4.
Current facts concerning (illegal) immigration from Mexico into the
US
As
I showed in Part 3, Delaney feels overwhelmed by Latinos,
particularly by (illegal) Mexicans in different situations in the
book.
When
I now look into Mexican/Latino immigration, I will especially take
these aspects into account.
Between
the years 1820-2000 the US has admitted 66,089,431 immigrants
lawfully. The largest groups were Germans (7,176,071), directly
followed by Mexicans (6,138,150). So we see, Mexicans make up nearly
10% of all immigrants who came into the US in this time period. They
are traditionally a large ethnic group in the US.
In
the decade between 1980-1990 7,338,062 immigrants and in the years
1990-2000 9,338,417 immigrants were admitted to the US. Out of these
16.7 million roughly 2.7 million came from Mexico. This is about
17%.2
Today
most of them live in the Western USA, forming a large proportion of
the population there.
“In Census 2000, 281.4 million residents were counted
in the United States (excluding the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and
the U.S. Island Areas1), of which 35.3 million (or 12.5 percent) were Hispanic. Mexicans
represented 7.3 percent […]of the total population.”3
Most
of them lived in the Western USA, forming a large proportion of the
population there. The West had a population of 63 197 932
inhabitants, thereof were 15
340 503 (24.3%) Latinos.4,5
Some
states, mostly located along the Mexican border, have a particularly
high rate of Latinos (see Appendix C and D).
For
more details on where they live and what proportion of the
population they make up, take a look at Appendix A - E.
Since
Delaney lives in Los Angles, California, here is a table about how
the situation is:6,7,8
Population Hispanics
Whites % Whites
%Hispanics
California
33 871 648 10
966 556 15 816 790 46.7
32.4
Los Angeles city
3 694 820 1 719 073 1 099 188
29.7
46.5
Los Angeles County
9 049 557
4 242 213 4 637 062 51.2
46.8
Summarizing
we can say that Hispanics do make up a huge proportion of the
population in some states. They are even the majority in LA, where
Delaney lives.
Now
I will take a quick look at illegal Mexicans in the US and at
illegal border crossings:
The
Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) estimates in a report on
“Immigration from Mexico” that there are three million, maybe
even close to four million illegal Mexicans living in the US today.
Around 74.4% of them live in or near poverty, of the legal Mexican
immigrants 60.7% do. Compare also Appendix F
There
are also an estimated 3 million other illegal aliens living in the
US. Parallel to what I showed above, the majority of illegal
Mexicans is suspected to live in California and Texas. (Around 1.4
million in California and 0.5 million in Texas.)9
In
1999 border apprehensions have grown to 1.5 million compared to
200,000 in 1970 (Appendix G). The INS estimates that there is a net
inflow of 202,000 illegal immigrants into the US every year.,10
In
1996 the INS recorded 1,649,986 border apprehensions. 1,598,016 of
the people arrested came from Mexico, this is about 96.8% of all
apprehensions.11
All these numbers about illegal immigrants might be
fairly realistic, or not. The border is 3300 km long and difficult
to control. That is why the border is known as Tortilla Curtain.
(See Appendix H.) So there is no guarantee that these numbers are
correct.
2
http://www.ins.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/IMM00yrbk/IMM2000.pdf
Immigrants, Fiscal Year 2000, INS, 2000, page 10
3
Betsy Cuzmán, “The Hispanic Population 2000, Census 2000
Brief” U.S. Census Bureau, Washington
D.C., May 2001, page 1 (see Bibliography (4))
4
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t6/tab02.pdf, page
1 (see Bibliography (5))
5
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t6/tab01.pdf, page
1 (see Bibliography (6))
6
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t6/tab04.pdf, page
1 (see Bibliography (7))
7
http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/phc-t6/tab05.pdf, page
1 (see Bibliography (8))
8
http://factfinder.census.gov/bf/_lang=en_vt_name=DEC_2000_PL_U_GCTPL_ST2_geo_id=04000US06.html
(see
Bibliography (9))
9
Steven A Camarota, “Immigration
From Mexico, Assessing the Impact on the United States”,
Center for
Immigration
Studies, July 2001, pages 9 ff. (see Bibliography (10))
10
http://www.dallasfed.org/htm/pubs/pdfs/efr/efr0101a.pdf, pages 1
ff. (see
Bibliography (11))
11
http://www.ins.gov/graphics/aboutins/statistics/299.htm (see
Bibliography (14))
Source: Source: Extract from: Wirsik, Norman, Facharbeit
"Delaney
Mossbacher’s development throughout the novel and the most
influential incidents or persons triggering off changes. Looking at
the current facts concerning illegal immigration from Mexico into
the US, is Delaney’s final attitude understandable? " March
2002, Aurich, unpublished
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