Untangling the Web: race/ethnicity, immigration, and the nation's health.

Abstract

According to the 2000 census, people of color (including Hispanics and non-Hispanics who did not identify their race as White) now represent 31% of US residents.1 The US population is increasingly racially and ethnically diverse owing, in part, to immigration and higher birth rates among minority populations. Today, more than 3 in 4 immigrants (77%) come from Latin America (South America, the Caribbean, and Central America) or Asia.2 They are racially and ethnically classified in the United States as Latino/Hispanic, Asian, or African American/Black, even though most of them probably would not be classified as such in their country of origin. This represents a shift from past immigrants, who were largely of European descent. Immigrants represent 11% of the US population.3 While most minority Americans are native born, about 39% of Latinos, 61% of Asians, and 6% of African Americans are immigrants (US Census Bureau, unpublished data, March 2000). On average, almost 60% of immigrants of color have been in the United States longer than 10 years and most are now US citizens (US Census Bureau, unpublished data, March 2000). Foreign-born residents of color often experience barriers to full participation in society on the basis of race/ethnicity, language, and immigration status. Sensitivities about issues of race in the United States have made it difficult to have open and honest dialogue about the overlapping issues of race/ethnicity, immigration, and access to publicly supported social welfare benefits. Louis Freedberg, in a Washington Post op-ed article,4 describes US policy toward immigrants as “borderline hypocrisy.” His article was largely about illegal immigrants, about a quarter of the 30 million immigrants estimated to be in the United States in 2000.3 Immigrants, regardless of their legal status, are given contradictory messages about the extent to which they are valued in society. On the one hand, there is considerable evidence that the United States encourages immigrants' participation in the labor force, both in lower-skilled positions (e.g., farming and domestic work) and higher-skilled positions (e.g., computer and medical sciences). On the other hand, immigrants' contributions to the economy are not always valued sufficiently to ensure that they are afforded the workplace protections and societal benefits made available to other workers. A recent poll found that public attitudes about the economic impact of immigrants on society have changed dramatically in the past 5 years.5 In 1994, 63% of the public saw immigrants as an economic drain on society. In 2000, just 38% held that view. However, the public has a more mixed view about immigrants' impact on American culture. In a March 2001 Gallup survey, 45% of respondents said that the increasing population diversity created by immigrants mostly improves American culture, while 38% said it mostly threatens the culture (the rest had no opinion or volunteered that “both” or “neither” response options were true).6 Although public attitudes toward immigrants have become more positive in the last decade, contentious public debate about the benefits of the current wave of immigration persists.