EthnicMajority

(Voice of America) Eight years ago, “Mrs. Kim” came to the United States from China “to pursue her American Dream,” but thanks to unscrupulous business practices familiar to many Asian immigrants working in low-wage industries, things went horribly wrong.

Kim, who did not want to use her real name because she is still involved in litigation, began life in the U.S. preparing dumplings and side dishes at a Korean restaurant in Bergen County, New Jersey.

The job went well for a few years. It was hard, but Kim was getting paid for her efforts.

“When I first started working, [the owner] agreed to pay me $600 per week,” she said. “Specific hours were not indicated, but she did indicate I would have to work over 12 hours per day.”

Though she worked as many as 17 hours a day, when the restaurant’s business started to decline, the owner began paying employees late or not paying them at all.

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(LatinaLista.net) How long does a person have to live in a foreign country before he/she calls it home?

Six months? One year? Three years? Ten years?

The answer, of course, is however long it takes for that person to feel comfortable in their surroundings. While some people quickly adapt and make themselves at home, for others it may take a few years. But it's a safe bet to assume that if a person has been living in a foreign country for 15 years or more, then they're feeling right at home.

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(NY Daily News) Latino activists accused U.S. Senator John McCain of “fanning the flames” of intolerance Saturday after he blamed illegal immigrants for some of the massive wildfires sweeping Arizona.

In a press conference after touring the scorched fire-damaged areas, the former presidential candidate said “there is substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by people who crossed our border illegally.”

In addition to following forest maintenance measures, McCain said a solution to future fires would be a “secure border” to keep immigrants from coming into the US and setting campfires.

“They have set fires because they want to signal others. They have set fires to keep warm and they have set fires in order to divert law enforcement agents and agencies from them,” he said Saturday.

A U.S. Forest Service official told CNN on Sunday that while the widespread blaze was believed to have been caused by one “escaped campfire,” there was no reason to believe illegal immigrants were behind it.

McCain’s comments infuriated Latino leaders who called them baseless and inflammatory.

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(American Progress) A handful of local communities across our nation enacted unconstitutional, discriminatory, and costly immigration controls in recent years in an effort to chase away undocumented immigrants and their families and friends, many of whom are American citizens. This growing backlash against Hispanic immigrants in particular was driven by fear, economic uncertainty, and cultural differences in these localities: small towns in New Jersey, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and Texas, and one county in Virginia.

Against the backdrop of a slowly recovering economy, high unemployment, falling state and local tax revenues due to the Great Recession, and a host of problems ranging from crime to overcrowded schools, Hispanic immigrants proved to be handy scapegoats for the white majority of citizens in these communities. Never mind that these immigrants—legal and undocumented—are neither the root cause of any of these problems nor a major factor in any of them.

Arizona, of course, drew the most attention for its law, S.B. 1070, which requires police to question the legal status of suspects when there is “reasonable suspicion” they are undocumented immigrants. The law also sets “attrition through enforcement” as Arizona’s official immigration policy, which in plain English means if the laws are harsh enough, immigrants will flee in fear. The state’s immigration control measure has not been enforced, however, because a federal judge put a hold on the new law pending the outcome of a lawsuit in which the U.S. Department of Justice challenged Arizona’s attempts to usurp federal jurisdiction of immigration matters.

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The anti-immigration folks are getting what they wished for. According to research conducted by Vivek Wadhwa at Duke and University of California Berkeley funded by the Kauffman Foundation, skilled immigrants are moving back to their home countries in droves. Because there are no statistics covering this issue, the research team conducted a detailed survey of over 1200 Indian and Chinese immigrants who had worked or received education in the U.S. and returned to their home countries, and the results are illuminating.

It’s no surprise that the surveyed immigrants’ initial motivations for coming to the U.S. was for professional and educational opportunities. It’s also not a surprise that many immigrants miss their families and friends, and run into significant language and cultural barriers. And in spite of this America has been the unquestioned land of opportunity by the rest of the world for decades.

What is surprising is how rapidly the opportunity gap between America and the rest of the world is narrowing. According to the survey, 87% of the Chinese and 62% of Indians felt they had better longer-term professional growth opportunities in their home countries than in the U.S. And this wasn’t just because the respondents had overstayed their work visas – 30% of the them were either permanent residents or citizens of the U.S.

Even though immigrants make up 12% of the U.S. population, they make up 24% of the science and engineering bachelor’s degrees, and 47% of the science and engineering workers who have PhDs. They have also co-founded some of our most successful technology firms, such as Google, Intel, eBay, and Yahoo.

This brain drain is significant, especially in light of the worsening economic conditions in the U.S. The long-term solution is a well-educated workforce that can be innovative enough to develop new technologies and rebuild the manufacturing sector.

Too bad so many Americans view immigrants as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

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