Posted on 06/05/2008 7:43:45 AM PDT by SmithL
More than half of new California immigrants who are permanent legal residents lived in the state illegally before getting green cards, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California.
The study suggests that the conventional notion of a legal immigrant as a brand-new arrival who has waited in a home country to get a green card is not the norm.
"The idea (is) you sit at home, you wait, you get the green card," said research fellow Laura Hill. "That's certainly an experience for immigrants, but it's not the most common."
Of green card holders living in California, 33 percent are new to the United States, never having entered the country before becoming legal residents here, according to the study. An additional 15 percent previously visited the country at least once without violating immigration rules.
But a majority — 52 percent — had past experience living in the country illegally, usually without the government knowing about it, Hill said.
The numbers were based on a survey of 8,000 people with green cards who shared detailed histories of their migration experiences with researchers as part of The New Immigrant Survey in 2003 and 2004.
Thirty-five percent of the California green card holders had come into the United States at least once before by illegally crossing the border, while 18 percent violated the terms of a legal visit by overstaying a tourist visa or working when they were not supposed to.
"It highlights how overly simplified our understanding of immigrants and immigration can be," said Hill, who said a stark distinction between "illegal" and "legal" immigrants does not acknowledge the frequent correlation between both categories. "We need to be a little more cognizant of the variety and breadth of experience."
Along with California, the study looked at the country as a whole. It found that a somewhat smaller percentage of green card holders — 42 percent — have previously lived in the country illegally. Of those, 20 percent had crossed the border illegally and 22 percent had violated their visa terms.
Those who overstayed their visa before obtaining legal residency were most commonly from Europe and Central Asia, where the numbers were about 30 percent compared with 22 percent overall.
Latin Americans were those most likely to cross the border illegally — 41 percent compared with 20 percent overall. In California, the rate was even higher, with 62 of Latin American and Caribbean legal permanent residents having once crossed the border illegally.
Hill said her study also tried to compare current results against what might happen if the immigration reform measures that were proposed but dropped by the U.S. Congress last year were to come to fruition.
Those measures emphasize a more merit-based immigrant selection process compared with the family-focused immigration system in place since 1965.
The study reports that those immigrants now labeled as brand-new arrivals, who make up about 33 percent of current green card holders in California, would be least likely to be admitted under the proposed system because they are less likely to have relatives to sponsor them and, by definition, cannot obtain the U.S. work experience that would be an important factor in the merit-based system.
The socialists that run Kalifornia, do not care about the law. Anything that might cost them a vote, if always overlooked, ignored or overridden by judical fiat in a liberal activist court.
Cr@p, how is this possible? The immigration documentation says you can’t have been here illegally. Is this because they got pregnant and got a waiver?
Pull their residency and send them back.
That’s because they found someone who’s a citizen or legal resident to marry, or had a kid.
Pull their residency and send them back.
Did it ever occur to you guys that this report is bogus?Did it ever occur to you that the illegals lied on their questionaire about being here illegally before applying for a green card? People can make up statistics, the Dems do it all the time. This is nothing but an obvious attempt to paint all legals as having been here illegally at one time. This is an insult to our intelligence as well as an insult to those who followed the law and applied legally. Don't believe everything you read, especially when it comes to Dems trying to sell their statistics as fact.
Why doesn’t this article ‘Most immigrants lived in California illegally, study says’ read Most illegal immigrants lived in California, studay says’? America, wake up! Seniors, volunteer to take this bunch of sponges back to the border with little or nothing for recompense other than a secured school bus, slot to send slop back to them for eating, a rented outhouse and a ‘Buena riddance, ilegales!’.
.....how many millions did we spend for this?
ping
You mean "Billions" don't you?
1 - The illegals commit fraud by lying on their immigration applications.
2 - The immigration bureaucracy isn't able to detect the fraud.
3 - Here's your green card, welcome to America
Actually, being a *LEGAL* immigrant myself (who was never in any kind of illegal status), I’ll tell ya right now that the 10 year process I went through from arriving to actually swearing my oath in front of a federal judge was so arduous that it is a miracle anyone has actually made it through it.
And, that being said, and knowing the intricacies of the actual process, latinos from Mexico/Centra/South America have absolutely *zero* chance of being granted a legal status outside of getting married to a permanent resident or a citizen, or producing a child born on the territory of the US. There just isn’t any basis in the immigration law for it. And the H1Bs are just WAY too few to account for the millions of the illegals. And what people consider ‘immigrants’ in CA is *all* ( or vastly ) from latin America.
Bottom line - I absolutely believe that a large number of *now* legal immigrants in, again, this is California we’re talking about, were illegal at one point or other. About 90% of “immigrants” in CA are latinos. I’m sure the liberals would cry racism but its a fact. I don’t care if they’re purple with blue polka dots, there’s a line millions long from europe, asia, and africa of highly educated folk that wants to immigrate legally here. Who says the latin America folks get preference just because they’re closer geographically ?
Oh, but the folks that’d come here from eastern/western europe, India, or, anywhere else other than latin America are highly educated and highly motivated to make a new life for themselves in the promised land of opportunity that US still is. But we can’t have that. To say otherwise is ‘racism’. Especially because they’d NEVER vote for socialists. Been there, done that. I personally would fight them to the death. So would most of those immigrating here from the former socialist/communist states.
In other news, darkness expected this evening, followed by dawn, sometime around sunrise. Women, children, members of minority groups ... and gays and lesbians ... at risk from ultraviolet radiation.
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