Sunday, December 24, 2023

Immigrants, Refugees, Asylum Seekers and the Crisis at the US Border

There are three main types of people who are seeking to come to the U.S.

Immigrants - people who want to live in the U.S. so they file paperwork and wait for approval and then travel here.

Asylum Seekers - people who are seeking asylum from oppression in another country.

Refugees - people who are forced to flea due to violence or a threat of their basic needs.  

All three of these groups are tangentially related - they use the same courts and the same Federal offices.  However, the crisis over the last several years has been mostly about asylum seekers.

It should be noted, however, that none of these groups are responsible for a majority of illicit drugs coming across the border - especially Fentanyl.   From the Immigration Forum,
Evidence indicates that illicit fentanyl is primarily brought to the U.S. by American citizens and usually through legal ports of entry. The calculation is simple: illicit drug smuggling organization are likely to prefer U.S. citizens as smugglers because they are less likely to raise alarms or undergo additional vetting when re-entering the U.S. through a legal port.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission recently released an annual report on incidents related to fentanyl trafficking. In fiscal year (FY) 2022, 19,851 drug trafficking offenses were reported to the Commission. Of these, 2,362 (about 12 percent) were fentanyl-trafficking cases. This represents a steady increase since FY 2018, when there were only 422 reported offenders – an increase of about 460 percent in four years. The report shows that most fentanyl trafficking offenders in FY 2022 were U.S. citizens (88 percent). The vast majority were men (82 percent), with an average age of 35 years. A large proportion (40 percent) had little or no prior criminal history.
Data from previous years also indicates the significant role U.S. citizens play in fentanyl smuggling. In 2021, 86 percentof fentanyl trafficking convictions were for U.S. citizens. The Cato Institute also notes how just 0.02 percent of people (279 out of 1.8 million migrants) encountered by the Border Patrol for crossing unlawfully possessed fentanyl. While CBP and other border officials must deal with challenges at the border related to processing asylum seekers, the trafficking of fentanyl itself is largely connected to U.S. citizens.  

Immigrants



CATO analysis of Obama legacy on immigration.

top recent sociology on immigration
In light of the Obama administration's 2014 DACA program, Contexts put together the most cited articles on immigration from the five years (2009-2014) in three leading sociology journals: American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces.

  • Want to know whether immigrants are more or less likely to work in a particular industry than native-born Americans? Pew’s data tool uses American Community Survey data to break it down by state.
  • If you’re interested in how the age and sex distributions of US immigrants compare to those of the native born population, The Migration Policy Institute used IPUMS data to put together interactive population pyramids comparing the populations in the US over time.
  • The Department of Homeland Security maps out international students by state, showing there were over 2,799 international students in Maine as of November. They also offer downloadable tables of characteristics like age, marital status, country of origin and admission category for greencard holders, nationally and by state.
  • The Urban Institute has a data tool that pulls information on children of immigrants from the American Community Survey, so if you wanted to know what percentage of children of immigrants in the US had parents with a Bachelors’ degree (33%), it’s a few clicks away.
  • Population Reference Bureau’s data finder generates statistics (and charts and maps) on demand.  Want to know the percentage foreign-born in each state’s population? You’re a few clicks away from a map.
Immigrants and refugees are often criminalized and this article highlights three realities:  
  1. Companies and government bodies benefit from the criminalization of immigrants.  
  2. Global capitalism and institutional racism produce the “facts” that are used to justify immigration control.
  3. In reality, immigrants and their communities face extreme threats.

is unauthorized immigration an economic drain on american communities? research says no.
Sociologist Helen Marrow and race and education sociologist Will Tyson reached out to other North Carolina sociologists with expertise in immigration: Susan C. Pearce of East Carolina University and Martha Crowley and Kim Ebert of North Carolina State University.  Marrow thought of her own students at Tufts University outside Boston, so often surprised to learn what sound, peer-reviewed research says about these matters. “We never hear this,” one student said of such research in 2016. “All we hear are the negative messages [about immigrants] in the media. We hear it so much we even believe it, too.” 
Together, our team has aimed to do three things: 1) assess the soundness of the data Miller presents, taking her up on her suggestion to use her sources to verify her claims; 2) provide more accurate information regarding the economic impacts of immigrants and immigration, using peer-reviewed research; and 3) offer an explanation for how and why flawed and biased anti-immigrant messages are so often reported in the media. The literature on this topic is vast, so we highlight just a few key points that readers can use to learn how to spot and critique biased and unfounded messages about immigrants and immigration in their own communities.
1) Purely Negative Media Accounts of the Economic Costs of Unauthorized Immigration Often Rely on Questionable Sources.
2) Unauthorized Immigrants Have Little or No Negative Effect on the Wages and Employment of U.S.-born Citizens, and Immigrant Workers Have Positive Effects on American Consumers.
3) Unauthorized Immigrants Do Not Have Large Negative Fiscal Impacts on Taxes and Public Spending When Long-Term Effects and Contributions to Federal Coffers Are Taken into Account.
4) What’s Really Going On? Research Points to Economic, Cultural, and Racial Anxiety.

looking “illegal”

From sociologist, San Juanita García’s 2019 article in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.  
The review of Garcia's work in Contexts explains, 
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Since this statement in June 2015, Donald Trump’s rhetoric has only intensified the Latino Threat, by which anti-immigrant attitudes toward Latinx and Hispanic individuals in the U.S. are intensified. It has also provided the underpinnings of 
García wanted to understand how Mexican-origin women experience racialization in an anti-immigrant climate and what that means for their sense of belonging or exclusion. She interviewed 60 Mexican-origin women residing in Houston, Texas.García ends with a caution: since the 2016 presidential election, scholars have documented a rise in harassment and intimidation of those perceived to be “illegal,” and it shows no signs of abating. She calls on academics to delve more deeply into the ways racialization and “illegality” unfold in the lives of immigrants and other vulnerable populations.


Asylum Seekers

This PBS video helps explain asylum seekers and the process for seeking asylum in the US:


Perhaps what is most important to now is that international law establishes who can seek asylum: People fleeing persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or social group.  If a person comes to the US and claims they are a member of a persecuted group and they have a credible fear of going back to their homeland, they can request a hearing for asylum.  US law states that these people are allowed to stay in the US while they await their hearing.  Recently, the number of people requesting hearings for credible threats has sky rocketed.  And this is all within an immigration system that was already overburdened with cases.  So, while these people await hearings, some governors are putting them on buses and sending them to other cities around the country.

Some things to know about asylum seekers:

Treacherous Trek:  The trek to asylum is no small thing.  Most of the asylum seekers make their way to Colombia where they hike on a treacherous passage known as the Darien Gap, a route that goes from Colombia through wild jungles of Panama with dangerous conditions, gangs, and deadly animals.  Parts of the route have gotten more organized over the last several years, but it still remains a daunting task.  Then they make their way, often paying bribes to gangs or guides who get them to Mexico.


TX governor Abbot is not helping.  The Texas governor is nefariously sending migrants to cities without communicating with such cities, largely as a political stunt.


Problems with how the US deals with undocumented people have been around since the 1970s as detailed in this Time Magazine article.

Council on Foreign Relations details many aspects of the crisis here including increasing asylum seekers from Haiti and Central America, and an immigration backlog.

Asylum seekers fleeing dire situations overseas are in search of a better life in the USA.

Watch this video about the role that Viator house plays in helping teen refugees:



Asylum seekers are increasingly flying to South America and making their way by land to the USA including through very dangerous Darien Pass including the jungles of Panama. Outside magazine features the dangerous journey here:


And PBS highlights the dangerous journey here in Part 1/2:
Whether fleeing war, persecution, poverty or the effects of climate change, migrants and refugees worldwide routinely find themselves in great danger. Perhaps the most hazardous migrant trail of all is the Darien Gap, a wild, lawless stretch straddling Colombia and Panama. Before the pandemic, special correspondent Nadja Drost and videographer Bruno Federico reported from this perilous path.



And part 2/2 from PBS is about how the U.S. immigration policy affects the asylum seekers.


Refugees

Admitted based on the 1980 Refugee ACT which aligns with international law.  Many people consider accepting refugees as a humane and compassionate act.  And, I think you could make the case that it is in our nature to empathize with our fellow humans who are experiencing war, famine and violence.  However, accepting refugees is not only a moral choice, it is also a very practical one.  

Refugees have added immensely to American culture and success.  For example, from rescue.org, here is a list of famous refugees including:  Albert Einstein, Madeleine Albright, Ellie Wiesel, Sergey Brin, among others. And from the UN here is a list of prominent refugees who have made a difference.  And, here is Time Magazine's list of important refugees.

Second, not only do refugees enhance American ingenuity and success, but they also provide America a platform to speak out for humanitarianism, democracy and peace.   Refugees are generally fleeing from untenable situations of war, violence, famine, and persecution.  Many refugees are at risk because of helping the U.S. with conflicts overseas.  For instance, Iraqi and Afghani citizens are threatened with violence for aiding the U.S. with intelligence and other military operations.  

Recent Sociological Trends and Refugees

Despite the benefits cited above, the U.S. runs the risk of losing its moral authority regarding refugees as well as its credibility with those who aid U.S. operations overseas because of recent trends regarding refugees.

First, there has been a shift in political rhetoric that uses refugees as an outgroup.  Remember we learned that it is easier to mistrust, judge and demonize outgroups.  And this PEW research shows that support for refugee settlement has been stronger when the group was European/White. 

And the graphs below show how easy it is to highlight refugees as an outgroup because the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq shifted the need for refugee status to Asians and Muslims.



 Here are stats from the UN Refugee Agency showing the drastic rise in refugees worldwide over the last decade created by instability from climate change and political upheaval:



World Vision also details the sources of refugees and how to help them.  
Statista shows the numbers in the graph below:




The Trump administration has capitalized on refugees as an outgroup by promoting anti-immigration and anti-refugee rhetoric.  The National Immigration Law Center has a list of Trump's tweets about refugees here.  For example:
In a response to this dangerous rhetoric, in 2016 The American Sociological Association published this statement, including:
In recent years (2016), vitriolic characterizations of immigrants and draconian plans for their exclusion have been floated by political candidates to a surprisingly receptive public. While the U.S. extended refugee status to 3 million persons since 1975, only about 28 percent of the American public currently endorses the continued admission of Syrian refugees. 
...the advent of cable news, the Internet, and social media have created additional venues for anti-immigrant sentiments. Their mobilization has shaped the fate of individual candidates, legislative agendas, organizations and social movements on the local, state, and national level....
The degree of anti-immigrant sentiment currently displayed in U.S. society is sizeable and strongly felt. However, despite aphorisms about America’s status as “a nation of immigrants,” evidence of anti-immigrant sentiment is clear and longstanding among wide swaths of the public. The reasons for its recent acceptability might be partly attributable to opportunities to express opposition to immigration in a manner that would have been politically unacceptable prior to the 1990s. In this way, analyses presented by sociologists and other scholars of migration can help us account for changes in popular views of immigration.

Secondly, not only has the rhetoric changed, but the actual policy has as well.  By law, the POTUS must notify Congress by the end of September what the refugee limit for the next year will be.  During the first year of his presidency,  Trump attempted to ban refugees and since then, the U.S. has reached its lowest level of refugees ever!  In 2017, the U.S. saw a historically low rate of refugees.

Pew documents the recent drop in refugees here.  In fact, 2017 was the first time in modern history that the U.S. has resettled fewer refugees than the rest of the world.  And this 2019 NY Times article details how President Trump slashed the number of refugees in the U.S. to even further record lows.

And, just a couple of weeks ago (September 2020) the current administration requested that the ceiling on refugees be set even lower than the record lows of 2018!  The Associated Press reports that here.  And the NY Times details the decision in this article,  Trump Virtually Cuts Off Refugees as He Unleashes a Tirade on Immigrants.  



More research on refugees and immigrants from the sociology journal Contexts:

tear gas? this is america.
As refugees flee Central America, they met with hostility reminding the public that American identity is assumed to be White, Anglo-Saxon, and Christian. Anyone that doesn’t fit this profile is othered and scrutinized.  Also provides a review of exclusionary U.S. immigration policies, some of which go back to the 1960s but created the crisis in immigration today.

a haunted generation remembers 
Sikh refugees survived a massacre in New Dehli in 1984 but the memory of the event has changed shape as it passes from one generation to the next.

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