Potential Immigrants Research Articles

Compensatory immigration depends on adjacent population size and habitat quality but not on landscape connectivity

1. Populations experiencing localized mortality can recover in the short term by net movement of individuals from adjacent areas, a process called compensatory immigration or spillover. Little is known about the factors influencing the magnitude of compensatory immigration or its impact on source populations. Such information is important for understanding metapopulation dynamics, the use of protected areas for conservation, management of exploited populations and pest control. 2. Using two small, territorial damselfish species (Stegastes diencaeus and S. adustus) in their naturally fragmented habitat, we quantified compensatory immigration in response to localized mortality, assessed its impact on adjacent source populations and examined the importance of potential immigrants, habitat quality and landscape connectivity as limiting factors. On seven experimental sites, we repeatedly removed 15% of the initial population size until none remained and immigration ceased. 3. Immigrants replaced 16-72% of original residents in S. diencaeus and 0-69% in S. adustus. The proportion of the source population that immigrated into depleted areas varied from 9% to 61% in S. diencaeus and from 3% to 21% in S. adustus. In S. diencaeus, compensatory immigration was strongly affected by habitat quality, to a lesser extent by the abundance of potential immigrants and not by landscape connectivity. In S. adustus, immigration was strongly affected by the density of potential migrants and not by habitat quality and landscape connectivity. On two control sites, immigration in the absence of creation of vacancies was extremely rare. 4. Immigration occurred in response to localized mortality and was therefore compensatory. It was highly variable, sometimes producing substantial impacts on both depleted and source populations. The magnitude of compensatory immigration was influenced primarily by the availability of immigrants and by the potential improvement in territory quality that they could achieve by immigrating and not by their ability to reach the depleted area.

Debating the ethics of immigration: is there a right to exclude?

The book has a clear focus on philosophical theory and ethical argument, referring to economic and other evidence for the positions taken where this is helpful, but making it clear that what is ultimately at stake is the morality of border controls. Each author sets out a distinct and thought-provoking position on the ethics of immigration, with Christopher Wellman arguing that legitimate states have the right to have any immigration regime they want, and Phillip Cole arguing that national borders should be completely open. By setting out what may seem to be radical positions, Wellman and Cole succeed in showing clearly what is at stake when it comes to the ethics of migration policy. Do states have the right to prevent potential immigrants from crossing their borders, or should people have the freedom to migrate and settle wherever they wish? Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole develop and defend opposing answers to this timely and important question. Appealing to the right to freedom of association, Wellman contends that legitimate states have broad discretion to exclude potential immigrants, even those who desperately seek to enter. Against this, Cole argues that the commitment to the moral equality of all human beings - which legitimate states can be expected to hold - means national borders must be open: equal respect requires equal access, both to territory and membership; and that the idea of open borders is less radical than it seems when we consider how many territorial and community boundaries have this open nature. In addition to engaging with each other's arguments, Wellman and Cole address a range of central questions and prominent positions on this topic. The authors therefore provide a critical overview of the major contributions to the ethics of migration, as well as developing original, provocative positions of their own.

The evolution of multimale groups in Verreaux's sifaka, or how to test an evolutionary demographic model

Theoretical advances in the study of social evolution have highlighted the importance of studying group formation in conjunction with population dynamics. To address this need, a number of demographically explicit models have been developed. We parameterize such a model to study the evolution of multimale associations in Verreaux’s sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi), a diurnal lemur living in small multimale–multifemale groups. We use long-term demographic data from a population in western Madagascar to estimate the fitness prospects of different male behavioral strategies. Our results indicate that dispersing male sifaka, rather than searching for a breeding territory of their own (floating), do better joining an established group as a subordinate with limited reproductive opportunities, mainly because they may later ascend to the dominant position. By contrast, resident males should not accept potential immigrants because we could not find any measurable benefit of living in a multimale group for them. There is thus a conflict over group membership between resident and floater males, and we suggest that floaters at least occasionally win this conflict because they have more to gain from joining than residents stand to lose by sharing their territory. Key words: ecological constraints, group-living, Propithecus verreauxi, social evolution, social queuing. [Behav Ecol]

A Return to a National Origin Preference? Mexican Immigration and the Principles Guiding U.S. Immigration Policy

The provocative question raised by Rogers Smith's “Living in a Promiseland? Mexican Immigration and American Obligations” is whether the tortured history of U.S.-Mexican relations and the racialized context of Mexican immigrant reception can best be ameliorated through targeted immigration policies that would create added opportunities for Mexican migrants relative to others. I argue that the current, more universally-principled system of U.S. immigration policy, supplemented by an inclusive legalization program, can better serve the needs of potential Mexican migrants and Mexican immigrants resident in the United States. Also, I am more skeptical than Smith is about the depths of Mexico's commitment to seeking binational strategies to address the needs of its émigrés abroad.

The Economics of International Refugee Law

We model the evolution of international refugee law and analyze reform proposals. We show that the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees can be understood as an agreement among states to supply the global public good of refugee protection but that the increase in economic migration has led states to shade on their obligations under the convention. Furthermore, one state shading on its obligations strengthens incentives for other states to shade, potentially creating multiple equilibria. Under the open-ended nonrefoulement norm of the convention, reforms that make a state less attractive for potential immigrants, such as taxes or north-to-south transfer systems, would create negative externalities for third countries. In contrast, reforms in which wealthy states pay poor states to resettle refugees from other poor states would create positive externalities on third countries. Subsidizing such transfers would be more efficient than current policies used to reduce the social costs caused by concentrations of refugees in certain southern host states.

A spatio‐temporal analysis of the spread of sugarcane yellow leaf virus

The spatio‐temporal dynamics of disease spread provide an area of acute scientific interest but substantial analytic challenges. Analytic approaches need to draw from current knowledge of disease systems yet be flexible enough to provide targeted inference without restrictive assumptions. We explore this balance in detail with respect to the observed pattern of spread of sugarcane yellow leaf virus, the causal agent of yellow leaf disease. This disease affects cultivated sugarcane plants and spreads via an aphid vector (Melanaphis sacchari). The system is of considerable economic interest, but presents several analytic complications. First, the plants begin as well separated individuals that grow into large plants with overlapping leaf canopies enabling increased vector access between neighbouring plants. The overlap between neighbouring plants first occurs within rows and then extends between rows, presenting another interesting spatial component to consider when modelling the propagation of infection. Second, the vector initially flies between plants but at some point sheds wings and shifts to walking between plants. We are particularly interested in how these two features of the system and their interrelation may impact the spatial spread of disease over time. In addition, we also explore the impact of potential immigration of infected vectors from outside of the study area. We treat our observed cane field as a spatial grid with regular spacing between rows and smaller spacing within rows. Our data consist of observed disease status of each of 1643 plants at each of six time points. We provide descriptive summaries of the temporal evolution of spatial pattern in infection, then propose hierarchical models to describe the pattern and capture the influence of the ecological and environmental factors listed above.

Iranian Diaspora: With focus on Iranian Immigrants in Sweden

Based on international data, nowadays, one of the every thirty-five people is living away from his/her homeland. In this respect, the United Nation has called current century an era of greatest human displacement in the history. In the last decades Iran was one of ten top migrant's receiver and sender society. Although there is no precise statistics about Iranians abroad, but according to formal speech, three-five millions of Iranians are dispersed around the world (Diaspora). Thus, studying those social problems by local researchers of social sciences is quite essential, because most of internal researches related on motivations and tendencies (potential immigrants), with a general focus on elites. There have been few studies on the Iranian immigrants and their social issues. This research employs Mixed Methods that integrates questionnaire, narrative interviews, observations, and participant observations. This paper mainly focuses on social problems of Iranian immigrants in Sweden, including employment, marriage, divorce, promoting education after immigration, immigration timing and reasons, satisfaction of life (family, income, and job) and immigrant's attitudes about the behavior of the host society toward them, adaptation, feeling as outsiders, and willingness to return to homeland.

Immigration amnesties

Barriers and border patrols complement amnesty in a coherent policy that creates incentives for illegal immigrants to self-select on the basis of ability in a way that benefits a rich host country. We consider the roles of barriers to migration and immigration amnesties in greater depth and, in particular, we examine the rich country's optimal policies. Encouraging self-selection is optimal under some, but not all, circumstances, because there are mixes of potential immigrants for which the cost of welfare migration is more than offset by the gains from productive workers enticed by a more lenient immigration policy. Furthermore, under plausible assumptions, the rich country's optimum may require a probabilistic rather than a certain amnesty to fine-tune the mix of migrants. Numerical examples illustrate that probabilistic or certain amnesties, addressed to different partitions of the migrant population, are each optimal as the mix of potential migrants changes.

Un Emploi Correspondant À Ses Attentes Personnelles? Le Cas Des Nouveaux Immigrants Au Québec

This paper studies the characteristics of immigrants who are likely (or unlikely) to find a job matching their aspirations. Data are from the 2002 Survey of selected workers for a sample of 1,875 economic immigrants that were admitted in Quebec between January 1997 and June 2000. Our empirical results confirm standard findings in the literature on immigration about the limited international transferability of human capital across countries, especially, of the foreign experience. In order to improve the chances of success of new immigrants, the implications of such results for immigration policy command a questioning and a re-examination of: (1) the resources allocated to the recruitment and information of potential immigrants in their country of origin prior to migration; (2) the programs already in place to facilitate their integration in the labour market; and (3) the Point System that is in use for selecting the most potentially successful immigrants.

Immigration and human rights in leprosy

The World Health Organisation in the early 1990s set its goal as ‘the elimination of leprosy as a public health problem by the year 2000’. With multiple drug therapy freely available, over 15 million people have been cured since the 1980s and the elimination goal of less than one case per 10 000 population was reached at a global level by 2000 and all but a small number of countries had achieved the target by 2005. From 2006 to 2010 the WHO Global Leprosy Strategy rightly focused its attention much more towards reducing the burden of leprosy and ensuring the quality and sustainability of control activities. This enabled much more focus to be given to the issues of equity, social justice and human rights and indeed these continue to be prominent in the recent WHO Global Leprosy Strategy for 2011–2015 adopted by 44 National Leprosy Programme managers in New Delhi, India in April 2009. The promotion of human rights and social justice in dealing with people affected by leprosy remains vital in addressing the persistent problems of stigma and discrimination suffered by people affected and their families. In many developed countries leprosy is only encountered among people coming in from endemic countries either as migrant workers or as immigrants. Public health considerations are often brought to bear on States’ policies regarding health care of migrant workers and the admissibility of new immigrants. It is in relation to this that we find in many countries leprosy is still regarded as a notifiable disease the identification of which can have a direct impact on the rights of migrant workers and potential immigrants. During the lead up to the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, the Chinese authorities issued a decree indicating that people affected by leprosy would not be allowed to enter the country. A vigorous and concerted lobby resulted in this ruling being withdrawn. However, a brief internet search revealed that a number of other countries also had policies in place citing leprosy as grounds for refusal of visas and for the inadmissibility of migrants or immigrants. Countries listed as having such discriminatory rulings included Barbados, Hungary, Iraq, Namibia, the Philippines, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and USA. In recent WHO meetings of Leprosy Programme Managers from the Eastern Mediterranean region it has been reported that in some countries migrant workers diagnosed with leprosy are routinely deported or at best, offered one round of MDT before being sent home. It unlikely that there is follow up of those cases on their return to their home countries and there is a clear disincentive to workers to disclose or even present early symptoms.

Promoting Equality? Gendered Messages in State Materials for New Immigrants

This article explores immigration policies and the state materials distributed to new and potential immigrants in Canada, Sweden and The Netherlands, focusing specifically on how these important tools of socialization contribute to the regulation of gender roles and family life. Beyond conveying key messages about the host society, these materials are also often devised to offset a perceived threat from immigrant cultures. This is particularly apparent with regards to gender roles and family structures, in which women’s roles are often put forward as symbolic markers of the differences between immigrant and host cultures. Ultimately, this article argues that while all three of the case studies view themselves as models of equality and tolerance, they also impose specific culturally informed definitions of family and gender on new immigrants that rely heavily on essentialized notions of immigrant and host communities.

Terra incognita: Mapping the detention center in Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying and the US Supreme Court ruling Boumediene v. Bush

This essay analyzes the contemporary conceptualization of the site of the detention center as a paradoxical space on the global map: detention centers are envisioned as removed from standard legal and social structures but simultaneously determined and circumscribed by political interests. Via an analysis of two texts, Edwidge Danticat's memoir Brother, I'm Dying, and the 2008 US Supreme Court ruling Boumediene v. Bush, I argue that a detention site for suspected terrorists like Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay is not a crucial innovation brought about by exceptional circumstances, but a continuation of an earlier US policy developed for the detention of potential immigrants. In the final section of this paper, I begin to address the question of whether the problem posed by the political construction of the detention center on our global map can best be counteracted via legal discourse – as the US Supreme Court seems to argue – or via literary discourse, as writers like Danticat seem to suggest.

Constitutional and Human Rights Disturbances: Australia’s Privative Clauses Created Both in an Immigration Context

With the arrival of another wave of “boat people” to Australian waters in late 2009, issues of human rights of asylum seekers and refugees once again became a major feature of the political landscape. Claims of “queue jumping” were made, particularly by some sections of the media, and they may seem populist, but they are also ironic, given the protracted efforts on the part of the federal government to stymie any orderly appeals process, largely through resort to “privative clauses”. Such clauses demonstrate the many ways in which human rights of those seeking asylum in far-off lands and are potential future immigrants, who often lack much-touted needed papers, yet who are for the most part genuine refugees, are subject to the slings and arrows of political fortune (and misfortune). Approaching the courts if treated unfairly or seeking a further decision as to your fate would seem one of the fundamental premises of human rights. Yet privative clauses—or attempts to ouster the jurisdiction of the courts and to insulate decisions from appeal—have become an increasingly frequent feature of the Australian migration legislation. With a seemingly watertight federal constitutional power set in stone since 1901, to deal with migration and aliens, and without the tempered contemporary update of a federal Bill of Rights, the Australian federal government has been able to narrow the grounds of judicial review in those contexts. We argue that the concerted efforts to deny such fundamental rights of appeal to those most in need of the full armoury of the protection of the law in a modern, affluent democracy, constitutes both a breach of their human rights and a breach of core constitutional principles such as separation of powers. Those principles may not be formally articulated in the text of the Australian Constitution, but in our view they are implicit in the constitutional arrangements, and hence we can conclude with the arguments of former Justice of the High Court of Australia, Michael Kirby, who asked—to whom does sovereignty truly belong?

Potential 21st century changes to the mammal fauna of Denmark – implications of climate change, land-use, and invasive species

The moderate temperature increase of 0.74 °C in the 20th century has caused latitudinal and altitudinal range shifts in many species including mammals. Therefore, given the more dramatic temperature increase predicted for the 21st century, we can therefore expect even stronger range shifts as well. However, European mammals are already faced with other anthropogenic pressures, notably habitat loss, pollution, overexploitation, and invasive species, and will have to face the combined challenge posed by climate change in a landscape highly influenced by human activities. As an example of the possible consequences of land use, invasive species, and climate change for the regional-scale mammal species composition, we here focus on the potential 21st century changes to the mammal fauna of Denmark. Supported by species distribution modelling, we present a discussion of the possible changes to the Danish mammal fauna: Which species are likely to become locally extinct? Which new species are most likely to immigrate? And, what is the potential threat from invasive species? We find that future climate change is likely to cause a general enrichment of the Danish mammal fauna by the potential immigration of seventeen new species. Only the northern birch mouse (Sicista betulina) is at risk of extinction from climate change predicted. The European native mammals are not anticipated to contribute to the invasive-species problem as they coexist with most Danish species in other parts of Europe. However, non-European invasive species are also likely to enter the Danish fauna and may negatively impact the native species.

The unity of the people, and immigration in liberal theory

What unites political associations? And what are fair criteria for conceding or denying access to citizenship to potential immigrants? This article argues that the socio-political conditions for the unity of political associations should be distinguished from the merely institutional functions of statehood. Focusing on conditions for the unity of political associations, the article critically examines traditional and contemporary ideas about the unity of the people in liberal political theory. Starting with a brief historical sketch of Hobbes' (states make peoples) and Rousseau's (the people is the state) accounts of the unity of the people, the major argument examines the conditions of democratic unity and especially conditions for the acceptance of majority rule. It will be claimed that democratic unity requires neither cultural nor moral homogeneity but first and foremost compatibility of political attitudes and continuous political dependency. Criteria for access to citizenship, accordingly, should focus on residence requirements and political attitudes, unless preferential treatment of particular groups of immigrants is recommended for other reasons such as history of colonialism or past injustice.

Estimating colonization potential of migrant tree species

AbstractPlant populations migrating in response to climate change will have to colonize established communities. Even if a population disperses to a new region with a favorable climate, interactions with other species may prevent its establishment and further spread. The potential of these species to grow along with residents will be a critical factor controlling their response to climate change. To determine the capacity of migrating species to colonize established communities we conducted extensive long‐term transplant experiments where potential tree migrant species, i.e. species within ‘migration range,’ were planted side by side with resident ones. Potential immigrants were selected to be representative species of their native communities. For both groups, residents and potential migrants (17 species), we compared their growth response along gradients in soil moisture and light availability. Rather than manipulate climate directly, we exploited natural microclimatic gradients and the fluctuations in climate that occurred during the 5‐year experiment. Experimental results were used to estimate growth in the context of novel climate and relevant establishment factors. Results suggest that potential immigrant species had similar growth rates in the new environment than those from resident species ensuring their ability to establish in the area. However, contrary to our expectations, the soil moisture requirements for the immigrant group were similar to those of the resident species. These results could have major implications for vegetation changes under the predicted drier climate for the region. If it is the case that neither resident species nor potential migrants are able to maintain stable populations, the region may experience a decline in local biodiversity.

Generation of Earth's First-Order Biodiversity Pattern

The first-order biodiversity pattern on Earth today and at least as far back as the Paleozoic is the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), a decrease in richness of species and higher taxa from the equator to the poles. LDGs are produced by geographic trends in origination, extinction, and dispersal over evolutionary timescales, so that analyses of static patterns will be insufficient to reveal underlying processes. The fossil record of marine bivalve genera, a model system for the analysis of biodiversity dynamics over large temporal and spatial scales, shows that an origination and range-expansion gradient plays a major role in generating the LDG. Peak origination rates and peak diversities fall within the tropics, with range expansion out of the tropics the predominant spatial dynamic thereafter. The origination-diversity link occurs even in a "contrarian" group whose diversity peaks at midlatitudes, an exception proving the rule that spatial variations in origination are key to latitudinal diversity patterns. Extinction rates are lower in polar latitudes (> or =60 degrees ) than in temperate zones and thus cannot create the observed gradient alone. They may, however, help to explain why origination and immigration are evidently damped in higher latitudes. We suggest that species require more resources in higher latitudes, for the seasonality of primary productivity increases by more than an order of magnitude from equatorial to polar regions. Higher-latitude species are generalists that, unlike potential immigrants, are adapted to garner the large share of resources required for incumbency in those regions. When resources are opened up by extinctions, lineages spread chiefly poleward and chiefly through speciation.

Immigration and Freedom of Association

In this article I appeal to freedom of association to defend a state’s right to control immigration over its territorial borders. Without denying that those of us in wealthy societies may have extremely demanding duties of global distributive justice, I ultimately reach the stark conclusion that every legitimate state has the right to close its doors to all potential immigrants, even refugees desperately seeking asylum from incompetent or corrupt political regimes that are either unable or unwilling to protect their citizens’ basic moral rights. This article is divided into four sections. First, I argue for a presumptive case in favor of a state’s right to limit immigration as an instance of its more general right to freedom of association. In the second and third sections, I respond to egalitarian and libertarian cases for open borders. Finally, in the fourth section, I consider the permissibility of screening immigrants based upon their race, ethnicity or religion.

Zachrání Evropu imigrace?

The current record wave of immigration is a problem and does not conform to the interests of most people in Europe. Immigration is ineffective as a global development policy. The article argues in favor of an immigration that is balanced and that is in the interests of citizens in Europe rather than just in the interests of potential immigrants, recent immigrants and businesses that like cheap labor. First section of the article perceives immigration in the context of the public debate. Second section calls attention to the record wave of immigration to Europe. Third section asks a question of who are the winners and losers of immigration. Forth section analyses free movement of people in the EU. Fifth section explains why immigration is not remedy to population aging. Sixth section is concerned with the strengths and weaknesses of multiculturalism. Seventh section draws attention to the problem of democratic legitimacy. Eighth section asks a question of whether there is a rational immigration policy.

Health Selection Among New Immigrants

We sought to quantify the extent of health selection (i.e., the degree to which potential immigrants migrate, or fail to migrate, on the basis of their health status) among contemporary US immigrant groups and evaluate the degree that selection explains variation in self-rated health among US legal permanent residents. Data came from the New Immigrant Survey 2003 cohort. We estimated the extent of positive and negative health selection through a unique series of questions asking immigrants in the United States to evaluate their health and compare it to that of citizens in their country of origin. The extent of positive health selection differed significantly across immigrant groups and was related to compositional differences in the socioeconomic profiles of immigrant streams. The salience of socioeconomic status and English-language ability in explaining health differentials across immigrant groups reinforces the importance of further research on the role of these factors in contributing to the health of immigrants above and beyond the need for additional attention to the health selection process.