Immigration patterns reflect changing economy

WASHINGTON – The once-popular perception of Mexican immigrants streaming across America’s southern border is outdated, according to a demographer who will give a lecture in Albuquerque next week.

That’s because today’s immigrants are much more likely to be Asian and more people are leaving the U.S. for Mexico than arriving from Mexico, said Jeff Passel, a senior researcher at the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, who will discuss “Immigration to the United States: Recent Trends and Turnarounds.”

	If you go WHAT: Lecture on Immigration to the United States: Recent Trends and Turnarounds, by Dr. Jeff Passel, a demographer and senior researcher with the Pew Hispanic Center WHERE: Sandia Prep Theater, 532 Osuna NE WHEN: 3 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 7 COST: $15 for AIA members; $20 for nonmembers; free for students with proper ID MORE INFORMATION: www.abqinternational.org

“The last time we saw something like that was in the Great Depression in the 1930s,” Passel said in a Journal interview.

Passel’s lecture, on Sunday, Oct. 7, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Sandia Prep Theater, is part of the Albuquerque International Association’s four-part lecture series on global immigration trends. The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan research organization that provides information on issues, attitudes and trends that are shaping America and the world.

In a Journal interview, Passel said that, in 2010, Asian immigrants to the U.S. outpaced those from Mexico and other Latin American countries. About 430,000 Asians, or 36 percent of all new immigrants, arrived in the U.S. in 2010, according to the latest census data. About 370,000, or 31 percent, were Hispanic.

Asians now make up nearly 6 percent of the U.S. population. Their numbers have increased partly because of additional visas given to specialized workers and investors as the U.S. economy becomes more technology-driven and less reliant on manufacturing.

“From the 1920s until the 1950s, our immigration laws were very discriminatory, and if you were from Asia, you basically couldn’t come to the U.S.,” Passel said. “It wasn’t just Asians – if you were from southern or eastern Europe, it was hard to get in.

“Now we have sizable communities from Southeast Asia, many of which are refugees from the Vietnam War but now the vast majority come as family members of people (already) in the U.S.,” he said.

The United States has more than 40 million immigrants, who represent 13 percent of the population, or one of eight people living in the nation, Passel said.

Passel said that the dire economic conditions in the U.S. have made the country less appealing to Latin Americans, millions of whom came to America for work between 1970 and the early 2000s.

“If you’re sitting in Mexico and you know it will cost you $3,000 or more to get into the U.S. and it’s dangerous because you’ll have to go through the desert and deal with drug violence in northern Mexico and you’re faced with the prospect of not being able to find a job in the U.S., you’re going to think twice about coming,” Passel said.