Immigration in an Age of Globalization: Part 2

Immigration in an Age of Globalization: Part 2

When looking at the immigrants we have to look at individual groups and on classes within those groups. Generalization is meaningless and misleading. The book divided these immigrants into different categories in table 17.3 “immigrants Admitted by Country of Birth, 1998” Mexico ranked number one where there was 131,575 people entered the country followed by China and Hong Kong, India, Philippines, Soviet Union, Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Cuba, Jamaica, and lastly El Salvador. Distribution of these immigrants throughout the United States was concentrated into two cities. More than 20 percent of these immigrants told the INS that they are planning to live either in New York or Los Angeles.  

One out of nine immigrants was admitted to the United States under employment-based preference. These immigrants are of two general kinds: skilled workers who held technical degrees and agriculture and service workers. It is not surprising to know that the skilled workers tend to acculturate more quickly than the less educated one. Educated people tend to have better understanding of the world and more willing to blend in the society, on the other hand, non-educated people are more confined with their own environment and culture. The third category of the immigrants is so called millionaire immigrants.  These immigrants has to invest 1 million dollar in an American enterprise or $500,000 if the investment in an economically poor area. The number of such immigrants from that category has never been large; in 1998 it compromised around 0.1 percent of the total immigrants.  The investor program or what is called now “employment creation” had many frauds in it.

Unfortunately we can’t count all the people who entered the United States. There are other types of immigrants who are not recorded. These people came to the United States on various kinds of visa that do not entitle them to apply for permanent residence status and these visas have expiration dates. Some of these people did not have the intention to stay when they first came, but after a while they decided to do so. Other people have the intention to over stay their visa and settle in the United Sates. According to the book, thirty million people came to the United States in 1998 on visas, but there is no system that would allow us to track the number of people who returned to their home country. We simply can’t know if these people are here or not. Our system is broken and we have to find a way to fix it. We should require every one who leaves the country to check out with the immigration and custom department, so we can track the number of people who over stay their visas.