2 out of 3 new Ariz. residents are immigrants, their families

Robert Gehrke Associated Press Nov. 26, 2002 11:05 AM

WASHINGTON - An estimated 130,000 immigrants settled in Arizona since 2000, accounting for two-thirds of the state's growth, but the new residents are likely to live in poverty and lack adequate education and health insurance, a new study says.

Fifty-eight percent of Arizona's immigrants and their U.S.-born children live in or near poverty, compared to 28 percent of the state's native population and are nearly four times as likely not to have a high school diploma.

They are two-and-a-half times as likely to lack health insurance and 22 percent benefit from some sort of government welfare program, compared to 13 percent of native households, according to the analysis of unpublished Census data by the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that supports some limits on foreign immigration.

"It just pops off the charts for you," said Steven Camarota, who wrote the study. "There's a big gap nationally, don't get me wrong, and that's a reason for concern, but the stakes for Colorado and Arizona are especially high."

Colorado's economic disparities were similar to those in Arizona.

The study looked at immigration between January 2000 and March 2002 and found an estimated 130,000 new immigrants, and a total of 180,000 when births to immigrant mothers were factored in. That brings the state's total legal and illegal immigrant population to 850,000 out of roughly 5.3 million people.

Tom Rex, research manager for the Center for Business Research at Arizona State University, said immigrants move to Arizona to take low-wage jobs that otherwise would go unfilled or filled by migrants from other states, but the wages would be low regardless of who fills the job.

"The immigration itself is not the problem," he said. "If your economy is creating a bunch of low-end jobs that aren't providing health insurance you've got a problem, but the problem isn't the immigrants. The problem is those are the jobs the economy is creating."

Rex also cautioned that the center's report was drawn from census data that can distort the truth because of the small sample of people on which it is based.

Camarota said it is inadequate education and not the immigrants' legal status or unwillingness to work that results in low wages, reliance on welfare and lack of health insurance.

"Although the vast majority of these immigrants do in fact work, the modern American economy offers very limited opportunities for those with little education," he said. "As a result, they often pay very little in taxes but impose significant costs on public services."

Local officials and Arizona's congressional delegation have complained the federal government is not doing enough to help pay for services for immigrants. Arizona's border counties have to absorb $31 million annually in uncompensated emergency medical care, according to a recent report by the U.S.-Mexico Border Counties Coalition.

Another national study by the Urban Institute released Tuesday found that children of immigrants are more likely to live in two-parent families and in poverty than children of parents born in this country.

The Center for Immigration Studies report also indicated that the immigrant influx remained steady since 2000, despite a weak economy.

Rex said it takes a surprisingly long time for a recession to register in migration statistics, although he anticipates that immigration to Arizona will slow.

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2002

Answers

Unskilled immigrants swell Texas population

Diana Washington Valdez El Paso Times

Immigration is fueling the population growth of Texas, and many of the newcomers from Mexico and Central America are doomed to poverty because they arrive with limited education and low job skills, according to the Center for Immigration Studies report released today.

About 293,000 immigrants came to Texas between 2000 and 2002, and 172,000 children were born in that time to immigrants, according to the study, "Immigrants in the United States -- 2002: A Snapshot of America's Foreign-Born Population."

The report said immigrants represented 44.4 percent of the state's population growth. In the Southwest, this percentage was exceeded by California (68.7 percent) and Arizona (46.8 percent). No breakdown by state was available on source countries for the immigrants. But most immigrants to Southwestern states are from Mexico.

The pattern outlined by the center's study does not hold true for El Paso County, said Tom Fullerton, an economics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

While census figures are not available for the same years, he said, "most of the growth in El Paso is projected to come from natural causes -- more births than deaths."

Fullerton said his studies showed that the net flow of immigrants to El Paso reached a high of 7,109 in 1994, and then fell to 3,394 in 1998. He projected a further decline to 2,664 in 2001.

"El Paso is seen like the Ellis Island of the desert ... some of the immigrants come here long enough to get whatever documents they need, and then they move on to other places with larger immigrant communities, such as Dallas," he said.

However, previous census figures suggest that many El Paso natives have the same problems as the immigrants cited by the Center for Immigration Studies report: low per capita incomes, high dropout rates, a lack of medical insurance and limited job skills.

"I agree that many immigrants don't get the same benefits or wages as the rest of population, and this is wrong," said Alonso Salinas, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who is in El Paso temporarily. "I've spent eight years working in different states. I get around by hopping trains.

"I held a painter's job in the '80s in San Antonio that paid $3.25 an hour and a job in a restaurant in Nebraska that paid $1,100 a month."

Salinas, who has two children in Mexico, said his goals are to legalize his status and get a good- paying job in Seattle.

A big increase

Steven Camarota, who wrote the center's study, said the number of foreign-born residents -- with or without documents -- climbed to a record high 33 million this year, up from 31 million in 2000. He said immigrants were crowding the nation's schools and depressing wages of low-income workers. He said too many were living in poverty. He also said stepped-up enforcement since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has not curtailed immigration.

Roberto Suro, executive director of the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, blasted the report. He said it did not include data showing that immigrants' earnings rise and poverty rates decrease over time.

"It's a highly selective use of data," he said, contending that no conclusive data exist to measure the impact of the slow economy or the crackdown on terrorism and immigration during the past two years.

Representatives of the private Center for Immigration Studies of Washington, D.C., have testified before Congress in the past, often advocating that the U.S. government curb immigration.

Apprehensions down

The Border Patrol in El Paso reported 94,256 apprehensions of undocumented immigrants in fiscal year 2002, which ended Sept. 30, compared with 112,869 apprehensions for the previous fiscal year. The decline may indicate that fewer undocumented immigrants are crossing through El Paso than in previous years, one official says.

"We think it's because people are more fearful about crossing since the antiterrorism measures went into place. ... They are afraid of what they might encounter," said Josephine Puente, a senior Border Patrol agent.

A separate report released Tuesday by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., said children of immigrants are more likely to live in families that earn substantially less money than nonimmigrants. As a result, the children of immigrants are more likely than other children to be in fair or poor health, live in families who do not receive food stamps, and live in crowded housing without assistance for paying for housing.

The institute -- a nonpartisan public policy think tank -- also noted that current U.S. laws deny welfare or public health insurance benefits to most legal immigrants, and that all undocumented immigrants are ineligible for benefits. To help children, it recommended that policies focus on issues such as day care, health insurance, affordable housing and job training for adults.

Eligible for benefits

The Center for Immigration Studies study says U.S.-born children of immigrants are eligible for some welfare benefits.

Both studies were released while U.S. and Mexican officials were meeting this week in Mexico City to talk about bilateral issues, including immigration. Officials are expected to consider an agreement that can range from a new guest worker program to fill U.S. labor shortages to legalizing many of the undocumented immigrants in the United States, a population that the U.S. Census Bureau estimates at 8 million to 9 million.

El Pasoan Luz Maria Ponce, a Chihuahua City native who became a legal immigrant 10 years ago, said adjusting to life in the United States has been hard at times.

"I'm attending classes to learn English," she said. "But, overall, I think our future, that of my husband and my two children, is much brighter here than in Mexico."

-- Anonymous, November 27, 2002