ICMEC Working Papers
Understanding the Information Resource Needs of the Immigrant
Advocacy and Service Communities
Generously supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation

Masters, Suzette Brooks (ICMEC/New School University) with Ted Perlmutter, September 2001.

“Networking the Networks:  Improving Information Flows in the Immigration Field,”

New York: The International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship, New School University.

ABSTRACT:

Based on extensive interviews with over 120 immigrant advocacy and service organizations around the country, this report focuses on what immigration-related information these groups need and how they currently obtain and impart information.  The report compiles the most popular listservs and websites, identifies key unmet information needs, analyzes technology use by immigration groups and the particular obstacles faced by community-based immigrant service organizations, and considers the role to be played by umbrella groups in improving technology use and collaboration among member groups.   The study concludes by recommending greater collaboration among information providers, education initiatives to improve technology use, new information products to address unmet needs, and creation of greatly expanded communication and information networks.

Section I:  Dedication, Acknowledgements, and Table of Contents (340KB);
Section II:  Executive Summary (324KB);
Section III:  Methodology and Sample Overview (333KB);
Section IV:  Findings (435KB);

Section V:
Conclusion and Recommendations (315KB)

Section VI:
Endnotes and Appendices (436KB)


Immigrants and New York City at the Turn of the Century:
Essays on Employment, Education, Health and Public Policy
Directed by David R. Howell
Generously supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation

    Over the last two decades, the U.S. has experienced the largest absolute and per capita levels of immigration since the early part of the century. Most have settled in a handful of cities. Just ten metropolitan areas accounted for two-thirds of all immigrants between 1985-90. Even more striking, almost 40 percent of all (counted) immigrants in this five-year period located in just two areas, Los Angeles and New York City. In absolute terms, New York City has received more than two and a half million immigrants since 1965. By the late 1990s, nearly 40% of the City’s population was foreign-born. The demographic makeup of the city is being transformed at a pace not seen since for a century.
    In 1999, The Henry Luce Foundation approved a proposal by the New School University's International Center for Migration, Ethnicity and Citizenship (ICMEC) to support a project of original and applied research on the public policy implications of the rapid growth of immigrants in New York City and the surrounding metropolitan area. The project was designed to document and better understand some key dimensions of this new immigration. These would include effects on metropolitan area institutions and populations, processes of immigrant incorporation, and changes in immigrant well-being.
    Our strategy has been to focus on a few key dimensions of the regional political economy crucial for immigrant incorporation and immigrant and native-born well-being: the labor market; public benefits programs, welfare reform and health outcomes; and education. Rather than looking for broad overviews of each of these areas, the project aimed to advance public understanding by taking advantage of the particular expertise of each of the authors. While this approach would require some sacrifice in comprehensiveness, it seemed the most appropriate for advancing the project’s main goal of producing important new policy-relevant knowledge. Our ultimate objective was to produce a set of scholarly but widely accessible and policy-relevant essays on the implications of the recent wave of less-skilled immigrants to the metropolitan area.
    We now have 13 completed essays by some of the foremost experts on both immigration and New York City. The authors are all professors and researchers affiliated with the region’s leading universities. They represent a wide range of disciplines, from economics (about half of the authors) to urban and regional planning, sociology, political science, anthropology and demography. Most importantly, the authors were selected as much for their multi-disciplinary and policy-oriented approaches as for their prominence and experience in the study of the New York metropolitan area.
    Abstracts of all the articles are listed below. To read the papers available in full-text version, simply click on the title of the article you are interested in.
Introduction
by David R. Howell, Editor

Paper #1. "New York’s New Immigrants, Then and Now."
by Nancy Foner

    Whether we look at immigrant quality, race, or education, it is misleading to view  today’s immigrants against a set of myths and images rather actual realities. There is a tendency to exaggerate immigrants’ successes in the good old days and to minimize the difficulties they faced then -- just as there is a tendency to exaggerate immigrant failures and problems now. This essay attempts to set the record straight, looking behind the myths to show what happened then and what is happening now.  Specifically, I critically examine three myths or popular images about New York immigrants in the two eras: about immigrant quality; about racial differences; and about immigrants’ educational success. A comparative-historical perspective that examines immigrant New Yorkers in the two great waves not only dispels some popular misconceptions but also brings into sharper focus important aspects of today’s immigration. Although there are striking continuities in the experiences of immigrants in the two eras, there are also dramatic contrasts in patterns of incorporation, partly due to characteristics of the immigrants themselves and partly due to the very different social, economic, and political contexts in New York in the two periods.

Paper #2. "Native-born Responses to Large-Scale Immigration: Outmigration vs Interborough Moves in New York City."
by Katherine Hempstead

    The 1990 PUMS is used to analyze the relationship between immigration and outmigration of the native born in New York City.  The study population is limited to native born males who lived in the five boroughs  in 1985. The relationship between immigration and the probability of various kinds of moves is assessed using logistic regression. Unlike prior work, this study examines a single metro area and does not limit itself to inter-state migration. No significant relationship between immigration and the probability of outmigration among the native born is found, but there is a significant relationship with inter-borough moves of the native born. The fact that immigration does not seem to have any effect on the likelihood of moving to the suburbs or beyond supports recent studies which have found no evidence of a labor market “push” effect of immigrants. However the positive effect of immigration on the probability of inter-borough migration is consistent with the view that the native-born move to achieve residential segregation.

Paper #3."Increasing Opportunities, Declining Pay: Immigrants in the New York
Metropolitan Labor Market, 1979-98."
by David Howell and Kimberly Gester

    Immigrants accounted for three-quarters of the 1.1 million increase in metropolitan area employment between 1980 and 1998. This paper provides an overview of changes in the jobs held, education attained, and earnings received by employed workers in 14 demographic groups (defined by nativity, race, ethnicity, and gender) and 3 job tiers (389 occupation-industry "jobs" grouped by job quality). There was a pronounced “hollowing” of the middle tier, reflecting a massive shift to the top tier by native-born whites and an equally significant growth of immigrant employment in the bottom tier. Real earnings deteriorated most strongly in the middle and bottom tiers for foreign-born Hispanic workers, foreign-born white men, and both black groups. Among college educated workers, the earnings declines for black workers (native- and foreign-born, male and female) were particularly striking. The race/ethnicity wage gap with native-born whites was substantial for all groups in 1979 and widened considerably for white, black and Hispanic immigrants (both male and female). Overall earnings inequality increased sharply, even when recent immigrants were excluded. In sum, despite a strong economy and considerable employment growth, these results indicate a substantial deterioration in the real and relative earnings of immigrants in the metropolitan area, particularly those employed in the middle and bottom job tiers.

Paper #4. "Immigrant Entrance into New York City's Health Care Industry."
by Lynn McCormick

According to the "job ladder" notion of an ethnic economy, new immigrants tend to replace jobholders of the same ethnic group as the latter experience upward mobility in the labor market. With a focus on nurse aides in New York City’s health care industry, this paper finds support for this dynamic only prior to the 1980's, after which employers restructured industry career ladders to deal with “bottom-line” concerns arising from unionization and health sector cost containment efforts. This restructuring allowed more recent Filipino and Indian immigrants to “jump the queue” into good hospital aide jobs.  Even though African-American and Jamaican immigrants held seniority in these positions, co-ethnic networks no longer worked to funnel their job-seeking peers into good hospital jobs. Restructuring of the sector has reshuffled ethnic career ladders.

Paper #5. "Immigrant Economies and Neighborhood Revitalization:
A Case Study of Sunset Park."
by Tarry Hum

This study utilizes ethnographic research, an original firm survey, and official data to explore the opportunities and challenges faced by an immigrant community in a post-industrial urban context. Sunset Park is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic immigrant neighborhood with extensive ethnic economies in retail, services, and nondurable manufacturing. Although immigrant-owned small businesses have been central to Sunset Park’s revitalization, many of these new enterprises have thrived on a foundation of poverty-level wages, casual employment relations, and non-union shops. Sunset Park illustrates that while a revitalized small business sector may provide increasing employment opportunities, other social goals of equity and community well-being can remain elusive. Small business development programs need to be redesigned and expanded to promote the quality of local area employment opportunities.

Paper #6. "Immigrants and Public Benefit Programs in New York City."
by Howard Chernick and by Cordelia Reimers

This paper investigates changes in access to the major public benefit programs by citizens and noncitizens in New York City in the aftermath of welfare reform.  Current Population Survey data are used to compare receipt of public assistance, SSI, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and subsidized housing, between the years 1994-95 and 1997-98.  In general, noncitizens do not show greater rates of decline in benefit receipt than citizens.  The exception is Food Stamps, where the percentage-point decline for noncitizens was almost three times the decline for citizens.  Public assistance receipt dropped by almost 10 percentage points for Hispanics, but remained essentially unchanged for blacks.  The decrease was twice as great for Puerto Ricans, who are citizens, as for other Hispanics, whether citizen or not.  Overall, the Hispanic-black differentials we find may be characterized as gap-closing, as public assistance rates were greater for Hispanics than blacks in 1994-95, but equalized by 1997-98. The greater decline in Food Stamp participation among non-citizens poses an important policy question concerning the extent of material hardship imposed upon non-citizens. More specifically, it highlights the importance of city policy in encouraging participation among those who are eligible.

Paper #7. "Immigrant and Native Responses to Welfare Reform: New York, California and the U.S."
 by Robert Kaestner and Neeraj Kaushal

This paper examines the effect of welfare reform on the employment and marriage rates of three groups of low-educated women: foreign-born citizens, foreign-born non-citizens and natives. Focusing on the US as a whole and two states with large immigrant populations, California and New York, we investigate whether the behavioral response to welfare reform differed by date of immigration and whether there is evidence of cost savings associated with the immigrant provisions of the legislation. We also compare the response to welfare reform of foreign-born non-citizens between states that did and did not make TANF-like benefits available to recent immigrants to investigate whether there was a “chilling” effect of the immigrant provisions of federal welfare reform legislation.
    Our findings suggest that federal welfare reform induced all three groups of women to increase their employment.  All three groups of women responded to welfare reform and the estimated effects for foreign-born women were larger than for native-born women. Recent immigrants had larger behavioral responses to welfare reform than did earlier arriving immigrants. The “chilling” hypothesis that has received so much attention in the popular press and professional literature is not supported by our results.  We found that actual eligibility for benefits is an important determinant of the behavioral response to welfare reform.

Paper #8. "The Perinatal Health and Health Care Utilization of Foreign-Born Women in
New York City, 1988-1998."
by Ted Joyce

Interventions that affect pregnancy can have critical impacts on child, family and community well-being. The waning of the crack epidemic, Medicaid eligibility expansions, and welfare reform shaped the perinatal health of U.S. and foreign-born women in New York City in the 1990’s. In this study, I examine how each of these changes affected the utilization of prenatal care and the rate of low birth weight for U.S. and foreign-born women. I conclude that although the Medicaid eligibility expansions significantly lowered the proportion of births to uninsured women, the waning of the crack epidemic had the most substantive impact on birth outcomes. Thus, the gap in low birth weight between mainland Puerto Ricans and foreign-born Latinos narrowed significantly with the decline in use of cocaine and other illicit drugs in the 1990's. There is a longstanding observation that the health of immigrants is often better than the health of their native-born counterparts, including their children. That such significant gains were achieved among such a high-risk group of women offers hope that by discouraging adverse behaviors with taxes and education, we may be able to eliminate the association between acculturation and adverse health.

Paper #9. "The Health of Immigrants in New York City: Demographics, Health Status, and Health Utilization of Recent Immigrants."
by Marianne C. Fahs and Peter Muennig

    This chapter investigates the health status and utilization of New York City’s foreign-born using publicly available data from vital statistics, hospital admissions, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Census.   In particular, we test the validity of the hypothesis that immigrants are “draining” health resources in New York City.  We compare mortality rates for native-born, foreign-born, and Puerto Rican born persons residing in New York City.  In addition we examine hospital utilization and costs, using the technique of “small area analysis”.  Finally we use multivariate analysis to examine the roles that income, gender, race, ethnicity, years of residence in the United States, housing conditions, and citizenship play on hospital use rates among foreign-born and native-born persons.
    We find that the foreign born have lower mortality rates than native-born (and Puerto-Rican) New Yorkers, and are much less likely to be hospitalized for most major categories of illness than are native-born populations.  We estimate that the cost of providing hospital-based care to the foreign-born was $312 million dollars less than the cost of providing hospital-based care to an equivalent number of native-born persons in 1996.  There is no evidence to suggest that appropriately meeting the health needs of immigrants will disproportionately reduce the availability of health resources for New York City’s native-born population.

Paper #10. "New Immigrants and the New School Governance in New York: Defining the Issues."
by Alec Ian Gershberg

    Since the early 1980s, immigrant students have represented a growing and significant student population in the U.S., primarily in five states. In New York City, recent immigrants (those who arrived within the past three years) made up about 9 percent of the City’s total public school enrollment in 1996-1997, while about 17 percent were limited English proficiency (LEP). At the same time, school systems across the country have been undertaking reforms to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and equity of schooling services to all students. State and local school systems are developing new standards and accountability systems, experimenting with school-based management, encouraging parent participation, and considering various forms of school choice. Immigrant students and families are affected by changes in governance, and since these reforms are impacted by the nature of the students they serve, immigrant student characteristics should affect the structure and implementation of governance reforms.
    This chapter explores what New York City, New York State and the Federal government are doing to address the needs of immigrant students, what reforms seem promising, and what potential gaps in service still exist. The City and State have virtually no organized policies to support immigrant education aside from those policies aimed at English proficiency and/or bilingualism. Providing effective support for recent immigrants may require different strategies than for other “disadvantaged” student populations. The number of recent immigrants and the unique set of issues they share may warrant exploring opportunities to develop programs and policies designed specifically to support them within the context of current school reform efforts.

Paper #11. "The Experience of Recent Immigrants in New York City Public Schools: Enrollment, Resources, and Outcomes."
by Amy Ellen Schwartz and Alec Ian Gershberg

    This paper makes use of school-level data to paint a statistical portrait of the resources and characteristics of the public schools attended by immigrant students, their distribution across schools, and the relationship between resources and outcomes, on the one hand, and the representation and characteristics of immigrants on the other. We disentangle the experiences of immigrant students from Limited English Proficient (LEP) students.
    Key findings include: (1) the LEP and immigrant experiences are different and we argue  that policymakers should target programs specifically at recent immigrants; (2) school resources generally decline with the representation of immigrants but increase with the representation of LEP students; (3) for school outputs, a greater representation of immigrant students indicates better ‘output’, while a greater representation of LEP students indicates lower performance; (4) equally important, despite the popular perception of immigrants students as Hispanic or Asian and LEP, a significant portion are black, white, or non-LEP; (5) we do not find strong segregation among either recent immigrants or LEP students; and finally, (6) we describe the mix of recent immigrants and find that not all groups are treated equally by the school system.

Paper #12. "Performance, Graduation, and Transfer of Immigrants and Natives
in CUNY Community Colleges."
by Thomas Bailey and Elliot Weininger

    This chapter analyzes the educational outcomes of foreign and native students who start their post-secondary education in two year degree programs in the City University of New York (CUNY).  Controlling for relevant demographic characteristics, we find that foreign born students accumulate more credits and complete associate degrees and transfer to four-year schools at higher rates than the native born.  Among students who have transferred, the foreign born are more likely to complete a bachelor's degree. All of these results are stronger for foreign born students who have completed their high school education abroad.

Paper #13. "Chutes and Ladders: Educational Attainment among Young Second
Generation and Native New Yorkers."
by John Mollenkopf, Philip Kasinitz, and Mary Waters

    Immigration has dramatically transformed the demographic terrain of New York and other large cities.  Over time, the full implications of this change will be worked out through the lives of the children of the new immigrants, the second generation.  Drawing on a large scale study of 3,424 men and women aged 18 to 32 from five immigrant and three native born ethnic groups, this chapter looks at educational outcomes, particularly the completion of high school and movement through college.  In general, blacks (whether native or second generation West Indians) did better than Latinos (though the Colombian, Ecuadoran, and Peruvian second generation matched their performance), with native whites, Chinese, and Russians doing best.  Second generation groups also tended to do slightly but consistently better than their native born ethnic counterparts.
    The chapter examines a series of factors that might contribute to these outcomes, including parents level of education, other aspects of family background, gender, and individual choices about the timing of family formation.  After controlling for all these factors, the same basic group differences still hold, with the Chinese second generation a positive outlier and Puerto Rican natives a negative outlier.  This analysis suggests that we need to see individuals not as isolated units but as part of family systems which can sometimes provide support to help people past (or out of) the chutes into which some may fall and up the ladders which others may find.


Migration Policy in Global Perspective Series
Generously supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts

 1. Mary M. Kritz (Cornell University)
Population Growth and International Migration: Is There A Link? 1996. [$3.00]Abstract

 2. Philip L. Martin & Edward Taylor (University of California, Davis)
Managing Migration: The Role of Economic Policies. 1996. [$2.50] Abstract

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Ecomigration: Linkages Between Environmental Change and Migration. 1996. [$2.50] Abstract

 4. Susanne Schmeidl (York University)
Conflict and Forced Migration: A Quantitative Review. 1997. [$3.00] Abstract

 5. Robert C. Smith (Barnard College)
Current Dilemmas and Future Prospects of the Inter-American Migration System. 1997. [$2.50]Abstract

 6. Thomas G. Weiss (Brown University)
Reforming the International Humanitarian System for Wars. 1997. [$4.00] Abstract

 7. David Forsythe with Garry Baker and Michele Leonard (University of Nebraska)
U.S. Foreign Policy and Enlarging the Democratic Community. 1997. [$4.00] Abstract

 8. Leah Haus (Vassar College)
Migration and International Economic Institutions. 1997. [$2.50] Abstract

 9. Richard Bissell (The World Bank) and Andrew Natsios (World Vision)
Development Assistance and Migration. 1997. [$3.50] Abstract

 10. Elizabeth Ferris (Church World Service)
After the Wars are Over: Reconstruction and Repatriation. 1997. [$2. 50] Abstract

 11. Gil Loescher (University of Notre Dame)
Protection and Humanitarian Action in the Post-Cold War Era. 1997. [$4.00] Abstract


Immigrant New York Series
Generously supported by a grant from The New York Community Trust

 1. Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz (Columbia University)
The Education of Immigrant Children: The Case of New York City. 1996. [$4.00]

 2. Suzanne Michael (Hunter College)
Immigrant Health in New York City: An Overview of Available Data and Current Issues. 1996. [$4.00]

 3. David Howell and Elizabeth Mueller (New School for Social Research)
Immigrants as Workers in New York City: A Review of Current Debates and Evidence. 1996. [$4.00]


ICMEC Occasional Paper Series

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Immigration and Multiculturalism in the Industrial Democracies. 1995. [$2.50] Abstract

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Migration Systems in Comparative Perspective: An Analysis of the Inter-American Migration System with Comparative Reference to the Mediterranean European System. 1996. [$7.00]Abstract

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The Unmixing of Peoples in the Post-Communist World. 1996. [$4.00] Abstract

4. Rainer Munz and Ralf Ulrich (Humboldt University, Berlin; University of Bamberg)
Migration, Identities and Citizenship:  History, Current Trends and Political Debates in Germany. 1999. [$3.00] Abstract


Critical Perspectives on Xenophobia Series
Generously supported by a grant from USIP

 1. Martin Schain, Aristide R. Zolberg, and Patrick Hossay (NYU, New School, New School)
The Development of Radical Right Parties in Western Europe: A Framework for Analysis. 1998. [$2.50]

 2. Hans-Georg Betz (Johns Hopkins)
Sociostructural Change, Globalization, and Radical Populism: The Divergent Paths of the FPO and Lega Nord. 1998. [$2.50]

 3. Tor Bjorklund and Jorge Goul Andersen (University of Oslo and Aalborg University)
The Emergence and Success of the Progress Parties in Denmark and Norway: Background and Consequences. 1998. [$2.50]

 4. Roberto Chiarini and Jack Veugelers (University of Milan and University of Toronto)
The Far Right in France and Italy: Anti-Immigrant Politics and Anti-Fascism. 1998. [$2.50]

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The Role of Socio-Economic Factors in the Success of Extreme Right Parties. 1998. [$2.50]

 6. Patrick Hossay (New School for Social Research)
Why Flanders? Accounting for Regional Variation in the Electoral Success of the Extreme Right in Belgium. 1998. [$2.50]

7. Christopher Husbands (London School of Economics)
Time, Space and Social Structures as Bases for Variations in Support for Racist Political Parties in Five Western European Countries.  1998. [$2.50]

8. Piero Ignazi (University of Bologna)
Origins of the Re-emergence of the Extreme Right. [Forthcoming]

 9. Roger Karapin (Hunter College)
Far-Right Parties and the Construction of Anti-Immigration Politics in Germany. 1998. [$2.50]

10. Michael Minkenberg (University of Heidelberg)
Radical Right in the Political Process: Interaction Effects in France and Germany. 1998. [$2.50]

11. Ted Perlmutter (Columbia University)
The Politics of Restriction:  The Effect of Xenophobic Parties on Italian Immigration Policy and German Asylum Policy.  1998. [$4.00]

12. Patrick Hossay, Julie Watts, Rudolf Maxwald, and Tom Gold (ICMEC)
Xenophobic Movements and Parties in Western Europe: An Annotated Bibliography.
1996. [$4.00]


Negotiating Difference Series
Generously supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation

1. Aristide R. Zolberg (New School/ICMEC) and Long Litt Woon (Department of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, Ministry of Local Government, Norway)
Why Islam is Like Spanish:  Cultural Incorporation in the United States.  1999.[$4.00]

2. Michael Hanchard (Northwestern University)
The Color of Subversion:  Racial Politics and Immigration Policy in the United States.  1999. [$2.50]

3. John Mollenkopf, Timothy Ross and David Olsen (Center for Urban Research, Northwestern University)
Immigrant Political Participation in New York and Los Angeles.  1999. [$3.00]

4. David Jacobsen (Arizona State University)
Place and Belonging:  Citizenship and Changing Patterns of Incorporation.  1999. [$3.50]

5. Jorgen S. Nielsen (Centre for Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Selly Oaks College, Birmingham, UK)
Fluid Identities:  Muslims and Western Europe Nation States.  1999.[$3.50]

6. Victoria Hattam (New School)
The Cultural Meaning of Race and Ethnicity:  Britain and the United States, 1965-1995.  1999. [$4.50]

7. Hector Cordero-Guzman (New School)
Citizenship, Language, and the Political Participation of Latinos in the United States.  [Forthcoming]

8. Gillian Stevens (University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana)
The Ideology of Language and the Incorporation of Immigrants in the United States.  1999. [$2.50]

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