← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Petr
Thread ID: 16437 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2005-01-26
2005-01-26 01:42 | User Profile
[I]As a way of comparison: still in the early 1960s, French Catholics in Quebec were tremendously fertile - now their birthrates are lower than the Canadian average... secularism is the death of fertility, even in the Third World.[/I]
[url]http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/9784390p-10647011c.html[/url] [COLOR=DarkRed]
[SIZE=4]Mexican migration to drop, study says [/SIZE]
[B]Lower birthrate affects Valley job outlook, officials predict.[/B]
By Vanessa Colón / The Fresno Bee
(Updated Monday, January 17, 2005, 9:39 AM)
Fewer Mexican immigrants will come to the Central Valley after 2010 because of a drop in Mexico's birthrate and its potential for sustained economic growth, a study predicts.
The report, by University of California at Davis professor Philip Martin, foretells a future in which the decline of Mexico's population will help ease the job creation challenge there and reduce the inclination to come across the border.
Martin's forecast drew a good-news, bad-news reaction from several experts in fields ranging from social services to businesses in the Valley.
Some agricultural employers say it could make it harder to obtain a steady labor work force. Other agencies say it could help Fresno County reduce its unemployment rate, reported at 12.5% in November, and put less strain on public health and assistance programs.
"If, in fact, there's a decline, it will be tougher for farmers to get that labor," said Peter Weber, co-chairman of the Regional Jobs Initiative. Weber said the decline of Mexico's birthrate is good news overall for the Central Valley.
"A drop of the Mexican birthrate is economically beneficial to Mexico, the United States and the Central Valley. It creates a better match of jobs and workers in Mexico, thereby reducing the economic incentive for illegal immigration to the United States," Weber said.
The December study finds that the number of Mexicans turning 15, the age of labor force entry in Mexico, will drop by 50%. That's a decline from about 1 million a year to 500,000 a year, according to Martin. He says the current high levels of Mexico-U.S. migration should not obscure the fact that the migration will soon drop.
Immigration to the United States from Mexico increased from 1991 to 2000. About "2.2 million Mexicans were admitted as legal immigrants, and 15 million foreigners, 95% Mexicans, were apprehended just inside the U.S. border," according to the report.
The North American Free Trade Agreement did not produce enough "formal sector jobs to reduce emigration pressures," but Martin says the past demographic growth in Mexico presents a different picture in which fewer Mexicans might feel compelled to come.
[B]The Mexican birthrate dropped from 3.4 children per female in 1990 to 2.4 children per female in 2000, said Leo Chavez, professor of anthropology at the University of California at Irvine. Meanwhile, the birthrate in the United States is 2.1 children per female, Chavez said.[/B]
The decline of the birthrate began 30 years ago, when the Mexican government debuted a family planning program. Its aim was to reduce the population growth through advertisements and promotions, which proclaimed smaller families are better.
[B]In 1970, the Mexican birthrate was seven to eight children per female, Chavez said.[/B]
[B]Contraception use over the years became more acceptable in Mexico. It's common to see television commercials and Mexican soap operas talk about HIV prevention and the consequences of teenage pregnancy.
"It's a Catholic country, but it's secular. They are still Catholic, but it's like American Catholics. … You see an increased use of contraceptives," Chavez said.[/B]
Some agricultural groups say fewer immigrants will result in more dependence upon machines.
"I don't agree with those demographics. What will reduce it will be mechanization," said Manuel Cunha, president of Nisei Farmers League.
Other agricultural groups wonder whether the Mexican birthrate decline will simply attract a different group of immigrants.
"We care about a stable labor force. We will have no choice to turn to other countries," said Celine Nieto, a spokeswoman for Western Growers Association, a statewide group made up mostly of vegetable growers.
A large number of farmworkers in California come from Mexico, Chavez said.
Agricultural employers might draw more from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala if Mexico is no longer viable, he said.
Fewer immigrants also could translate into less money for Fresno Unified School District and other schools.
Jefferson Elementary School gets about $430 per English-language learner from the state, said principal Froy RamÃÂrez, former director of the district's Multilingual Multicultural Education Office.
About 62% of the students at Jefferson Elementary are Spanish speakers. A portion of the state money is used for hiring bilingual instructional assistants, he said.
Fresno Unified lost about 800 students last year, and if it loses migrant children in the future, there will be more of a financial impact, he said.
"If in fact the population of immigrant students is declining, there will be less and less money to work with," RamÃÂrez said.
"Some of our schools have small populations of English learners, but the needs of the students are still there."
Weber said fewer immigrants could help reduce the unemployment rate if there are fewer migrants looking for a job when the agricultural season ends.
"Many of the migrants come to the Valley for agricultural jobs and then want year-round jobs," Weber said.
Many of them are low-skilled workers with little education, so they are limited in what type of jobs they can find, he said.
"It's tough for them to hold or find jobs, so they end up unemployed," Weber said.
A decline in immigrants will have less impact on the health industry, except for the use of hospital emergency rooms, which can be costly.
The expensive treatment of uninsured patients forced two emergency rooms to close in Los Angeles County in August. That month, a federal bankruptcy judge ordered the Elastar Community Hospital and its emergency room in East Los Angeles to close after it rung up more than $10 million in debt.
"The undocumented immigrants are still not eligible for health benefits. Many of the farmworkers can't afford health benefits," said Lupe Gonzalez, area coordinator for Binational Health Week Task Force, a program hosted by the California-Mexico Health Initiative.
Latinos, whether they are U.S. citizens or not, have the highest rate of uninsured people, Gonzalez said.
Fewer immigrants in the Central Valley could mean relief for families that need extra assistance, such as food stamps or other programs.
Children of immigrant parents who are born in the United States are eligible for food stamps and the National School Lunch Program.
"The projections might provide some relief … in regards to social and economic planning, but we still have the immediate problem of poverty," said Virginia Rondero Hernandez, associate director of research and evaluation for the Central California Children's Institute in Fresno.
Hernandez said many immigrant families don't use food stamps because they either don't know their children are eligible or are afraid it will have a negative impact on their petition to become a U.S. resident.
As of June 30, 2004, more than 256,000 people in Fresno County were receiving food stamps, Medi-Cal, CalWORKs and other assistance.
Of those, the majority were female, Hispanic and English-speaking and lived in an urban area. Hispanics made up 68% of public assistance recipients, according to the Fresno County Department of Employment and Temporary Assistance.
Hernandez says some might be immigrants, but they can also be second- or third-generation Hispanics.
The controversy over Mexican migration and its consequences might subside years from now if the decline in immigrants occurs.
Chavez said: "It will lessen the controversy of Mexicans but not of others.
"You won't be able to point the finger at Mexicans any more."
In a counterargument to Martin's report, Steven Camarota, director of research for The Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, said a lower birthrate might have little impact on immigration because of the complex nature of Mexican migration.
"Mexico has experienced significant drops in fertility rates in 30 years. It so far has not so much had an impact on migration. It's one of many factors," Camarota said.
Higher wages in the United States and the network of Mexican-American families could continue to bring Mexicans to the United States, he said. He cited Russia, which has a much lower birthrate than Mexico, yet many Russians leave because of economic problems. [/COLOR]
2005-01-26 02:47 | User Profile
[I]And same process seems to be going on among Hispanics living in USA as well:[/I]
[COLOR=Indigo] [SIZE=4]As Hispanics embrace life in U.S., some prefer to limit family size[/SIZE]
[B]By HELENA OLIVIERO
Cox News Service
Sunday, January 16, 2005 [/B]
ATLANTA — Yolanda Lucena removes seeds from dark red chile peppers, her 5-year-old son, Ignacio, rushes into their home. He brandishes the daily behavior sheet, which has a blue circle for excellent behavior.
Lucena smiles widely. She kisses her kindergartner on the cheek. She checks on her sleeping 1-month-old, Arnoldo, swaddled in a Superman fleece blanket. Both of her boys are content. And so is she.
Her family is "completa."
"I think two children is enough," 32-year-old Lucena said in Spanish as she prepared mole, a classic Mexican dish made with unsweetened chocolate, cinnamon and spices. "I actually put off having our second child for a long time. I kept telling my husband, let's wait one more year."
Faced with a kitchen counter strewn with bills — from calling long-distance to Mexico, to heating their home, to generous meals, to diapers and toys — each additional child strains the family's budget. And delays Lucena's dream of opening a small business.
Lucena and her husband, Ignacio Araujo — who moved to Norcross, Georgia from the coastal state of Guerrero, Mexico, about five years ago — are breaking a long tradition of big families. Lucena is one of six children. Her husband is one of 14.
Newly arriving Hispanics have long outpaced the fertility rates of other ethnic groups, helping them become the country's largest minority.
[B]In recent years, however, the typical Hispanic family is shrinking — fast. The change emerges as more established Hispanics resist some of the social and religious pressures of their homelands.[/B]
They are carving a new way of life here — one characterized by fewer children.
"Only her," Alicia Jimenez, a stay-at-home mom, said about her 19-month-old daughter, Noemi Aylin, dressed in a pink velour pantsuit. They were in the waiting room at the Norcross, Ga.-based prenatal and pediatric clinic La ClÃÂnica de la Mamá. "We want to be able to support her well."
Ed Cota, chief executive officer of La ClÃÂnica de la Mamá, has a local radio program called "El Doctor Está en Casa," or "The Doctor's in the House." He estimates that a third of the questions he receives are related to birth control.
Bigger than average
[B]Hispanics still have bigger families on average, with a national average of 3.87 people per Hispanic family. The national average for all families is 3.19.
And in Georgia, the average Hispanic family size is larger than other states with more established Hispanic immigrant populations, such as California. In fact, Georgia ranks fourth in the country for the largest Hispanic family size — 4.14 people on average, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of U.S. Census Bureau figures.[/B]
Still, many experts believe that as second-generation Hispanics in Georgia plan their families, they will be more likely to keep their family size small as they wrestle with many of the challenges of the American lifestyle: dual-income households, the high cost of day care and the drive for a financially comfortable life. Many postpone marriage until they are well into their 20s, and they are more educated.
"As the second generation starts to Americanize, they finally understand they have rights and choices and they don't have to have six kids because the husband says so," Cota said.
They are also more open to birth control — a move that puts them at odds with the Roman Catholic Church.
Generational shift
The Rev. Pedro Polche of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta, originally from Colombia, said that Hispanics are still far more likely to eschew birth control, but he is seeing a shift among second-generation Hispanics.
"Those Hispanics who have been here for a while . . . incorporate some of the American lifestyle. What happens is you have couples who get married and are so focused on their careers, they hold off on having children," he said. "Morally, this is an issue for us. We believe families should be open to children." He reiterated that the Catholic Church permits only natural family planning.
But doctors, nurses and administrators who work in clinics that target Latinas see a growing openness toward other forms of birth control, and very few seem to struggle with any religious issues.
"I am Catholic, and some people say to me I shouldn't use birth control, but I don't want to end up with a bunch of kids," Lucena said during a recent checkup at La ClÃÂnica de la Mamá. Lucena used an IUD after her first child, and she is planning to have it inserted again.
[B]University of Georgia demographer Douglas C. Bachtel expects the birthrate in Georgia to slip in coming years, following the trends in California and Florida. In California, demographers have dialed down their population estimates for 2040 by nearly 7 million, pointing to the continuing drop in the fertility rate among Hispanics, according to the California Department of Finance's Demographic Research Unit. The fertility rate is now 2.6 children per woman in 2003, down from 3.4 children in 1990. (Georgia did not track birthrates based on race until 2000.) The shift also reflects a slowing fertility rate in Mexico, where the country's average is now less than three children per family.[/B]
The Rev. John Coleman, a sociologist and professor of social values at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, said that few priests would press the issue given the overwhelming rejection of such doctrine among Catholics. In fact, studies show that about two-thirds of American Catholics reject the church's opposition to birth control, according to Catholics for a Free Choice, a Washington-based organization that supports reproductive rights. American Catholics are also just as likely as non-Catholics to use birth control, with almost 90 percent of American Catholics having used some form of birth control, according to the federal government's 1995 National Survey on Family Growth, the most recent available government study on this subject.
"When people move to a new place, they take on a lot of the new patterns of the new place," Coleman said. "It does seem to be happening much faster than we thought it would."
Two is enough
At La ClÃÂnica de la Mamá, young mothers with young children fill the pediatric wing of the clinic. They all want two children — max.
Mariana Jimenez, 21, is perfectly content with one child. But her husband, Freddie, cradling their 8-day-old daughter, Stephanie, wants more.
"So we will likely have one more, but that's it," Mariana Jimenez said. "It's very difficult to have enough money for everything children need. You can take care of your children better if you have fewer of them."
Maria Francis, administrator for Centro Internacional de la Maternidad, has seen a major shift in thinking among second-generation Latinas.
"With a lot of first-generation women . . . when you ask what they will do about birth control, they'll say, 'I don't have to worry, my husband will take care of me,' " Francis said. "With the second generation, they come in and ask us about birth control."
Cota said he still hears from many couples grappling with machismo and social pressures to procreate.
"I hear men say they heard a vasectomy takes away their manhood, that it causes sexual problems," Cota said, "but once they get the information, they are open to it."
Barriers remain
Despite the declining fertility rate among Latinas, several barriers still remain to birth control, according to experts. Silvia Henriquez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, believes that a lack of health insurance and access to health care because of language barriers and poverty issues is more significant in preventing the use of birth control than religious reasons.
Still, some Hispanic couples don't give much thought to family planning. At Plaza Fiesta shopping center in Atlanta, the Carranza family of six — including baby Yesenia, sleeping in a navy blue baby carrier — "just happened," according to the parents.
"This is just how it went," said Marta Carranza, who moved to metro Atlanta from Mexico a few years ago. "We don't think of it as a lot or little, just the way it is."
Back in Norcross, as Yolanda Lucena prepares dinner, she talks about her hopes of returning to work at a money-wiring business part time and her dreams of opening a clothing store or small restaurant. Her husband, who works as a mechanic, hopes also to have his own business someday.
They live in a two-bedroom mobile home strewn with plastic toys. A purple slide outside is tied to a tree so it won't blow away. Just one mobile home and a thin line of pines separate their home from cars flying by on the interstate. They will stay here for now, but their hopes of a bigger house — and all the trappings of the good life — they see in closer reach, in part, because of their decision to have a family of four.
"Things are expensive here, and I don't always want to stay home," Lucena said. "Life is easier with fewer children."
[I] Helena Oliviero writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Journal-Constitution writer Maurice Tamman contributed to this article. [/I][/COLOR]
2005-01-26 04:18 | User Profile
Well amigos, it looks to me like the gringos will have to pick their own grapes and do the own garden and get a job at Taco Bell, and the Mexicans? hummmmmmmmmmm they will problably have a house in Beverly Hill.
We are in trouble now upssssssssss did I say "we"?, yo no hablo ingles.
2005-01-26 05:51 | User Profile
Well Ponce-boy, according to CIA Factbook, Cuba's fertility is already well below the replacement rate:
[B]Birth rate:
12.18 births/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Death rate:
7.17 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Total fertility rate:
1.66 children born/woman (2004 est.) [/B]
[url]http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cu.html#People[/url]
Systems like socialism and social democracy are simply poison to birthrates - when the government (is supposed to) take care of you, why bother having children?
Petr
2005-01-26 17:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Ponce]Well amigos, it looks to me like the gringos will have to pick their own grapes and do the own garden and get a job at Taco Bell, and the Mexicans? hummmmmmmmmmm they will problably have a house in Beverly Hill.
We are in trouble now upssssssssss did I say "we"?, yo no hablo ingles.[/QUOTE]
I'd be happy to pick my own grapes. And, if I don't want to pick my own grapes... we could just import the grapes rather than the grape pickers. And, if we didn't want to import anything, the shortage of grape pickers would lead to increased automation (with a possible long-term reduction in price) and/or a modest increase in price to pay Americans what is necessary.
I still think some people are being optimistic about the reduction in birthrates of 3rd-world countries.
2005-01-26 19:37 | User Profile
[I][B] - "I still think some people are being optimistic about the reduction in birthrates of 3rd-world countries."[/B][/I]
"Optimistic" doesn't always equal "false", you know.
What would it take to convince you?
Petr
2005-01-26 19:46 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr][I][B] - "I still think some people are being optimistic about the reduction in birthrates of 3rd-world countries."[/B][/I]
"Optimistic" doesn't always equal "false", you know.[/QUOTE]
Time.
2005-01-26 19:49 | User Profile
[B][I] - "Time."[/I][/B]
Huh?
Petr
2005-01-26 23:39 | User Profile
[I]Systems like socialism and social democracy are simply poison to birthrates - when the government (is supposed to) take care of you, why bother having children?[/I] That may be part of it, but it's also that these systems are all very present-oriented. As Hoppe explains thay alter people's time preferences. More fundamentally, they are systems in which the State redistributes presently existing goods with no concern for the effect such policies may have on the production of future goods.
2005-01-27 04:42 | User Profile
Mexican birthrates are dropping because every time they get pregnant they swim across the Rio Grande to have the baby in Texas. Now we have six million Mexicans in Texas. It does little to generate optimism on my part.
The media can print articles that downplay the effects of the demographic warfare against their enemies (us), but I ain't buying it.
2005-01-27 09:38 | User Profile
[QUOTE=mwdallas][I]Systems like socialism and social democracy are simply poison to birthrates - when the government (is supposed to) take care of you, why bother having children?[/I] That may be part of it, but it's also that these systems are all very present-oriented. As Hoppe explains thay alter people's time preferences. More fundamentally, they are systems in which the State redistributes presently existing goods with no concern for the effect such policies may have on the production of future goods.[/QUOTE]
Right. SSI is a good example of this. The state promised everubpdy who paid in (and some who didn't pay in) the same benefits, regardless of whether they shouldered any of the burden to raise the next generation of workers.
Have no kids and spend you extra income on fancy vacations, Armani suits and gourmet foods, you get the same benefits as the family who had four kids, took camping vacations in the local state park and shopped at Wal-Mart.
This system created an enormous moral hazard, where childless Yuppies could exernalize the costs of their future SSI beneifts in our pay-as-you-go system onto couples foolish enough to have children. I know couples like this, I'm sure we all do. Many of them just shake their heads at how foolish we breedres are. One of them even took me to task when my wife was pregnant with our last baby, saying that I didn't care about the environmental impact of children on our overcrowded planet, and how the really responsible thing to do was to have no kids.
I pointed out to this fellow that my kids would be paying his SSI, but his mind was closed.
I posted here an article that appeared recently in the Washington Post that openly discussed this problem and suggested a SSI tax rebate for every child a worker has. Makes sense to me. But it won't happen, since SSI is all about giving the voter something for nothing.
2005-01-27 10:36 | User Profile
Walter,
I wonder how this person feels about high birth rates in the third world and the impact that has on the enviroment, especially when they download here in America?