Causes and Consequences of California's Latin American Origin Immigration

California

The single most important factor contributing to Latin American immigration to California is the availability of multiple employment and income earning opportunities. California is a world economic power, sixth in the world if it were an independent nation. California's vigorous economic development has consistently depended on an equally rapidly growing labor force made up in large part by immigrants.

Therefore, any research conducive to understanding the immigration phenomenon in California, historical or contemporary, should focus its attention on the nature, direction and organization of productive activity and the development of labor markets and employment opportunities. This, among other things, implies a focus on how individual firms (in industry, agriculture, and services) organize production, recruit, and manage labor. Through such an approach, we should realize a deeper, fully-informed understanding of the role and importance that immigrant workers play in the State's highly differentiated economy.

Evidence suggests that many California industries and businesses are dependent upon the existing Latino immigration labor force. Without access to this immigrant and migrant labor force California agriculture, for example, would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the current level of production and to expand its markets.

Preliminary research findings also suggest that other sectors of the State's economy (small and medium-sized firms devoted principally to labor intensive manufacturing, construction, and services) have emulated the agricultural labor organization model in order to increase production and competitiveness in national and international markets. This phenomenon helps explain, in part, the surge of Latino immigrants to California urban centers witnessed over the past fifteen years. However, much more synchronic and longitudinal research on firms must be advanced in order to confirm and better understand this process, its consequences and future developments.

Mexico

For many years Mexico has been the main source of Latin American immigrants to the United States. The Mexican migration tradition is an old one. Many Mexican communities have practiced it since the 192Os, and many more since the 194Os, involving as many as three generations of experienced practitioners, and it is now a necessary way of life deeply imbedded in the local culture. The opportunity of migration is a last ditch alternative for survival when crops fail, when there are family crises, and when all else goes wrong. But in the home community, money and knowledge acquired abroad have frequently been instrumental in making improvements on the local farm and the family farm economy. And even for permanent migrants, the home community offers temporal relief from the intolerance and hegemony of American culture, and sanctuary for retirement or the ever present threat of deportation.

In California Mexicans not only represent the vast majority of Latino immigrants, but they also comprise the largest contributor to the State's current foreign-born population. Driving current immigration are the demographic and economic crises of modern Mexico, and opportunities for relief in California's thriving economy.

Mexican immigration to the United States and California is unique from other immigrant groups in that it is not a unidirectional process. The common practice of sojourn workers and circular migration and the establishment of strong durable social network systems that transcend geopolitical factors link families and communities on both sides of the border. Hence, California-based immigrants assist kin, friends, and neighbors in their temporary and permanent immigration plans; seasonal migrant workers travel unhindered and purposefully back and forth across the border; and permanent immigrants regularly visit their home towns, sharing with kin and friends both goods, income and occupational information. The cumulative experience of these practices has made Mexican migration a remarkably efficient informal system, able to overcome great obstacles erected by state and governmental agencies to stem and curtail the process.

Today many, if not most, of the peasants of Mexico's major sending communities depend for their livelihood and welfare on income generated in the United States. Simultaneously California firms in agriculture, industry and services rely heavily on the availability of Mexican migratory labor. However, it would be incorrect to conclude that Mexican agricultural workers represent the poorest of the poor or the human dredges of the failing economy. Extensive research has ascertained that many migrants come from prosperous Mexican regions and communities where agricultural development and modernization programs have been most successful. This raises important questions about the consequences of technological transfers from the United States and the appropriateness of the design and implementation of agricultural modernization and development programs.

What has, in fact, emerged over the past years is a binational system of production and labor markets made up of separate but interdependent parts. This binational system involving Mexican labor and American firms is indispensable to the understanding of Mexican immigration and to the policymaking process. Obviously, California, as the principal recipient and beneficiary of Mexican labor, is more affected by this symbiotic relationship than other states. Hence, its responsibility and stake in the matter are commensurately greater.

Central America

Immigration in large numbers from Central America to the United States and California is relatively recent. As such, little research has been conducted about its unique characteristics, and much empirical and statistical research is urgently needed. Nonetheless, certain characterizations can be made and policy concerns raised.

Two underlying conditions appear to spur Central American immigration. First, as in the Mexican case, economic turmoil and uncertainty in the home country have led many to seek employment and income earning opportunities elsewhere. Some have sought work in neighboring Mexico's depressed economy; while others, joining the Mexican stream, have come to California. Second, rampant war, endemic conflict and violence, and generalized political turmoil are feeding the ranks of refugees and exiles who cannot remain in their home countries without great risk to their lives. Hence, many have sought refuge in the United States with a clear preference for California. Regardless of the motivation, the vast majority of Central American immigrants are, like their Mexican counterparts, undocumented.

Although all Central American nations partake in the immigration process, three account for the greater part of the immigration balance: Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. These immigrants mirror a cross section of their country's society: indigenous populations with distinct cultures and languages; landless and propertied peasants; and low, middle and upper class urbanites. Regardless of their internal social diversity, they have formed nationally-based enclaves in California, particularly Salvadorenos in urban and metropolitan areas. Many of these new enclaves show clear signs of complex socioeconomic integration and political organization similar to the Cuban immigrant experience in Florida rather than the Mexican experience in California. Consequently, they will not easily return to their countries of origin even with peace and stability in Central America. It is probable that each will become a permanent group with their specific problems and needs.

Long standing American private interests in Central America and current United States official foreign policy towards the region contribute, in a great degree, to the Central American trek to the United States and California. Any attempt to stem or curtail Central American immigration, therefore, must begin with a profound evaluation of standing foreign policy.

With respect to Central America, we are obliged to develop research that will further clarity the relationship between standing United States private and public interests in the region and the emigration process. In focusing empirical research on the new immigrant Central American communities and enclaves, we should also develop an improved knowledge on this relatively little known group.

Summary of Policy Issues

Serious efforts must be made to understand and evaluate the degree of dependency that the State's economy has with respect to the immigrant population. This should include careful and detailed synchronic and longitudinal studies of California firms (agricultural and non-agricultural) that rely heavily on immigrant labor.

Similarly, research is needed to better understand the migratory tradition that links Hispanic communities across the border, and on the degree of dependency that traditional sending communities have with respect to the immigration phenomenon in order to secure an elemental livelihood.