Tag: Pew Hispanic Center

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Podcast: For Latino Voters it’s Immigration & the Economy, Not Necessarily in that Order

What’s important to Latino voters this year? A preview of the conversation coming up on Thursday, Oct. 18 at the “Unlocking the Latino Vote” town hall at The New School.

Survey Shows Hispanic Immigrants Got the Census Message

A poll of nearly 1000 people found that that Spanish-speaking immigrants are more likely than U.S.-born Hispanics to mail back their census forms.

Study Finds No Evidence of Massive Return Home by Mexican Immigrants

Mexicans migration to and from the U.S. - Source: Pew Hispanic Center

Source: Pew Hispanic Center

Mexicans are not fleeing the U.S. economy in droves to return home, says a report released this week by the Pew Hispanic center. After months of speculation last year and dramatic statements from Mexican state and municipal officials, this is the first broad study of whether the recession has caused a huge wave of reverse migration.

“The current recession has had a harsh impact on employment of Latino immigrants, raising the question of whether an increased number of Mexican-born residents are choosing to return home,” the study says. “This new Hispanic Center analysis finds no support for that hypothesis in government data from the United States or Mexico.”

The Pew study cites the Mexican government’s National Survey of Employment and Occupation, which includes data on household members returning from abroad.

“The number of arrivals home has not increased for any year-to-year period since the Mexican survey began in 2006,” the study says.

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Undocumented Immigrants Remain At Under 12 Million, Have More Children, New Study Says

By Diego Graglia, FI2W web editor

Undocumented immigrants in the United States are more geographically dispersed than in the past, they make up over 5% of the nation’s labor force and are more likely than U.S.-born residents or legal immigrants to live in a household with children, a new report says.

The study, published on Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, also says that “the recent rapid growth in the undocumented immigrant labor force has come to a halt.” The undocumented population has stayed at about 11.9 million or 4% of the country’s population.

A Portrait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United StatesThe Center, which has been studying the size and growth of the undocumented population for years, estimates that it grew rapidly between 1990 and 2006, but it has since stabilized.

Now, “unauthorized immigrants are 4% of the nation’s population and account for 5.4% of its workforce,” the report’s authors, Jeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn wrote.

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In California and Elsewhere, Latinos Disproportionately Affected By Recession

Social worker Lourdes Cienfuegos, at right, talks to an Imperial Valley resident - Photo: La Opinión

Social worker Lourdes Cienfuegos, at right, talks to an Imperial Valley resident. (Photo: La Opinión)

Sara Espinosa chose to sleep on the street rather than leave her 12-year-old son to spend the night alone at a men-only homeless shelter. As a consequence, Sara, her son and her two daughters have been sleeping in her car.

Espinosa is one of hundreds of people in conditions of extreme poverty in Imperial Valley, one of the poorest counties in California and the nation, La Opinión reporter Claudia Nuñez wrote Wednesday.

Here, the unemployment rate has already passed 24 percent, almost four times the national average, and one out of every 18 families has lost their home.

While Imperial Valley is an extreme case, a report released last week by the Pew Hispanic Center shows the economic recession “is having an especially severe impact on employment prospects for immigrant Hispanics,” according to Rakesh Kochhar, the center’s associate director for research.

The unemployment rate for foreign-born Hispanics increased from 5.1 percent to 8 percent, or by 2.9 percentage points, from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2008. During this same time period, the unemployment rate for all persons in the labor market increased from 4.6 percent to 6.6 percent, or by 2 percentage points.

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