The "TrumpTracker" Immigration Policy Tracking Project collects and digests every known immigration policy of the Trump administration from 2017 through 2021. The website is also Biden-era policies. Take a look!
The Migration Data Portal of the International Organization for Migration has links to many new migration datasets during the Covid-19 pandemic. My favorite graphic is about foreign-born medical professionals. There are so many other interesting facts/trends on their website. Check it out!
Jason DeParle’s “A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves” paints a vivid picture of a Filipino migrant family’s journey to the United States, the complications they faced and the often subtle and nuanced adaptations they made as they navigated the ups and downs of global immigration. The story starts with NY Times reporter DeParle’s arrival nearly 30 years ago in Manila where he was interested in reporting on Filippino shantytowns. Looking to rent, DeParle abruptly starts boarding with Tita Comodas, an unwitting Leveriza resident who reluctantly takes DeParle in. DeParle carefully catalogues his surroundings and paints a picture of the living conditions of his new environment: proliferating with rats, wads of newspaper filled with human feces, called “flying saucers,” and higher-end jobs barely paying $2 a day, a little more than the World Bank’s current definition of extreme poverty.
Yet DeParle’s depiction of the immense poverty of Leveriza also reveals persevering hope, determination, resiliency and loyalty to family in the form of its people: living side by side within mere feet of their neighbors, Filipinos raised their families seeking prosperity through schooling and work abroad, many spurred on by faith in the will of God. It is in these circumstances that we meet the main focus of DeParle’s book: Rosalie, a 15 year old schoolgirl, the middle child of Tita’s children, and future Texas nurse and mother. It is through her eyes that we learn about the many migrant journeys of her relatives.
Rosalie and family celebrating Kristine’s 13th birthday party.
The constant tension between hardship and hope is a persistent theme in the journey of the Portuganas, as DeParle chronicles their movement from the Philippines to Saudi Arabia and eventually the United States. Spanning decades and punctuated by state-of-the-art studies on global migration (by Dilip Ratha (World Bank) , Dean Yang (University of Chicago) and the 2017 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study of the fiscal consequences of immigrants), what doubles as a meticulous scientific investigation into the forces behind immigration showcases at its heart the very human dimension of the migrant story, illuminating often overlooked nuances of Filippino culture.
DeParle painstakingly catalogues the data that help explain the Portuganas’ migration trajectory: Emet makes $50 a month as a pool cleaner in Manila as opposed to $500 a month as a pool cleaner in Dhahran, and Rosalie moves from $110 a month as a Filippino nurse to $375 a month as a nurse in Mecca, and eventually $30 an hour in Galveston, Texas. Rosalie’s visa for travel to the US equaled $190, excluding the friends and family whose visas Rosalie also paid for. Stressing the importance of Filipino workers as an immigrant group in the United States, DeParle notes that Filippine immigrants rank number 4 in size, trailing behind Mexicans, Indians, and Chinese, respectively. With regard to nursing, foreign born and trained nurses compose a fifth of the workforce in populous states like New York, and in California compose a fourth of the workforce, with more than a third of this group being Filipino.
Origins of foreign nurses working abroad, with the Philippines sending more nurses to work abroad than the next 3 nations combined. Source: OECD Health Statistics 2019, DIOC 2015/16 and LFS 2015/16.
DeParle doesn’t shy away from the national discussion of the financial costs of immigrants, and includes a National Academy study that discusses the economics of immigrants such as Rosalie. An immigrant family lacking high school education could cost federal, state, and local governments $225,000 over 75 years, but a college-educated immigrant like Rosalie could produce a net gain of $504,000 on their own.
DeParle, however, also captures the cultural motivations that nudge Rosalie’s family along and the importance of networks all over the world. In Mecca, Rosalie befriends her Filippino coworkers and meets her future husband Chris Villanueva during a dinner at a Chinese restaurant. When Rosalie and her family move to Texas, they ecstatically rush to the local Jollibee on its opening day, waiting for hours to get Filipino fast food, to stave off their feelings of homesickness. The importance of video chat is also apparent through Rosalie’s video chats with her children and later on Kristine’s chats with Rowena, Rosalie’s sister and a motherly figure to Kristine. Video calling serves as a vital lifeline between Rosalie’s family in the states to her extended family living in the Philippines. The importance of having a sense of belonging also manifests itself through Rosalie moving into a house adjacent to her Filipina coworkers in a cul-de-sac, creating a sort of Filipino cultural sphere resulting in cultural camaraderie and close friendships. In purchasing homes together, DeParle also shows how the immigrant story in the United States can build up US investment through immigrants contributing to the country through their homes and their taxes.
Houston Jollibee that Rosalie and her family visited.
Obstacles also work against Rosalie and her family in her migration efforts. In attempting to acquire her and her family’s visas, Rosalie had to take nursing tests and English language tests to enter the states multiple times in order to gain her work authorization. The visa queue also resulted in more than 8 years of waiting for Rosalie and her family, during which Rosalie was unable to physically spend time with her children due to her working abroad. Arriving in the US, Rosalie and her family also had to navigate tensions with US natives and other minority groups, such as in Chris’s differences with his coworkers or even dealing with pressures within Galveston’s own Filipino community through the local school’s lemonade fundraising event. Rosalie was also forced to contend with her children’s newfound sense of cultural identity as Americans.
By the end of the story, the family’s hardships and triumphs create a bittersweet moment of clarity for the reader: in moving her family to the States, Rosalie unintentionally Amercanizes her children, separating them from their Filippino heritage that she treasures greatly, but also cementing their identity as United States citizens. It is with a sense of pride that Rosalie tells DeParle that she’s going to her home, that, “the U.S. is my home.”
In spite of DeParle’s direct involvement at times in helping Rosalie in getting to the United States and protecting her family and interests, which some reviewers have negatively received, I believe DeParle’s genuine concern and work to assist the Portugana’s is a breath of fresh air in a field of study about human beings. That DeParle broke his investigative journalistic distance at times to help the Portuganas is not a lamentable disintegration of the tenants of journalistic investigation, but rather an emblematic and precedential effort demonstrating how journalism can reach beyond its displaced and observant lens to be an empowering human-centric component of learning.
It is a long and arduous and honorable path that Rosalie travels to get her family to where they are. DeParle demonstrates that, in showing the nonlinear path of one Filippino migrant family’s journey to the United States, that the growing global migrant population is not a monolithic story. Immigrants have a significant and diversified impact on the United States and across the world; and they are in no small part a significant driving force in the international field. DeParle’s book shows there is fruitful knowledge to be gained through empathetic investigation, and the story of the Portuganas is an important first step into revealing the rich and relatively unknown story of Filippine immigrants in the United States.
Authored by Jeffrey Justin Ashbeck (UCSB '18 (philosophy), JD (anticipated) '24) and Cynthia Bansak (Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University)
Email contacts: jeff.jash@gmail.com and cbansak@stlawu.edu
(https://www.clippings.me/users/jeffreyjustinashbeck)
(https://www.stlawu.edu/people/cynthia-bansak)
As the pandemic is now in its 8th month in the US, the inequities of the job loss and mortality rates due to COVID have been dramatic. The rate of new infections does not appear to be stabilizing as the number of new cases reach record highs daily. In particular, the hardships have fallen on those least able to handle them -- namely minority groups, single women, those with chronic illnesses and some immigrant groups. Undocumented immigrants, in particular, may have been especially hard hit as this group often lives in close quarters, works in the service industry, agriculture and some labor-intensive manufacturing and they are less likely to have adequate health care coverage. Furthermore, this group often lives in the shadows and may not immediately seek medical help.
What are the Current Statistics for Different Racial and Ethnic Groups?
The New England Journal of Medicine recently published an article discussing the effects
of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic on the undocumented Latinx Community (October 7, 2020). Specifically, it finds that Latinx patients in the Baltimore community (where the authors work and live) have reflected especially higher positive Covid test results in comparison to other groups’ testing outcomes. For example, over 40% of the Latinx population tested positive between March 11, 2020, and May 25, 2020 compared to the national average of 8.2%. According to the Boston Center for Antiracist Research, their COVID tracker shows higher national rates of Covid among people of color where deaths per 100,000 are nearly 50 percent higher for Hispanic or Latino individuals compared to white individuals and over 100 percent (or 2 times as likely) for Black individuals.
In Baltimore, where the local Latinx population is 5.5% and growing, the pandemic’s effect on immigrant Latinx patients has revealed demonstrable and immediate consequences. Whereas before the pandemic immigrant Latinx patients reflected a small proportion of Johns Hopkins admissions, following Covid-19 42.6% of Johns Hopkins Latinx patients tested for SARS-CoV-2 had positive results, in comparison with 17.6% of non-Hispanic Black patients and 8.8% of non-Hispanic White patients. This situation seems to be similar in other areas across the country as well. New data shows similar disproportionate ratios in the cities of New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, and 20 of 45 states reflect cases among Latinx people being double that of expectations based on population, and 11 of 45 states reflect cases being more than three times expected numbers.
Source: The COVID Racial Data Tracker
Why are undocumented immigrants possibly more likely to contract the COVID 19 virus? What reasons could be driving the racial disparities that exist between the undocumented Latinx population and other groups in the United States?
These higher rates may be indicative of underlying systemic issues affecting undocumented Latinx residents, such as tenuous housing arrangements and unstable economic situations, inability to travel and other factors making them a particularly vulnerable population.
A look at the current living situation that many Latinx migrant workers are facing right now gives some insight into the way these circumstances have come to exist. Difficult housing arrangements have helped accelerate rates of transmission between undocumented migrant workers, with many workers living together in densely crowded barrack-style homes. Residence sharing among low-income immigrant families is also common, and patients frequently mentioned living situations involving up to 10 workers within a two-bedroom apartment or multiple families living in a single home.
Source: Pulitzer Center
What local policy actions have been undertaken to try and combat these issues affecting the undocumented Latinx migrant community during the pandemic?
Different local policy responses across the nation have attempted resolving these issues with varying rates of success. Several states and cities have taken matters into their own hands rather than waiting for major fed immigration legislation. In Colorado, rental assistance and emergency medicaid have been offered to everyone without regard for citizenship status. Seattle has also launched a $9 million COVID-19 relief fund that gives grants to undocumented immigrants unable to access federal stimulus money, offering $1,000 to $3,000 grants per household for undocumented immigrants, and adding to the $40 million allocated by the state to assist undocumented workers. California has also made available a $125 million public-private fund for undocumented workers, and Minneapolis is offering $5 million in assistance to tenants and small businesses regardless of immigration status.
What has been lacking?
Note: an important consideration for this blog post is that there is a significant lack of concrete data regarding the undocumented community in the United States. Therefore, we had to use information about COVID contractions and mortality rates by race and ethnicity rather than citizenship status. Nonetheless, the Pew Hispanic Center and other researchers have documented that immigrants from Latin American countries comprise a disproportionate share of the undocumented population.
Authored by Jeffrey Justin Ashbeck (UCSB '18 (philosophy), JD (anticipated) '24) and Cynthia Bansak (Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University)
Email contacts: jeff.jash@gmail.com and cbansak@stlawu.edu
(https://www.clippings.me/users/jeffreyjustinashbeck)
(https://www.stlawu.edu/people/cynthia-bansak)
Works Cited
Inslee announces COVID-19 Immigrant Relief Fund now open for applications
https://www.governor.wa.gov/news-media/inslee-announces-covid-19-immigrant-relief-fund-now-open-applications governor.wa.gov, October 21, 2020.
The COVID Racial Data Tracker https://covidtracking.com/race The COVID Tracking Project, last updated November, 2020.
Cohn, D’Vera & Passel, Jeffrey, Mexicans decline to less than half the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population for the first time https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/us-unauthorized-immigrant-population-2017/ Pew Research Center, June 12, 2019.
Dillard, Robert, The Pandemic Has Devastated the Underserved: COVID-19 and the Undocumented Latino Community
https://www.docwirenews.com/docwire-pick/home-page-picks/the-pandemic-has-devastated-the-underserved-covid-19-and-the-undocumented-latino-community/ DocWire News Urban Health Today Blog, October 9, 2020.
Flores-Miller, Alejandra & Page, Kathleen Lessons We’ve Learned — Covid-19 and the Undocumented Latinx Community
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2024897 The New England Journal of Medicine, October 7, 2020.
Garnham, Juan Pablo & Venkataramanan, Meena, Undocumented immigrants behind on their rent are self-evicting across Texas
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/22/evictions-texas-undocumented-immigrants/ The Texas Tribune, July 22, 2020.
Ortega, May, Undocumented Immigrants Face Different Pandemic Struggles And A Complicated Web Of Resources
https://www.cpr.org/2020/10/15/undocumented-immigrants-coronavirus-pandemic-struggles-resources/ Colorado Public Radio, October 15, 2020.
Shah, Areeba, Harvest During the Pandemic: In America's Rust Belt, an Essential but Vulnerable Workforce Is Left To Fend for Themselves https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/harvest-during-pandemic-americas-rust-belt-essential-vulnerable-workforce-left-fend Pulitzer Center, September 28, 2020.
Shapiro, Nina, Seattle starts COVID-19 relief fund helping undocumented immigrants
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-starts-covid-relief-fund-helping-undocumented-immigrants/ The Seattle Times, October 16, 2020.Colgate students taking Professor Annie Hines' Economics of Immigration class in Fall 2020 just wrote a set of policy briefs on topics ranging from the effects of Covid on immigration to H1-B visas. Their briefs can be found on the class blog site: http://nsimpson.colgate.domains/econ233/. Check it out!
