Thoughts on Immigration

I have been thinking a little about immigration lately. It's a touchy subject, I know, but that doesn't mean I should ignore it. I can't anyway. I cannot ignore any thoughts that come into my head. Sometimes I wish I could but...

I am in favor of immigration. I have had many friends who immigrated to this country and met many people when I was out of this country who wanted to immigrate here. Fine people, all of them, a number of them quite pretty and friendly. But let's not go there...

But it dawned on me that I don't know much about immigration, legal or illegal. One of the things I didn't know is what nationalities are immigrating here. So I went looking. and this is what I found:

Legal immigrants by nationality (top ten):
Country               #                     % of total
Mexico          276,550                  14.8%
India              110,193                    5.9%
China            101,368                    5.4%
Philippines      98,963                    5.3%

The other 6 are each under 4% of the total.

Then there's the illegal immigrants
Mexico           6,650,000         61.9%

The rest of the top ten countries are each less than 4%. If you are wondering why the numbers are small, it's because the data is from 2009.

I found the data at this site: http://blog.ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2010/05/14/top-10-legal-and-illegal-immigrant-nationalities-in-the-u-s.aspx

I came across it after Googling "illegal immigration by nationality." I tried "immigration by nationality" but that didn't give me any results that fit with what I wanted to know. Instead I got a lot of hits about "the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952" which provided neither timely nor useful data for my purposes.

I lived in Dade County (now called Miami-Dade County) in the late 50's and early 60's. Immigration was not a big issue then. After the Cuban Revolution, we began to get a big influx of Cuban immigrants. The first influx was mostly middle class and above; mostly doctors, lawyers, and other professionals along with businessman of some level of affluence. But they brought no money with them. A few had money stashed in our banks but not enough to matter. Most arrived with just the clothes on their backs. After that, the influx was mostly made up of the poorer members of Cuban society.

The black population quickly resented their presence. This was because the new immigrants took jobs away from them. The new immigrants became a cheap labor source for lawn services and other menial work, undercutting even the poor wages given to blacks in those days.  The Florida branch of the AMA demanded almost impossible requirements for those that had been physicians in Cuba to prevent them from easily entering the medical profession in Florida and becoming competition for the state's existing medical professionals. I don't recall but I would bet the same happened for nurses, lawyers, and all other professional occupations. The small businessmen ran into the usual restrictions and regulations that have always plagued small businessmen. And, of course, getting loans was even tougher for them than people who had lived here all their lives or, at least, had been here long enough to establish good credit.

When I was an usher at age 17, the theater hired a man as a doorman. It turned out that he had been a doctor in Cuba and had made the journey in a leaky boat from Cuba, a journey that cost him his entire savings, to escape the land of his birth. But he found he could not practice medicine here unless he completed a couple of years of med school. He was not a young man, somewhere in his 60's (maybe late 60's, I do not recall) and did not have strong command of the English language. So he looked for and took what jobs he could... including a $1 an hour doorman's job.

I had had several Cuban friends in school. Good kids, lots of fun, and as crazy as I was in those days.  A couple were close friends. They got a bit of grief from the ignorant and cruel kids but nothing too serious and they were generally accepted.

But all of these were legal immigrants. I did not know about the migrant workers who traveled up from Mexico and followed the crop harvests through the southeast states. I had heard about them and, occasionally, saw them in the orange groves but didn't get to know any of them personally. I was oblivious to the discrimination they faced until I went in the Navy at age 19 and found myself in California.

I detest discrimination. But I am concerned about illegal immigration. I do not think anyone should be given "a path to citizenship" if they entered the country illegally.