Understanding and Effectively Managing the Mexican Employee

Abstract

The numbers are staggering. Between 1820 and 1980, a span of 160 years, approximately 50 million immigrants have entered the United States (see Tables 1 and 2). The United States has traditionally received immigrants and, in fact, has received a larger number of immigrants than any other country in history. Even now, immigrants are still flocking to the US. More recent statistics for this decade show that during the five year period between 1981 and 1985, an average of 573,000 legal immigrants were admitted to the US. In addition to legal immigrants, according to some estimates, the number of illegal immigrants is growing by up to 500,000 a year. This steady flow of immigrants is having a significant impact on demographics. The Census Bureau estimates that immigration now accounts for about 28 percent of the US population growth. Because of the close proximity to many Latin American countries, one of the fastest growing ethnic groups of immigrants is the Hispanic (see Table 3). Latin Americans accounted for 35 percent of all legal immigration between 1981 and 1985 and account for three‐fourths of the estimated 500,000 yearly illegal immigrants. Hispanics, as a group, are growing so fast that according to a study conducted by Leon F. Bouvier and Robert W. Gardner, if present trends continue, within a hundred years non‐Hispanic whites of European origin will no longer constitute a majority of the US population. In addition, if current legal and illegal immigration trends continue and annual immigration averages one million, the non‐Hispanic white population would drop to just under 50 percent by 2080.