Funnel 40/2, Inhalt - Fulbright-Kommission

can get individual advice and support by a specialized immigration
counselor.
Due to my personal interest in immigration I focused my internship
on these activities. Very soon I experienced the enormous importance
the situation of non-documented immigrants had on the general
discourse on immigration.
HERE TO STAY
For the purpose of this short glimpse into the issue I regard as nondocumented
persons those people who came to the U.S. from a different
country and have their primary place of residence in the U.S., but
do not possess a legal residence permit of any kind. I omit the broadly
used term “illegal immigrants” because of its negative connotation.
Determining the number of non-documented immigrants in
the U.S. is a complex undertaking. There is no federal or state census
data available that calculates U.S. residents without legal residency
status. Therefore, estimates often have to replace distinct
data.
A broadly applied method to estimate the total number of nondocumented
persons is to subtract the estimate of legal foreign-born
persons living in the U.S. from the estimate of the total foreign-born
population (Fix & Passel, 2001). By applying this process to data
received from the March 2000 Current Population Survey (CPS) and
the U.S. Census 2000, different studies have proposed numbers ranging
from 7 to 9 million non-documented immigrants. This number
represents roughly 28% of the total amount of the foreign-born population
or around 2% of the overall population of the U.S. (Fix &
Passel, 2001).
The primary country of origin of this population is by far Mexico
(~5 million) followed by El Salvador (~190,000) and Guatemala
(~150,000), according to findings of the former Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS—now called the U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Service - USCIS). The states with the highest numbers
of non-documented immigrants are, according to USCIS, California
(2.2 million), Texas (1.04 million), New York (489,000), Illinois
(432,000), and Florida (337,000) (USCIS, 2003).
Research findings indicate that the majority of the non-documented
population do not come to the U.S. on a temporary basis but intend
FROM OUR FULBRIGHTERS 31
to stay permanently (Mehta & Ali, 2003, 17). Therefore it becomes
clear that non-documented persons in the U.S. represent a significant
social group and there are no indicators that suggest the numbers of
non-documented persons in the country or new arrivals will decrease
or that non-documented persons might leave the country after a short
time. The majority of this population will stay here. In fact, I often
meet people who live in Chicago, have a job, and are raising their children
but do not have legal documentation of their residency.
WITHOUT A SAFETY NET
The legal status of non-documented persons keeps them from
accessing support systems such as adequate health care, education, or
childcare and makes it almost impossible to go beyond the very low
levels of professional activity, highly impacting their socioeconomic
situation. While a Chicago-based study, whose results are suported
by an array of other research, found that 91% of the male non-documented
population joined the workforce, the average wage level
(around $7/hour) earned by these workers in predominantly restaurant-related
jobs, hand-picking, and assembly was consistently under
the average wage level earned by the general workforce. Additionally,
only 25% of these employees were covered by any form of health
insurance (Mehta et al., 2002).
These legal barriers towards an improvement of the socioeconomic
situation of non-documented persons are exacerbated by the
comparably low general educational level of immigrants from Mexico.
In the 1990s only 4% of the Mexican-born adult population in
the United States posessed a college degree, one of the main prerequesits
for professional advancement (Szelenyi & Chang, 2002).
And while there is hope for the children of immigrants with legal
documentation to integrate into the U.S. education system, the access
barriers towards these options are much higher for non-documented
immigrants and their families.
From this background arises the argument that private companies
often have an interest in maintaining the status quo, that is, keeping
non-documented workers in the country, but keeping them from
accessing higher-wage jobs in order to be able to draw from a broad
pool of workers, who are ready to work under sub-standard conditions,
enabling the companies to significantly reduce labor costs.
THE FUNNEL • VOLUME 40 • NUMBER 2 • SUMMER 2004