are very few avenues open to people trying to legalize their status. Anyone who wants to know if they qualify should consult a reliable lawyer or legal service agency for advice. Try to get referrals from trusted friends or community-based organizations; there are unfortunately a lot of people out there who will be happy to charge a fee and promise to get you legal documents. If you’re not careful, you may lose your money and end up in deportation proceedings.
Terminology
We use several terms in this book to describe people who are living in the United States without permission from the federal government. “Out of status” is the most accurate term and reflects the transitory nature of immigration status, but it is sometimes awkward, especially when used repeatedly. “Unauthorized” is less clumsy but still accurate and neutral, and is often used by researchers and policy analysts. “Undocumented” is more popularly used in the United States by those who reject the term “illegal.” “Without papers” is especially common in Europe. (Occasionally we use “illegal,” in quotes, just to make sure everyone understands that what so many people call “illegal” is what we are referring to as out of status or undocumented.)
As of April 1, 1997, to conform with laws passed in 1996, the immigration agency began using the term “removal” instead of “deportation” to describe the process of sending immigrants back to their home countries. Removal is a more legally precise term, but deportation is more widely recognized and understood. In this book we use the terms interchangeably.
1. Who Are the Immigrants?
IMMIGRANTS CURRENTLY MAKE UP AROUND the same proportion of the U.S. population as they did during the “great wave” of migration between the 1880s and 1920: between 13 and 14 percent. As happened during the first wave, some people view the newcomers as “too different” to integrate into U.S. society. The earlier waves mostly came from Europe. Jews, Catholics, and others from Eastern and Southern Europe were not necessarily seen as fully white at the time, but eventually they were accepted as white Americans.
Since 1965, a majority of immigrants have come from Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Restrictive immigration laws push millions of them into a situation of “illegality,” and many face a hostile racial climate that views them as second-class citizens and perpetual outsiders. Will the changing demographics of the United States lead us to expand our ideas about who is American? Or will we continue to put up walls and to consolidate a caste system that limits rights and opportunities for large numbers of people?
How do we define immigrants?
Immigrants are people who move into one country from another in order to settle there. They are immigrants—incoming migrants—from the perspective of their new home. They are emigrants—outgoing migrants—in relation to the country they are leaving.
“Migrants” can also refer to people who move from one area to another within their own country. Over the decades following the Civil War, millions of African Americans fled oppressive conditions in the rural South to seek a better life in northern cities, or in the West.1 Because the United States had been reunited, these migrants didn’t have to cross a national border, so they weren’t immigrants. If the war had ended differently, African Americans might have had to cross into another country in order to escape—just as some 20,000 to 30,000 of them did between 1820 and 1860, fleeing slavery in the South and dodging bounty hunters in the northern states to reach freedom in Canada through the Underground Railroad.2
The U.S. government uses the term “alien” to cover all the different types of people who come here from another country and are not U.S. citizens. Demographers—people who study populations and how they change—generally use the category “foreign born,” which includes naturalized citizens.
Foreign-born people living here with a legal status recognized by the federal government may be referred to as “authorized migrants” or “authorized immigrants.” The government includes in a category of “non-immigrants” those people who come here from other countries but don’t plan to stay, such as tourists and other visitors, temporary foreign workers, and international students. In reality, some “nonimmigrants” end up settling here, while some immigrants decide to return to their country of origin.
Terms such as “unauthorized,” “out of status,” or “undocumented” are used to describe immigrants who are living here without permission from the federal government, or who are violating the terms of their stay.
The government, some media outlets, and many ordinary people describe out-of-status immigrants as “illegal aliens,” “illegal immigrants,” or just “illegals.” But these terms contribute to a political climate that dehumanizes immigrants. The word illegal only makes sense when describing actions, not people—and in any case, unlawful presence in the United States is not a crime.3 At a meeting with immigration officers after the arrests of immigrant workers at a factory in Wisconsin in the summer of 2006, Sandra Jiménez, an authorized migrant from Mexico, asked an immigration officer to stop calling the detainees “illegal aliens.” “The word makes me think of strange little creatures,” Jiménez said. “I am not a Martian.”4
How many immigrants are here?
As of 2013, about 44 million foreign-born people had settled in the United States. Nearly half of them—19.3 million—had become naturalized citizens. Another 13.5 million people were lawful permanent residents (known in legal jargon as LPRs, often referred to as green card holders because the residency document used to be green). Over 100,000 refugees and asylees—people who were granted protection here after fleeing their home countries because of persecution, but who had not yet gained permanent residency—were also living in the United States. Another million or more “temporary legal residents” were here on work visas, as students, or as diplomats.5
It’s harder to figure out how many people are living here out of status. Most estimates now are based on a residual method, taking the number of foreign-born people counted in the surveys or by the U.S. Census Bureau, and then subtracting the number of authorized migrants reported by immigration authorities. Demographers know that some out-of-status immigrants evade census takers, so they add in a certain percentage to compensate for the undercount.
As of 2014 the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit research group in Washington, D.C., estimated the unauthorized population at 11.3 million, including people who had been granted temporary relief from deportation. This number had not changed much over the past five years.6
About 8.1 million undocumented immigrants were working or looking for work in 2012, making up about 5.1 percent of the total U.S. labor force, according to the Pew Research Center’s estimates. These figures too had been basically stable since 2007, when unauthorized workers reached a peak of 5.4 percent of the labor force.7
Are immigrants different from everyone else?
Compared to the general population, a larger proportion of immigrants are young adults, since immigrants tend to come here when they are at peak working age—that is, between twenty and fifty-four years old.8
In terms of family income, immigrants lag a bit behind people who were born here. In 2013, the median annual income for a household headed by a U.S.-born citizen was $52,500, compared to $48,000 for a household headed by an immigrant (regardless of status). When you compare immigrants from different regions, a stark contrast emerges: households headed by immigrants from South or East Asia had median incomes of $70,600, while those headed by immigrants from Mexico took in only $36,000.9
There is one major area in
