here in central Mexico, staring outside through designer glasses that, like his Nike sneakers and Nike backpack, signaled a life lived almost entirely in the United States. His parents are at home in Mexico. Jeffrey is lost.
When his teacher asked in Spanish how dolphins communicate, a boy next to him reached over to underline the right answer. When it was Jeffrey’s turn to read, his classmates laughed and shouted “en inglés, en inglés” — causing Jeffrey to blush.
“Houston is home,” Jeffrey said during recess, in English. “The houses and stuff here, it’s all a little strange. I feel, like, uncomfortable.”
Never before has Mexico seen so many American Jeffreys, Jennifers and Aidens in its classrooms. The wave of deportations in the past few years, along with tougher state laws and persistent unemployment, have all created a mass exodus of Mexican parents who are leaving with their American sons and daughters.
In all, 1.4 million Mexicans — including about 300,000 children born in the United States — moved to Mexico between 2005 and 2010, according to Mexican census figures. That is roughly double the rate of southbound migration from 1995 to 2000, and new government data published this month suggest that the flow is not diminishing. The result is an entire generation of children who blur the line between Mexican and American.
“It’s really a new phenomenon,” said Víctor Zúñiga, a sociologist at the University of Monterrey, in Nuevo León State, which borders Texas. “It’s the first time in the relationship between Mexico and the United States that we have a generation of young people sharing both societies during the early years of their lives.”
Critics of immigration have mostly welcomed the mass departure, but demographers and educators worry that far too many American children are being sent to schools in Mexico that are not equipped to integrate them. And because research shows that most of these children plan to return to the United States, some argue that what is Mexico’s challenge today will be an American problem tomorrow, with a new class of emerging immigrants: young adults with limited skills, troubled childhoods and the full rights of American citizenship.
“These kinds of changes are really traumatic for kids,” said Marta Tienda, a sociologist at Princeton who was born in Texas to Mexican migrant laborers. “It’s going to stick with them.”
Jeffrey’s situation is increasingly common. His father, Tomás Isidoro, 39, a carpenter, was one of the 46,486 immigrants deported in the first half of 2011 who said they had American children, according to a report by Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ http://www.scribd.com/doc/87388663/ICE-Deport-of-Parents-of-US-Cit-FY-2011-2nd-Half ] to Congress. That is eight times the half-year average for such removals from 1998 to 2007.
Mr. Isidoro, wearing a Dallas Cowboys hat in his parents’ kitchen, said he was still angry that his 25 years of work in the United States meant nothing; that being caught with a broken taillight on his vehicle and without immigration papers meant more than having two American sons — Jeffrey, 10, and his brother, Tommy Jefferson, 2, who was named after the family’s favorite president.
As for President Obama, Mr. Isidoro uttered an expletive. “There are all these drug addicts, drug dealers, people who do nothing in the United States, and you’re going to kick people like me out,” he said. “Why?”
White House officials have said that under a new policy focused on criminals, fewer parents of American children are being deported for minor offenses. On Friday, the Obama administration also announced that hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who came to United States as children would be allowed to stay [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/us/us-to-stop-deporting-some-illegal-immigrants.html ] without fear of deportation. The policy, however, does not grant legal status, and because nearly half of the country’s 10.2 million illegal immigrant adults have children, experts say that inevitably more families will be divided — especially if deportations over all hold steady around 400,000 a year.
But for Jeffrey, the impact of his father’s removal in June last year was immediate. His grades dipped. His mother, Leivi Rodríguez, 32, worried that he had become more distant, from both his friends and his studies. Almost every day, Jeffrey told her he wanted to see his father.
So six months after her husband’s deportation, she sent Jeffrey to live with his father in Mexico, and she followed with Tommy a few months later. It was December when he arrived here in a hill town south of Mexico City, surrounded by fields of swaying sugar cane. On Jeffrey’s first night, he noticed something strange in his bed. “Dad, what’s that?” he asked.
“A scorpion,” his father said.
School here presented new challenges, as well. Jeffrey went hungry at first because neither he nor his father realized that without a cafeteria, students relied on their parents to bring them food at recess.
In class, Jeffrey’s level of confusion rises and falls. His teacher said she struggled to keep him from daydreaming. “His body is here, but his mind — who knows where it is,” she said.
Houston — that is where Jeffrey’s thoughts typically drift. There, he had friends, McDonald’s, the zoo. It is where he lingered at the library at Gleason Elementary to catch up on his favorite series of books, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” There, his school had a playground; here, there is just a concrete slab. There, computers were common; here, there are none.
“It was just better,” Jeffrey said.
The educational disparities between Mexico and the United States are not always so stark. At the elementary level, some of Mexico’s schools are on par with, or even stronger than, the overcrowded, underfinanced American schools that serve many immigrant children, education experts say.
But Mexican schools lag when it comes to secondary education. In many areas of Mexico, especially places where the tradition of migration is not as well established, Mexico’s educational bureaucracy can make life difficult for new arrivals like Jeffrey. It is not uncommon for American students to be barred from enrollment for a year or more because they lack proper documents.
“The established rules for registration don’t need to be so severe,” said Armando Reynoso Carrillo, a state legislator from Malinalco, a rural area in Mexico State where dozens of American children have arrived in recent years.
The problems extend beyond registration. Mexicans have a long history of greeting returnees with skepticism — for abandoning Mexico, or because they resent the United States, or view those who moved there as materialistic, culturally out of touch and arrogant. The prejudice often extends to their children.
Graciela Treviño González said that when she returned to Malinalco three years ago, after more than a decade in California, she could not get her American son onto a soccer team because the coaches refused to accept him without Mexican identification. “He felt rejected by everyone,” she said. “The kids called him ‘leche,’ ‘gringo’ — it was awful.” Leche means milk and gringo can range from a neutral reference to a foreigner to a slur.
Here in the central state of Puebla, Mexican children are especially likely to see transnational students as different, according to surveys by Mr. Zúñiga, the sociologist. Some have come to Mexico because of deportations. Others arrived because relatives were sick or without work.
But regardless of the cause, Mexican students tend to see their American-educated colleagues as strangers. Jeffrey’s experience is typical: He is friendly and quick to open up in English, but quieter at school, where Spanish is the only language one hears.
At one point this spring, as Jeffrey sat at the edge of the playground, a larger boy approached from behind and asked if he was from Florida or Houston. When Jeffrey pulled away because the boy had leaned into him, the bigger boy seemed surprised. “Are you mad?” he asked.
Later, other boys tested Jeffrey on his English, asking him in Spanish to translate various body parts.
“How do you say foot?” one asked. “Finger?”
“Eye?”
Jeffrey provided one-word answers without enthusiasm. At home, a three-room concrete box with furniture hauled from Houston, he said that many of the children called him Four Eyes. He said he was starting to feel more comfortable academically and socially, but even in a school with 11 other children born or educated in the United States (out of 296) he is still a foreigner. Sometimes, he confuses the Mexican pledge of allegiance with the American version.
Ms. Tienda, at Princeton, said children of Jeffrey’s age were more likely to struggle with such a difficult transition. “This is the age where they start to be aware of each other’s differences,” she said. “They’re preadolescents and their identity is being crystallized.”
She added that how these students fared over the long term will probably vary widely. Some will make the transition easily while others will suffer setback after setback. It will depend on their language skills, school and family dynamics.
Jeffrey, like many other children whose parents have moved them to a country they do not know, seems to be teetering between catching up to his classmates and falling further behind. His parents are struggling to find work and keep their marriage together. Jeffrey, in quieter moments, said he was just trying to endure until he could go home.
“I dream, like, I’m sleeping in the United States,” he said. “But when I wake up, I’m in Mexico.”
Shaul Schwarz contributed reporting.
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Immigration Upended
Articles in this series are exploring the changing patterns of immigration between the United States and Mexico.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/americas/immigration-upended-series.html
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© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/world/americas/american-born-children-struggle-to-adjust-in-mexico.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/world/americas/american-born-children-struggle-to-adjust-in-mexico.html?pagewanted=all ] [with comments]
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Don’t Shut the Golden Door
By JOHN M. MacDONALD and ROBERT J. SAMPSON
Published: June 19, 2012
IMMIGRATION [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/immigration/index.html ] is in the headlines again, with President Obama’s decision last week to stop deporting young illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children, and the Supreme Court’s approaching decision on the constitutionality of Arizona’s crackdown on undocumented migrants.
But too much of the public debate has focused on the legality of immigration without considering a more fundamental question: What effects has mass immigration had on American society?
As a result of the 1965 immigration act, which opened the door widely to non-European immigrants, 40 million foreign-born immigrants now live in the United States. They make up 13 percent of the population, the largest such proportion since the 1920s. More than half of these migrants are from Latin America and the Caribbean, although a study released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that Asians overtook Hispanics in 2009 as the fastest-growing group of immigrants.
For the May issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, we commissioned some of the most meticulous research done to date about the effects of immigration on a cross section of American communities — urban, suburban and rural.
The scholars who participated were in remarkable agreement: while new immigrants are poorer than the general population and face considerable hardship, there is no evidence that they have reshaped the social fabric in harmful ways.
America is neither less safe because of immigration nor is it worse off economically. In fact, in the regions where immigrants have settled in the past two decades, crime has gone down, cities have grown, poor urban neighborhoods have been rebuilt, and small towns that were once on life support are springing back.
Scholars can’t say for sure that immigration caused these positive developments, but we know enough to debunk the notion that immigrants worsen social ills.
For example, in rural counties that experienced an influx of immigrants in the 1980s and ’90s, crime rates dropped by more than they did in rural counties that did not see high immigrant growth. Higher immigration was associated with reductions in homicide rates for white, black and Latino victims. In both Hazleton, Pa., which has a recent history of hostility toward immigration, and St. James, Minn., a much more welcoming community, migrants have also bolstered dwindling populations and helped to reverse economic decline.
In large gateway cities, immigration has been associated not only with a decrease in crime but also with economic revitalization and reductions in concentrated poverty. Data from the 2005 American Community Survey showed, for example, that the income of blacks in the New York City borough of Queens surpassed that of whites for the first time, a development driven largely by immigration from the West Indies.
Scholars found that immigrant youths in Los Angeles were involved in less crime and violence than their native-born peers in similar economic circumstances. Research also has shown that an increase in immigration in cities like San Antonio and Miami did not produce an increase in the homicide rate. Furthermore, social scientists found that people in immigrant communities in New York were less cynical about the law than were people in less diverse communities; they were also more likely to indicate that they would cooperate with the police.
If migration has had such beneficial effects, why, then, has there been such a persistent backlash?
Part of the answer surely lies in the social changes — language, political attitudes, religious mores — that immigrants bring, in addition to the effects of the recession. The leveling-off of migration, especially from Mexico, may bring a sense of relief to opponents of these social changes, but if the new research is any guide, the consequences of the slowdown may be the opposite of what the critics intend.
Comprehensive immigration reform — last attempted during the second term of President George W. Bush — should be a priority for whoever wins in November. Mr. Obama’s decision to exempt undocumented children who were brought to the United States by their parents from harsh deportation rules is an overdue, but welcome, first step.
Establishing a clear path to citizenship for undocumented adults, creating a more permissive guest-worker program, reducing unwarranted police stops of immigrants and preserving families rather than separating them through deportation are controversial ideas, but they deserve a hearing.
John M. MacDonald [ http://www.crim.upenn.edu/faculty/profiles/macdonald.html ] is an associate professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. Robert J. Sampson [ http://scholar.harvard.edu/sampson/ ] is a professor of the social sciences at Harvard.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/20/opinion/the-beneficial-impact-of-immigrants.html
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Immigrants Are Crucial to Innovation, Study Says
Wenyuan Shi, a native of China, earned a patent in 2011 for the active ingredient in a lollipop that can help prevent tooth decay.
U.C.L.A. School of Dentistry
By ANDREW MARTIN
Published: June 25, 2012
Arguing against immigration [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration_and_refugees/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier ] policies that force foreign-born innovators to leave the United States, a new study [ http://www.renewoureconomy.org/index.php?q=patent-pending ; also http://renewoureconomy.org/university-letter , http://renewoureconomy.org/not-coming and http://renewoureconomy.org/aeireport ] to be released on Tuesday shows that immigrants played a role in more than three out of four patents at the nation’s top research universities.
Conducted by the Partnership for a New American Economy [ http://www.renewoureconomy.org/ ], a nonprofit group co-founded by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, the study notes that nearly all the patents were in science, technology, engineering and math, the so-called STEM fields that are a crucial driver of job growth.
The report points out that while many of the world’s top foreign-born innovators are trained at United States universities, after graduation they face “daunting or insurmountable immigration hurdles that force them to leave and bring their talents elsewhere.”
The Partnership for a New American Economy released a paper in May saying that other nations were aggressively courting highly skilled citizens who had settled in the United States, urging them to return to their home countries. The partnership supports legislation that would make it easier for foreign-born STEM graduates and entrepreneurs to stay in the United States.
“Now that we know immigrants are behind more than three of every four patents from leading universities, the federal laws that send so many of them back to their home countries look even more patently wrong,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement.
But some worry that the partnership’s ideas for immigration reform would undermine similarly skilled American workers while failing to address broader problems with immigration policy.
“No one is asking what is in their best interest, the American worker,” said Eric Ruark, director of research for the Federal for American Immigration Reform, an advocacy group that is pushing for reduced immigration. “It’s what is best for the employers. What is best for the foreign workers. It’s not as if the foreign workers aren’t skilled. What’s being ignored is we already have a domestic work force that has the same skills.”
The most recent study seeks to quantify the potential costs of immigration policies by reviewing 1,469 patents from the 10 universities and university systems that had obtained the most in 2011. The schools include the University of California system, Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Patents, the study maintains, are a gauge for a nation’s level of innovation and an important way for the United States to maintain an edge in STEM fields.
In one illustration of the issue, the study notes that nine out of 10 patents at the University of Illinois system in 2011 had at least one foreign-born inventor. Of those, 64 percent had a foreign inventor who was not yet a professor but rather a student, researcher or postdoctoral fellow, a group more likely to face immigration problems.
Some of the patents that were reviewed for the report have become business ventures. Wenyuan Shi, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, earned a patent for an ingredient in a lollipop he developed that works as a dental treatment for children. A native of China, Mr. Shi has created a company to commercialize his inventions.
But current immigration laws can make it difficult for foreign-born students to remain in the United States after graduation. And employers may be wary of hiring them because green cards, allowing for permanent residency status, are limited and the process of obtaining one is cumbersome and expensive.
Under the current system, foreign-born students are allowed to stay in the United States for 12 to 29 months after graduation, provided they find a job or internship in their field.
After that, more permanent visas are difficult to obtain, restricted by factors like country quotas. The study notes that China is entitled to the same number of visas as Iceland.
Dr. Ashlesh Murthy came to the United States from India in 2001 to pursue a master’s degree in molecular biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Working with his professors there, he developed a vaccine for the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia, which obtained patents in 2011 and 2012.
Nonetheless, Dr. Murthy had to negotiate a bureaucratic maze to remain in the United States, and at one point was stuck in India for an extra month because American officials in India doubted a previously approved visa.
Noting that university officials petitioned a congressman to intervene on his behalf, Dr. Murthy, said, “If I was not in a position where they really wanted me, I seriously doubt I would have gotten back.”
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/business/immigrants-played-role-in-majority-of-us-technical-patents-study-finds.html
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