SUNDAY PRICE: $1.50 SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2010 FOUNDED IN 1905

NEW YORK ● It’s Christmas Eve2006, and I step into freezingdarkness on a balcony highabove Ground Zero and won-der what 2,977 people wouldbe doing if they were still alive.

Traffic lights wink 32 sto-ries below my sister’s apart-ment. They match the tiny redand green lights strung acrossthe iron guardrail on the nar-row ledge. But, on this night,there is no joy.

There is a gaping black hole

in the ground, blacknesswhere the twin towers oncesparkled like crystals reachingtoward the heavens.

In my mind’s eye, I can seethe souls floating in front ofme, and I realize had theylived, most would be celebrat-ing right now – singing carolsor cleaning up after Hanukkahor getting ready for Eid al-Ad-ha, an Islamic holy day. Others

Covering the scars of 9/11won’t erase the loss

DAVIDWHITING

REGISTERCOLUMNIST

SEE WHITING ● PAGE 1 8

AN INVESTIGATION BY RONALD CAMPBELLPART ONE OF FOUR

Today, half of California’s software developers, one-third of its nurses

and a quarter of its CEOs are immigrants. So are most of its house-

keepers, cooks and gardeners. Most of them are here legally, the

product of the largest wave of legal immigration in a century. Long after

residents of other states gave up on California, immigrants are still com-

ing, bringing muscle and ideas to the state’s economy. NEWS 3-7

CALIFORNIA IS HOME TO 9.8 MILLION

IMMIGRANTS. TOGETHER THEY

MAKE UP ONE-THIRD OF THE STATE’S

WORKERS – MORE THAN ALMOST ANY

OTHER DEVELOPED ECONOMY ON

THE PLANET. IMMIGRANT WORKERS

EARNED $260 BILLION IN 2008.IN SHORT, THIS IS …

A STATE POWEREDBY IMMIGRANTS

SUNDAY

California relies more on immigrantlabor than any other state and al-

most any developed country. That’sthe result of decades-long econom-ic and demographic shifts as well

as political choices.

SEPT. 19

More than 1 0 million undocument-ed immigrants have moved to the

United States since Congressvowed a crackdown in 1 986. A keyreason: the government’s failure

to lock them out of jobs.

SEPT. 26

Immigrants have drivendown wages in low-skilledtrades. But they’ve madelife easier for middle- andupper-income Californians.

OCT. 3

Changing U.S. immigrationpolicy means grappling withpolarizing choices – such as

amnesty and a national ID card.

SERIES AT A GLANCE

● Solemn ceremo-nies at Ground Zero, the Penta-gon and Shanks-ville, Pa., paid trib-ute to the victimsof the terrorist at-tacks.News 22-23

● Orange Countymarked the ninthanniversary of theattacks with a re-membrance ser-vice and a ridefeaturing morethan a thousandmotorcycles.Local 1

REMEMBERING SEPT. 11, 2001

JASON DECROW, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A firefighter salutes as taps is played for victims of the Sept. 11terrorist attacks during a commemoration ceremony Saturday atZuccotti Park, adjacent to Ground Zero, in New York.

California is addicted to immigrant labor.

Over the past four decades, the state hascome to depend on immigrant brains andbrawn to an extent unmatched by any oth-er state and almost any developed country.

That puts the state at the center of a po-litically charged debate over immigration for atleast the third time in its history. Nowhere else arethe numbers greater or the stakes higher.

As Congress prepares to act on immigration – torestrict or expand it, to offer illegal immigrants “apath to citizenship” or to harass them until theyleave – success or failure will depend in large parton how that policy works in California.

The Orange County Registeranalyzed four decades of data fromthe U.S. Census Bureau, reviewedmore than 100 reports and inter-viewed dozens of experts and immi-grants to weigh the enormous andoften misunderstood impact of im-migrants on the California econo-my.

Among the conclusions:● California is home to more immi-grants, 9.8 million, than any foreigncountry save Russia and Germany. Most are here le-gally, the product of the largest wave of legal im-migration in a century.1

● A third of California workers are immigrants, afar higher proportion than any other state and anyadvanced economy except for tiny Luxembourg.Together they earned $260 billion in 2008 – morethan the state spent on imports of oil, cars and elec-tronics combined.2

● Nearly a tenth of the state’s workers, 1.75 millionpeople, are illegal immigrants. They’re here be-cause of a tacit consensus in Washington to spendbillions fortifying the border while doing almostnothing to prevent illegal immigrants from findingwork once they cross or to catch those who overstaytheir visas.3

● Immigrants have filled most of the new jobs cre-ated in California since 1970. Without them, thestate’s workforce would have shrunk in the 1990s.4

● Immigration has helped middle- and upper-in-

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Alma Nieto, holding a photo of herself at age 16, fled Nicaragua with her husband, Francisco, after years ofharassment and feeling unsafe. The couple were granted asylum and eventually became U.S. citizens in 1999.

DEPENDENT ON A WORKFORCE

OF IMMIGRANTSEconomic and demographic factors, as well as government policies,

have fostered the state’s reliance on a foreign-born labor pool.

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 4

Birthplace of California workers,

1900-2008

Source: IPUMS SDA database

Other countries

Asia

Europe

Mexico

Rest of U.S.

California

1900

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2008

1910

The Register

A note from Register Editor Ken BrusicImmigration is a political, legal and economic story – one

that we have covered extensively. It is also a highly chargedemotional issue, as any frequent reader of the comments sec-tion of ocregister.com can attest.

I remember sitting in the Register building with a group ofreaders who were assessing our immigration coverage.

“What part of illegal don’t you understand?” one readerasked. The majority of the other dozen or so in the groupnodded their heads. In their eyes, we had failed to addressthe central issue of the immigration debate.

I challenged some of our best reporters to develop a wayto assess the true economic effect of illegal immigration: itscosts as well as its benefits. They tried but could not come upwith reliable numbers on either side.

So we decided to tell the broad economic story of im-migration: the incentives that drew millions of foreign-bornlegal and illegal workers and their families to California, thejobs they filled and the impact they have had on our commu-nity.

In general, most people in our community do not like theidea of people entering the country unlawfully. But we alsohave a tremendous appetite for inexpensive labor – in ourgardens, in our restaurants, building our homes. The task ofkeeping illegal immigrants out belongs to the federal govern-ment. Both Republican and Democratic administrations havefailed to resolve the issue.

To tell our story, we have talked with dozens of immi-grants, analyzed four decades of census records and re-viewed more than 1 00 reports.

We have also taken the unusual step of footnoting our sto-ries so you can follow the chain of documents and numbersthat led to our conclusions. Online you can view, downloadand analyze for yourself three dozen spreadsheets that helptell the economic story of immigration in California.

We know you will want to discuss and perhaps challengethe findings. We welcome the conversation. I have assignedan editor to moderate the online discussion. We will answerquestions as well as ask some. We will tolerate divergentviewpoints. And we will keep the conversation civil.

This is an important story that requires some length totell. Please take the time over the four Sundays it will run toread, reflect and discuss it with your family, friends, neigh-bors and online with us.

We hope all of us will come to a better understanding ofthe issues involved and use that knowledge to require mea-ningful reform.

IMMIGRANTS AND THE CALIFORNIA ECONOMY

FOR MORE COVERAGE, GO TO OCREGISTER.COM/INVESTIGATIONS

Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010 | NEWS 3The Orange County Register

RONALDCAMPBELL

REGISTERWRITER

come Californians economicallywhile driving down wages forthose with the fewest job skills.5

The immigrant workforce in-cludes people such as DanielLee, who left postwar Korea tostudy in America and stayed tobecome an architect. And AlmaNieto, who fled the Sandinistaregime in her native Nicaragua,slipped into California through asewer pipe and became a churchsecretary. And Maria Rosa, acosmetologist, one of millions ofMexicans who walked awayfrom poverty at home for an ille-gal but more prosperous life inthe United States.

‘NO PLACE BUT CALIFORNIA’Today, most of the state’s

housekeepers, painters andcooks are immigrants. So arehalf of its software developers, athird of its registered nursesand a quarter of its business ex-ecutives. A generation ago, na-tives of the United States dom-inated all of these jobs, indeedalmost every occupation.6

Most of the workers in SantaAna and central Los Angeles,places filled with tiny businessesand garment factories, are im-migrants. But immigrants makeup nearly half the workers in

much of Silicon Valley, includingthe hometowns of Apple andGoogle.7

And no matter what Congressdoes, the role of immigrant fam-ilies in the California economy iscertain to grow: Nearly half ofthe state’s children have an im-migrant parent.8

California’s dependence onimmigrant labor is no accident.

It is the product of economicand demographic shifts thathave been decades in the mak-ing. It is also the result of policychoices.

And it has echoes in our past.A third of the forty-niners

came from foreign lands, leavingtheir mark on gold camps suchas Dutch Flat, English Moun-tain, Irish Hill, Chinese Camp,Canada Hill, French Corral andSpanish Flat.9

In 1861, New York native Wil-liam Brewer marveled at thecrowd attending Mass at Mis-sion Santa Barbara: Americans,Irish, French, Italians, Spanish,even two Chinese.

“No place but California canproduce such groups,” Brewerwrote.10

But during the sharp depres-sion of the 1870s, white Califor-nians saw the Chinese as athreat to their livelihoods. Theirshout – “The Chinese must go!”– led to the Chinese ExclusionAct of 1882, the first restrictiveimmigration law in the nation’shistory.11

Twenty-five years later, Cali-fornians demanded similar re-strictions on Japanese immi-grants, and again Washingtonagreed.12

Finally, in 1924, Congress vir-

tually outlawed Asian immigra-tion and severely restricted im-migration from southern andEastern Europe. One of the lead-ers of the anti-immigration cam-paign in Congress was Califor-nia Sen. Hiram Johnson.13

The opponents of immigra-tion got what they wanted. In1860, nearly 40 percent of Cali-fornians were immigrants. By1960, less than 9 percent wereforeign-born.14

OPENING THE DOORSCalifornia’s immigrant pre-

sent has its roots in 1965.That year, Congress scrapped

nationality-based quotas in fa-vor of a family-friendly system.The architects of the 1965 lawsaw it as a way to redress thediscriminatory aspects of the1924 law. Instead it became thelegal foundation for a new era ofmass migration.15

The United States has admit-ted nearly as many legal perma-nent residents in the past 10years, 10.3 million, as it did in theentire 50-year span followingpassage of the 1924 law. Some 3million to 4 million illegal immi-grants also entered the countryduring the last decade.16

California attracted far moreimmigrants than any otherstate. Today, it is home to 26 per-cent of the nation’s immigrants,

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Daniel Lee, who served on the St. Thomas Korean Catholic Center construction committee, was born in South Korea and lives in Fullerton.

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 3

California’s workforce

Source: IPUMS; U.S. Census Bureau

Native and foreign-born workers in California:

In millions15

12

9

6

3

0

The Register'08'07'06'05'00'90'80'70

Foreign-bornNative

7,09

2,70

0

9,44

9,24

0

11,1

27,5

61

11,0

12,9

05

11,3

45,5

62

11,7

91,3

25

11,8

07,7

19

12,1

72,5

94

932,

200

1,88

8,70

0

3,83

6,72

2

4,82

6,12

1

5,92

9,85

3

6,17

3,38

9

6,24

3,67

0

6,34

8,87

9

0

5

10

15

20

25

30 million

20082000199019801970196019501940193019201910190018901880187018601850

Native population (blue):70,795Foreign-born population (red):21,802

Native population:26,897,639

Foreign-born population:

9,859,027

1849-1869The Gold Rush and construction of the Transcontinental Railroad draw a flood of immigrants to California, including tens of thousands of Chinese.

1890-1910Peak period for immigration to the United States.

1850: Census begins separate count of foreign-born residents. In California, newly admitted to the Union, 23.5% of residents are foreign-born.

1882: In response to pressure from California, Congress enacts the Chinese Exclusion Act, which bars Chinese immigration and forbids Chinese who have already arrived from becoming citizens. The act is not repealed until 1943, as a gesture to wartime ally China.

1924: Ending decades of essentially unlimited immigra-tion from Europe, the Immigration Act sets tight racial and nationality quotas. It slashes Italian immigration from 200,000 annually to 4,000.

1942-1964: Congress authorizes the bracero program to import agricultural workers from Mexico. It remains on the books until 1964.

1952: The Immigration and Nationality Act modifies the nationality quotas in the 1924 act and adds preferences for immigrants with special work skills or family ties to the U.S. Although it was illegal for undocu-mented immigrants to work, a clause in the law known as the “Texas Proviso” made it legal for employers to hire them.

1965: Congress passes a new Immigration and Nationality Act, abolishing the nationality quotas created in 1924. The new law makes family unification and job skills the primary criteria for admitting immigrants.

1986: Congress passes the Immigration Reform and Control Act. The law scraps the “Texas Proviso,” imposes sanctions on employers who knowingly hire undocumented immigrants and grants amnesty to nearly 3 million undocu-mented immigrants already in the U.S.

2001: The 9/1 1 attacks prompt sweeping changes in immigration law.

U.S.- and foreign-born Californians, 1849-2008The foreign-born population grew or stalled depending on changes to immigration laws.

Immigrants from Asia arrive at Angel Island in San Francisco.

Workers from Mexico pick chili peppers in California in 1964 as part of the bracero program.

Applicants wait for amnesty application papers to be typed in 1988 in Los Angeles.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau; The Associated Press photos The Register

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 5

IMMIGRANTS AND THE CALIFORNIA ECONOMY

EARTHWATCH MOVES THIS WEEK TO MONDAY NEWS 2

1 9.8 million immigrants: See “Native and foreign-born, all states, 1850-2008.xls,” Register analysis of census data. “More than any foreigncountry save Russia and Germany”: See “World Bank estimate of mi-grants by country, 2005.xls,” based on United Nations population divi-sion estimates; the 12 million immigrants in Russia include several mil-lion people born in other nations of the former Soviet Union. “Most arehere legally”: Widely accepted estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center andthe Department of Homeland Security put the illegal immigrant popu-lation at 11 million nationwide and about 2.55 million in California, orless than a third of the total foreign-born population as counted by theCensus Bureau. “Largest wave of legal immigration in a century”: See“Legal Immigration Summary, 1907-2009.xls,” Register analysis of De-partment of Homeland Security data.2 “A third of California workers”: 34.3% in 2008; see “Native and for-eign-born workers, CA, 1950-2008.xls,” Register analysis of CensusPUMS data. “Any other state”: The states with the next highest rates areNew York (27.0 percent), New Jersey (25.6 percent), Nevada (25.2 per-cent) and Florida (23.8 percent), according to “Foreign labor force bystate, 1980-2005.xls,” Migration Policy Institute, 2008. “And any ad-vanced economy”: See “Immigrant workers by nation, 2000.xls,” basedon a survey by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Devel-opment of 28 developed nations; only one of the 28, Luxembourg, had ahigher percentage of immigrant workers – 42.9 percent. Luxembourg isa banking center with a workforce of 191,000, roughly twice the size ofIrvine’s. “Together they earned $250 billion in 2008”; see “Income of na-tive and foreign-born workers, CA, 2008.xls,” Register analysis of cen-sus PUMS data. “More than the state spent on imports”; see “California

trade statistics, detailed, 1998-2008.xls,” from California Department ofFinance; these are totals for all goods imported through California portsand include products shipped to other states after passing through cus-toms here.3 “Nearly a tenth of the state’s workers, 1.75 million”; see “U.S. Unau-thorized Immigration Flows Are Down Sharply Since Mid-Decade” byJeffrey S. Passel and D’Vera Cohn, Pew Hispanic Center, Sept. 1, 2010.“A tacit consensus”; see part 2 of this series. 4 “Filled most of the new jobs”; see “Native and foreign-born workers,CA, 1970-2008.xls,” Register analysis of IPUMS data; immigrants filled52 percent of all jobs created from 1970 through 2008 and 70.6 percentfrom 1990 through 2008; during the 1990s, the native workforce de-clined by 115,000.5 See part 3 of this series.6 “Most of the state’s housekeepers”: “Native and foreign-born workersby occupation, 2006-2008.xls, Register analysis of IPUMS data. “A gen-eration ago”: “Occupations and wages, 1970-2008.xls”, “1970” sheet,Register analysis of IPUMS data.7 “Most of the workers in Santa Ana”: “Foreign workforce by PUMA,2006-2008.pdf” (map) and “Foreign-born workforce by PUMA, 2006-2008.xls” (spreadsheet), Register analysis of Census PUMS data. A PU-MA is a Public Use Microdata Area, an area with about 100,000 resi-dents, the smallest area for which the Census reports microdata.8 “Nearly half of the state’s children”: See “Nativity of parents,2008.xls,” Register analysis of census PUMS data.9 “A third of the forty-niners”: See “Native and foreign-born, all states,1850-2008.xls,” a Register analysis based on Census Bureau Tech Pa-

per 29, Table 13. The 1850 census, conducted amidst the chaos of theGold Rush, reported that 23.5 percent of California residents were for-eign-born; that did not include San Francisco – then the largest city westof St. Louis – because returns from the city were destroyed by fire. The1850 census is online at http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/doc-uments/1850a-01.pdf. The 1860 census, conducted under calmer condi-tions, found that 38.6 percent of California residents were foreign-born.“Gold camps”: These place names all appear on the “Gold Rush MiningDistricts” map, Atlas of California, by Michael W. Donley, Stuart Allan,Patricia Caro and Clyde P. Patton, Pacific Book Center, 1979, page 14.10 Up and Down California in 1860:1864: The Journal of William H.Brewer, edited by Francis P. Farquhar, University of California Press,1930 (reprinted 1966), pages 69-70. This is a classic of early Californiahistory, written by a Yale-educated scientist who was second-in-com-mand of the Whitney Survey. He was the first to climb 13,570-foot MountBrewer in the central Sierra Nevada; from the top, he spotted a muchhigher group of peaks to the southeast, including the peak later namedfor his boss, Josiah Whitney.11 “Their shout”: See California: The Great Exception, by Carey McWil-liams, University of California Press, 1948, for an account of the rise ofthe Workingmen’s Party and its leader, Denis Kearney. In 1880, 71.2 per-cent of the nation’s 105,000 Chinese residents lived in California; for de-tails, see http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/decennial/1880.html;click on the Zip file to download Volume 1, then open “1880a_v1-03.pdf”and go to page 7. “Chinese Exclusion Act”: California had unusual politi-cal clout in the early 1880s because it was a swing state; it voted Repub-lican in the 1876 presidential race, turned Democratic (by a statewide

margin of 144 votes) in 1880 and reverted to the Republican side in 1884.“The first restrictive immigration law”: A 1798 law, the Alien Friends Act, partof the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts, gave the president the power to de-port aliens suspected of radical opinions. But the Chinese Exclusion Act wasthe first law to bar immigrants from entering; it remained on the books until1943 when it was repealed as a gesture to World War II ally China.12 California agitation led to the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” curbing Japaneseimmigration in 1907. See McWilliams, California: The Great Exception. 13 For an account of the 1924 law, see “Three Decades of Mass Migration:The Legacy of the 1965 Immigration Act,” by Center for Immigration Studies,September 1995. Hiram Johnson: As governor, Johnson signed the 1913Alien Land Act, which tried to prevent Japanese immigrants from buyingfarm land; in the Senate, he allied with Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusettsin sponsoring restrictive legislation in 1920 and chaired the Senate Immigra-tion Committee from 1923 to 1930.14 “Native and foreign-born, all states, 1850-2008.xls,” Register compila-tion of U.S. Census data.15 “Three Decades of Mass Migration: The Legacy of the 1965 ImmigrationAct,” Center for Immigration Studies, September 1995. 16 “The United States has admitted”: “Legal immigration summary, 1907-2009.xls,” Register compilation of data from Yearbook of Immigration Sta-tistics 2009, Table 1; see “LPR Only” sheet, Line 66, for summary comparingnumber of legal permanent residents admitted for the 2000-2009 period withother periods. “Some 2 million to 3 million illegal”: See “Illegal immigrationestimates, 1986-2008.xls,” Register compilation of data from Pew HispanicCenter, Congressional Research Service, Department of Homeland Securityand others.

FOOTNOTES

NEWS 4 | Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010 The Orange County Register

IMMIGRANTS AND THE CALIFORNIA ECONOMY

FOR MORE COVERAGE, GO TO OCREGISTER.COM/INVESTIGATIONS

twice its share of the overallpopulation.17

At least two-thirds of thoseimmigrants are here legally.18

The 1965 law applied every-where. But California absorb-ed far more immigrants thanany other state – far more im-migrants than almost anylarge nation – because ofunique economic and socialfactors.

Together those factorsallowed California to takeenough immigrants topeople a medium-sizestate.19

One of those factorswas cultural.

When the immigrationwave began rising in the1980s and 1990s, Califor-nia already had small im-migrant communitiesready to welcome new-comers. So the engineerfrom India, the refugeefrom Somalia and the ille-gal immigrant from Guatema-la all knew that in Californiathey could eat familiar foods,hear familiar tongues and per-haps meet familiar people.

Esmael Adibi, a ChapmanUniversity economics profes-sor who came to Southern Cal-ifornia as a student in 1974 andis now a U.S. citizen, laterhelped most of his family movehere from Iran.20

Community organizer HildaCruz’s grandparents had be-come citizens and settled inSouthern California years be-fore she crossed the border il-legally in 1978 at age 9. An un-cle met the Cruz family in Ti-juana, providing the childrenwith their American-born cou-sins’ birth certificates to foolthe guards. Years later, she be-came a citizen.21

Maria Rosa, the cosmetolo-gist, left her native Morelia,

Mexico, in 1990 at age 27 insearch of “a better life, a betterjob, better opportunity.” Sheslipped across the border andmade her way to OrangeCounty, where her older sisterand brother-in-law alreadylived. She remains undocu-mented.22

When Alex Ortega imigrat-ed illegally from Mexico in 1991at age 16, he immediately wentto work painting houses for hisuncle in Santa Ana. He nowowns a small carpet business,has a work visa and is applying

for a green card.23

“That’s just the basic waythat social networks work,”said Steven Camarota, re-search director at the Centerfor Immigration Studies, agroup that favors restrictionson immigration.24

“Once that concentration(of social connections) is es-tablished, then it grows reallyfast,” Adibi said. “Once a stategets established in that path,there’s no stopping it – unlessthe economy falls apart.”25

RUN FOR THE EXITSThe California economy did

fall apart in the early 1990s.The post-Cold War recessionsent more than 1 million U.S.-born workers running to otherstates. And it set the stage forour dependence on immigrantlabor.

For most of its frenetic his-

tory, California has producedfar more jobs than its nativescould fill. The California jobmagnet lured people from theEast, South and, above all, theMidwest. In 1960, two of everythree California workershailed from another U.S.state.26

California continued to at-tract workers from otherstates for three more decades.Then, in the 1990s, the flow ofworkers from other statesabruptly reversed. During the’90s, the number of workers

born in other states fell by 1million.27

One big factor: the post-Cold War cutbacks in aero-space, which wiped outhundreds of thousands ofhigh-paying blue-collarjobs. For example, the num-ber of machine operatorshas fallen by 125,000 – morethan half – since 1970.28

Another factor: the in-crease in home prices,which even after the mar-ket’s decline remain farhigher in California than inmost other states.29

Although the state haspicked up lots of high-skilledworkers and low-skilled immi-grants during the past two dec-ades, said UC San Diego econo-mist Gordon H. Hanson, it alsohas lost mid-skilled workers,the people who used to fill blue-collar manufacturing jobs.

“They’re priced out of Cali-fornia,” Hanson said. “Califor-nia is an expensive place.”30

While workers from Iowa,Michigan and Texas were mov-ing out, workers from Mexico,the Philippines and a hundredother countries were movingin. By 2008, immigrants out-numbered workers from otherU.S. states in every age brack-et save one: 60 and older.31

Without immigrants, thestate’s labor force would haveshrunk by 100,000 in the 1990s.

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Alma Nieto, left, and her mother, Miriam Mayorga, receive Communion from the Rev. AvenlinoOrozco of La Purisima Catholic Church at Nieto’s home in Orange.

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 4

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 6

2000

5-10% 10-15% 15-20% 20-25% 25-30% 25-30% 30-35% 35% or more

200819901980

Percentageof foreignworkers

1970

O.C. O.C.

Immigrants in the workforce

Source: IPUMS The Register

Q. How many immigrants work in Cali-fornia? A. About 6.3 million immigrantsare in the civilian labor force.That’s roughly one of every threeworkers. The Pew Hispanic Cen-ter, which provides the mostwidely accepted estimates of ille-gal immigrants, says there are1.75 million undocumented work-ers in California.Q. How many are citizens?A. About 2.86 million immigrantworkers are citizens. The remain-der are split roughly in half be-tween illegal immigrants and le-gal residents, who have greencards or are here on temporaryvisas.Q. Where do they come from?A. They come from more than100 countries. But two-thirds hailfrom just six nations. Some 43percent (2.85 million) come fromMexico, followed by the Philip-pines (8.7 percent), Vietnam (4.6percent), El Salvador (4.6 per-cent), China (3.4 percent) and In-dia (3.1 percent). Q. What do they do?A. Immigrants dominate low-skilled jobs, those requiring lessthan a high school diploma. Ex-amples include housekeepers (81percent of whom are immi-grants), electrical equipment as-semblers (68 percent), gardeners(68 percent), cooks (61 percent),painters (61 percent) and con-struction laborers (57 percent).But they also comprise largeshares of scientific and technicaloccupations – half of software de-velopers, 48 percent of electricalengineers, 36 percent of regis-tered nurses and 34 percent ofphysicians. Q. How well-educated are they?A. As a group, immigrants arenot as well-educated as natives.One of every three immigrantworkers lacks a high school diplo-ma. Fewer than half have attend-ed college. By comparison, just 8percent of native workers arehigh school dropouts, and 71 per-cent have attended college. How-ever, at the educational pinnacle,immigrants are slightly morelikely than natives to hold a doc-toral degree (1.6 percent of im-migrant workers vs. 1.3 percentof natives).Q. How much do they earn?A. Immigrants as a group earnabout 70 percent of what nativesdo. In 2008, the mean incomewas $41,566 for immigrants and$53,902 for natives. The medianincome was $26,478 for immi-grants and $37,069 for natives.(The mean is the arithmetic aver-age; the median is the midpointor “typical” income.) Educationexplains most of the difference.College graduates on averageearn twice as much as highschool graduates and nearlythree times more than highschool dropouts. Because a dis-proportionate share of immi-grants are dropouts, that holdsdown their average income.

Sources: Register analysis ofcensus data, Pew Hispanic Cen-ter

17 “Native and foreign-born, CA, 1850-2008.xls” and“Native and foreign-born, all states, 1850-2008.xls,”Register analysis of census data.18 The Department of Homeland Security estimatedthere were 2.8 million undocumented immigrants inCalifornia in 2007; see “Illegal immigration estimates,1986-2008.xls”. The census counted about 9.8 millionimmigrants in the state that year.19 “Enough immigrants to people a medium-sizestate”: California’s foreign-born population, 9.86 mil-lion in 2008, exceeds the total populations of Georgia,North Carolina and New Jersey, the ninth-, 10th- and

11th-largest states. See “Native and foreign-born, allstates, 1850-2008.xls,” Register compilation of cen-sus data.20 Esmael Adibi interview, Nov. 25, 2009.21 Hilda Cruz interview, Jan. 20, 2010.22 Maria Rosa interview, Dec. 15, 2009.23 Alex Ortega interview, Jan. 21, 2010.24 Steven Camarota interview, Nov. 18, 2009.25 Adibi interview.26 “For most of its frenetic history”: See “Birthplace ofCA workforce, 1900-2008.xls” and especially the“Summary” worksheet, Register compilation of

IPUMS data. 27 “Fell by 1 million”: See “1990” and “2000” work-sheets in “Birthplace of CA workforce, 1900-2008.xls”; the number of workers born in other statesshrank from 5.38 million in 1990 to 4.35 million in2000.28 “The number of machine operators”: See “Occupa-tions and wages, 1970-2008.xls,” Register analysisof IPUMS data; go to “Summary” worksheet, line 297,“Machine operators, n.e.c.” (not elsewhere classi-fied), showing 250,000 holding this job in 1970 and122,000 in 2008.

29 Four California metro areas – Santa Clara County,San Francisco-Oakland, Orange County and San DiegoCounty – ranked among the 10 most expensive areasnationwide on the National Association of Realtors’ listof median home prices for existing single-familyhomes in 2009. See http://www.realtor.org/wps/wcm/connect/d83da280415d4daca9dfb908069f8e0c/rel09q4t.xls?MOD=AJPERES&CA-CHEID=d83da280415d4daca9dfb908069f8e0c30 Gordon H. Hanson interview, Oct. 26, 2009.31 “A hundred other countries”: See “Birthplace of CAworkforce, 1900-2008.xls,” “2008” worksheet; list of

foreign countries sending workers and residents to Cali-fornia extends from line 64 through line 209. Note: Thisspreadsheet counts people by place of birth, regardless ofcitizenship; thus people born to U.S. citizens in, say, Ger-many, appear in the German total; for all other purposes,we consider workers to be foreign-born only if they areborn in a foreign country to parents who are not U.S. citi-zens. “Outnumbered workers from other U.S. states in ev-ery age bracket”: See “Birthplace and age of CA workforce,1970-2008.xls,” Register analysis of IPUMS data.

FOOTNOTES

Immigrants are “goingto work 10 times faster

than any American citizen would work.”

D A V E N O R R E D

O W N E R O F B U S I N E S S

I N L A G U N A N I G U E L

Q & A

The Orange County Register Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010 | NEWS 5

IMMIGRATION AND THE CALIFORNIA ECONOMY

FOR MORE COVERAGE, GO TO OCREGISTER.COM/INVESTIGATIONS

Instead it grew by 875,000. Immigrantshelped revive the California economyand kept it growing until the Great Re-cession.32

HIGHER EDUCATIONWhile millions of blue-collar jobs were

disappearing from California, a subtler,longer-term change created an openingfor millions of poorly educated immi-grants.

That change happened in the class-room.

In 1970, the typical U.S.-born Califor-nia worker had a high school diploma. By1990, the typical native worker had a yearof college.33

The changes were more extremeamong the best- and worst-educated na-tive workers. In 1970, the top 10 percentof native workers had a bachelor’s de-gree or better. By 2008, that thresholdhad jumped to a master’s degree or bet-ter.34

The change waseven starker at thebottom. In 1970, theworst-educated 10percent of nativeworkers had gottenno further than ninthgrade. By 2008, thebottom 10 percent in-cluded people withhigh school diplomas.

Economics helpeddrive that change.

Since 1970, Califor-nia employers havecreated 1.1 millionnew jobs for high school dropouts – andfour times more new jobs for people withcollege and postgraduate degrees.35

Native-born workers have used educa-tion to move up the job chain. Many im-migrants have done the same thing, tak-ing high-skilled jobs in fields such ashealth and technology. Nearly half of im-migrant workers have at least some col-lege.36

But today, immigrants hold two-thirdsof the state’s low-skilled jobs – jobs suchas janitor, gardener and construction la-borer that can be filled by high schooldropouts.37

Barbara Davies Alvarez operates acommercial landscaping business in SanDimas. Almost all of her employees areimmigrants.

“I do hard, physical work,” Alvarezsaid. “It’s the American mentality thatdoing physical labor is not consideredsexy.”38

Even in the midst of the recession, shegot no applications from U.S.-born work-ers. Her own 22-year-old grandson wouldnot work for her.

Immigrants are “a pretty consistentworkforce,” said Dave Norred, owner of alandscape installation business in Lagu-na Niguel. “They come to your door.They’re a cousin of somebody, and theystay. … They’re going to work 10 timesfaster than any American citizen wouldwork.”39

THE CALIFORNIA PROMISEIf California has lost its allure for residents

of other states, it remains golden to immi-grants. Especially for those at the bottom ofthe economic heap, California promises abetter life.

Hanson, the UC San Diego economist,found that young Mexican men earn huge payraises by crossing the border – anywherefrom two to six times their wages at home –after adjusting for the higher cost of livinghere.40

For men ages 23 to 27 with less than fouryears of schooling, that translates to a $7.01-per-hour wage increase.

Luciano, 42, welds iron gates and windowframes in Orange County. He earns $11.50 anhour when there is work. An illegal immi-grant, he planned to return to Mexico as soonas he earned enough money to buy a homethere. Instead, he stayed.

“You come here thinking, just for one year,”Luciano said. “But once you’re here, thingschange. … Once you see life here, you don’twant to leave.”41

He shares an apartment in a crowded Ana-heim complex with his wife, Martha, a house-cleaner who is also undocumented. She

makes more moneycleaning houses, $415a week, than she did asa social worker inMexico.

The Californiapromise is greatest forthose who immigratedas children. A quarterof California’s immi-grant workers arrivedin the U.S. at age 15 oryounger.43

Jose Moreno grewup the youngest childin a family of illegal im-

migrants in Oxnard. Living in constant fear ofla migra, he absorbed an unspoken messagefrom his parents: “Get A’s or get deported.”44

He got A’s. In time, he became a U.S. citi-zen and earned a doctorate in education. Twoolder siblings became medical doctors.

He describes himself this way: “Made inMexico, assembled in the U.S.”

The economic influence of immigrantsseems likely to continue long after the cur-rent generation retires. Nearly half the chil-dren in California have an immigrant parent.Most of those 4.4 million children of immi-grants were themselves born in the UnitedStates.45

The presence of those children, and thehopes their parents place in them, help ex-plain why most immigrants are choosing tostay rather than earn some money and returnhome. In 1980, the typical immigrant to Cali-fornia had been in the U.S. for less than a dec-ade. By 2008, the median stay had nearlydoubled, to 18.3 years.46

Hilda Cruz, who came to the U.S. as a child,never got past high school; she was too busyworking and raising her family. But one of herchildren earned a degree from UC Riverside,and three others are college students.47

Had she never left Mexico, “we wouldprobably have only had an elementary educa-tion and then moved on. … We would continueto live in poverty.

“I came here so young, this has alwaysbeen my home,” Cruz added. “Mexico is a for-eign country.”

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Esmael Adibi, an economics professor at Chapman University, holds the attention of economic students during a lecture. Adibi came toSouthern California as a student in 1974 and is now a U.S. citizen. He eventually helped most of his family move here from Iran.

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 5

“Once you’re here,things change. … Onceyou see life here, youdon’t want to leave.”

L U C I A N O

W E L D E R F R O M M E X I C O

The Orange County Register’s coverage of the immi-grant workforce is based primarily on U.S. Census Bureaudata from 1 970 through 2008.

In every once-a-decade census and in the AmericanCommunity Survey conducted annually since 2005, the bu-reau has gathered mountains of data about the Americanpeople and economy. Much of that data goes unpublished.It is simply too detailed for the policymakers and marketerswho are the census’ primary customers.

But after each major survey, the census releases raw da-ta for those who want to dig deeper into the numbers.Known as the Public Use Microdata Sample, it consists ofnearly complete survey results from 1 percent of a state’shouseholds. Names and addresses are excluded from thePUMS file to protect individuals’ privacy. The only geo-graphic information given is the respondent’s “Public UseMicrodata Area,” a region with about 1 00,000 inhabitants.In this way, a researcher can get detailed information abouta group of people without learning about specific individu-als.

An explanation of the PUMS file is at http://www.census.gov/acs/www/Products/PUMS/index.html.

Using PUMS data from 2005 through 2008, the Registerfocused on the civilian workforce in California and com-pared natives – those born in the United States or bornabroad to U.S. citizens – with immigrants.

For historical comparisons, we turned to IPUMS-USA –the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, a service of theMinnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota(usa.ipums.org/usa). The authors are Stephen Ruggles, J.Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B.Schroeder and Matthew Sobek.

IPUMS has gathered census microdata from 1 850 to2008 and harmonized ever-changing census variables sousers can accurately compare pre-Civil War America withthe present.

MARGIN OF ERRORAlthough they seem precise, PUMS and IPUMS numbers

are in fact estimates, drawn from samples of the popu-lation. The PUMS samples are enormous by conventionalsurveying standards – 346,000 California respondents in2008 alone and 5.9 million respondents over the 38-yearspan that the Register analyzed – but they still are just sam-ples. Like all samples, they are subject to statistical error.

We’ve calculated margins of error for most of the PUMSdata from 2006 forward and selected data from 1 990 and2000. We have reported estimates in our stories only wherethe margin of error is 5 percentage points or less with a95 percent confidence interval. In other words, if we couldsomehow count everybody in a group, the chances are 95percent, or 1 9 in 20, that the true number would be within5 percentage points above or below the reported estimate.

Here’s an example. In 2008, the census estimated thatamong California workers ages 30 to 34, 42.8 percent wereimmigrants. Based on census formulas, the probability is95 percent that the true proportion is between 4 1.3 percentand 44.3 percent, 1.5 percentage points above or below theestimate.

We’re publishing our spreadsheets online. These spread-sheets include many estimates that weren’t reliableenough to make the story. Where a margin of error exceeds5 percentage points, we’ve highlighted it in bold, red type.

In general, the smaller the estimate, the bigger the mar-gin of error. This has forced us in some cases to combinesurveys and categories to get publishable data. That’s es-pecially true for the number of natives and immigrants inparticular occupations. When we looked at 2008 alone, wewere able to get reliable estimates of the foreign-born per-centage for just 44 of 335 occupations representing lessthan 20 percent of the state workforce. By combining sur-vey results from 2006 through 2008, we got reliable datafor 1 08 occupations representing more than 80 percent ofthe state’s workforce.

The numbers behind the story

32 “Native and foreign-born workers, CA, 1950-2008.xls,” Registeranalysis of IPUMS data.33 “Education by nativity for workers, 1970-2008.xls,” Register analy-sis of IPUMS data. 34 “Educational attainment of CA workforce, 1970-2008.xls,” Registeranalysis of IPUMS data. See “Natives” and “Immigrants” sheets.35 “Education by nativity for workers, 1970-2008.xls”: See “Change:1970 vs. 2008” beginning at line 68; this analyzes the change in the

number of native and foreign-born workers at each educational level.36 “Nearly half have some college”: “Education by nativity for workers,1970-2008.xls”37 91 percent of workers with no high school are immigrants; 69 per-cent of dropouts (workers who either never attended high school ornever graduated) are immigrants. See “Education by nativity for work-ers, 1970-2008.xls”38 Barbara Davies Alvarez interview, Dec. 14, 2009.

39 David Norred interview, Dec. 15, 2009.40 “Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States,” by Gordon H.Hanson. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper12141, March 2006.41 Luciano and Martha interview, Jan. 22, 2010.42 Aleem Bilwani interview, Dec. 16, 2009.43 “Age at entry of foreign-born workforce, 2006-2008.xls,” Registeranalysis of IPUMS data.

44 Jose Moreno interview, Dec. 16, 2009.45 “Nearly half the children”: “Nativity of parents, 2008.xls,” Registeranalysis of census PUMS data; of the nearly 4.4 million children with im-migrant parents, almost 3.9 million, or 88 percent, were born in the U.S.46 “Immigrant years in U.S., 1970-2008.xls,” Register analysis ofIPUMS data. The median stay was 13.8 years in 1970 but dropped to 9.8years by 1980; the state’s foreign-born population almost doubled dur-ing the 1970s.47 Hilda Cruz interview, Jan. 20, 2010.

FOOTNOTES

NEWS 6 | Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010 The Orange County Register

The Orange County Register Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010 News 71

Esmael AdibiJob: Professor of economics, Chapman

UniversityHome: Lake ForestBirthplace: Babol, Iran (near southern

shore of Caspian Sea)Age: 58 Status: Naturalized citi-

zenFamily: Married, two

childrenFor an economist devot-

ed to the rationality ofmarkets, there is some-thing almost whimsical inEssie Adibi’s story.

In April 1974, freshlygraduated from TehranUniversity, Adibi flew7,600 miles at a friend’surging to attend a tiny col-lege he knew next to nothing about.

He arrived at Los Angeles InternationalAirport with a single suitcase, barely man-aged to avoid boarding the Disneyland busand took a taxi to Chapman University inOrange.

“And then,” Adibi recalled, “I realizedthey didn’t have a graduate degree in eco-nomics.”

No matter. He earned an MBA fromChapman while studying for his master’s ineconomics at Cal State Fullerton and latera Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate Univer-sity.

He worked his way through school at theKnowlwood restaurant in Fullerton, start-

ing by peeling onions and ending as a man-ager. After three years in the kitchen, heswore off hamburgers.

While he was writing his doctoral disser-tation, a friend at Chapman, a young eco-nomics professor named Jim Doti, nowChapman’s president, got him a temporary,one-year teaching assignment.

Adibi had come to California with a plan:He was going to get a doctorate, then re-

turn to Iran and become aresearcher in the centralbank, one of a handful ofPh.D.s helping set eco-nomic policy.

Then came the Iranianrevolution, the fall of theshah, the rise of theocracyand the hostage crisis.

“The revolutionchanged everything forvery many people,” Adibisaid. “Educated people feltthey were not welcome to

go back.”He got his green card in 1981 and became

a citizen five years later.Adibi married an Iranian woman, the sis-

ter of a friend, in 1978. He and his wife were careful to speak on-

ly English around their young children. Thechildren learned Farsi as a second lan-guage.

“We did not want them to have an ac-cent,” Adibi said. “We did not want them toslow down. Because we knew they were go-ing to end up here.”

Adibi misses the neighborhood where hegrew up, but little else about Iran. TheUnited States, he said, is his home.

AT THE HEAD OF THE CLASS

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE REGISTER

Professor Esmael Adibi has aneasy rapport with his students.

Prof i l es by RONALD CAMPBELL

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Daniel (Changmin) LeeJob: Retired architectHome: FullertonBirthplace: Seoul, South KoreaAge: 75Status: Naturalized citizenFamily: Married, three children and two

grandchildrenWar and its aftermath set the course of

Changmin Lee’s life. He was a teenager when North Korea at-

tacked Seoul, forcing hisfamily to flee. After thewar, he joined a genera-tion of South Korea’sbrightest students, go-ing to college in the Unit-ed States.

By the time South Ko-rea had recoveredenough to offer suitablework, 20 years hadpassed, and ChangminLee had become DanielLee, an American citizenwith American-born children.

Lee came to the United States in 1955,hoping to become a doctor. But the pre-med program at Ohio State University,where he enrolled, was filled. So he joined aKorean friend in the architecture program.

Five years later, degree in hand, he real-ized he had no future at home.

“Korea at the time wasn’t ready to pro-vide reasonable employment,” Lee said.

This was decades before the South Ko-rean economic boom. The nation’s grossdomestic product was about $50 to $100

per person. So Lee built his architectural career in

the U.S., first in Ohio and then in California.In the mid-1960s, he returned home look-

ing for work. He met his wife, Helen, but insix months of searching could not find a job.He returned with Helen to California,where they started their family.

By the mid-1970s, South Korean con-struction companies were booming. Theywanted people familiar with the American

and European standardsthat prevailed on big jobs– people like Daniel Lee.

He went to Korea in-tending to stay one year.He stayed 12, spendingsix months of every yearin the Middle East help-ing design city-size pro-jects. He returned to Cal-ifornia in the mid-1980s“for the sake of my chil-

dren.”Lee retired a decade

ago but did not give up architecture entire-ly. He served 4 1⁄2 years on the constructioncommittee for St. Thomas Korean CatholicCenter in Anaheim, advising the architecton ways to harmonize traditional Koreanstyle with Catholic architectural motifs.

Five decades after leaving South Koreafor the United States, Lee recognizes that ifhe had only stayed long enough, until theboom of the 1980s, he might have mademore money there. But he has no regrets.

“What can you do?” he asked. “You can-not have everything in your lifetime.”

CHASING HIS OPPORTUNITIES

Daniel Lee holds a photo of him-self with his mother in 1955.

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE REGISTER

Alma NietoJob: Church office managerHome: OrangeBirthplace: Matagalpa, NicaraguaAge: 48Status: Naturalized citizenFamily: Married, three childrenLate one night in September 1984, Alma

Nieto emerged from a manhole in San Die-go to begin her new life.

She and her husband, Francisco, hadclung to their native Nicaragua despiteyears of harassment.

They stayed after theSandinista government de-nied them flour and eggsfor their small bakery.They stayed after the armybriefly drafted Francisco, abreadwinner who was sup-posed to be exempt. Theystayed even after a boy-hood friend, a lieutenant inthe army, pulled a gun onFrancisco and said he hadpermission to kill him.

They finally knew it wastime to flee when his moth-er, visiting from Southern California, toldhim, “Next time I come over here, I’m goingto have to put flowers on your grave.”

That was in August 1984. Days later, Francisco waded across a riv-

er to Honduras, his birth certificate wrap-ped in a $10 bill in his boot. Months later, herode a motorcycle across the U.S. border,telling a guard in accent-free English thathe was returning from a day trip to Tijuana.

Alma, meanwhile, sold their propertyand flew to Mexico City. She crossed theborder walking barefoot, hunched overthrough a sewer, her way lit by a coyote’s

flashlight.She found a job at a McDonald’s. The

manager “hired me on the spot as the cash-ier. And I said to him, ‘No, no, no.’ ”

She had wanted a job in the kitchenwhere no customers would hear her brokenEnglish. She returned home that first daycrying. Customers had made fun of herthick accent.

Francisco refused to sympathize.“No more Spanish radio, no more Span-

ish TV, no more Spanish conversation,” hetold her. “Spanish staysin Nicaragua. Here wespeak English.”

The threat of deporta-tion haunted her. On abus ride, Alma thoughtthe uniformed bus drivermight be la migra.Caught in a traffic jam,she was sure there wasan immigration check-point ahead.

A parish priest sentAlma and Francisco toCatholic Charities.Workers there asked

Francisco to describe in writing why theyhad fled Nicaragua. He wrote three or fourpages. Within months, they were grantedasylum. They became citizens in 1999.

Four years later, Alma and Francisco vis-ited Nicaragua with their children.

“The kids just loved the country,” Almarecalled, “and they were very surprised.They said, ‘How can you leave such a beau-tiful country?’ … And we had to say, ‘We hadno choice.’ ”

LEAVING THEIR PAST BEHIND

Alma Nieto holds a photo of her-self in first grade.

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE REGISTER

CONTACT THE WRITER:

7 1 4-796-5030 or rcampbell@ocregister.com

FOR MORE COVERAGE, GO TOOCREGISTER.COM/INVESTIGATIONS

The Orange County Registeris a Freedom Communicationsnewspaper.Copyright 20 1 0Customer servicetoll-free 1 -877-OCR-7009 [627-7009]

A coastal development in San Juan Ca-pistrano is seeing signs of life as newbuilders have emerged to finish thestalled project that features more than400 houses. REAL ESTATE 1

SANTA ANA CELEBRATESMEXICAN INDEPENDENCEThousands converged in downtownSanta Ana on Saturday to kick off thecelebration of Mexican independencefrom Spain. The bicentennial bash con-cludes today. LOCAL 1, 5

USC FINDS ITS IDENTITYTO DEFEAT MINNESOTAThe 18th-ranked USC football team as-serted itself in a way it hadn’t this sea-son, rallying from a deficit in the thirdquarter en route to a 32-21 victory overMinnesota. SPORTS 1

NEW BUILDERS STEP INAFTER PROJECT STALLS 71/59

Coast

87/59Inland

TODAY’S WEATHER

SUNDAY PRICE: $1.50 FOUNDED IN 1905SUNDAY, SEPT. 19, 2010

AN INVESTIGATION BY RONALD CAMPBELL PART TWO OF FOUR

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The federal government has spent billions of dollars fortifying the border. But a

wayward policy embraced by multiple presidents and Congresses has done

little to stop employers from hiring those who immigrated. Few illegal work-

ers are caught, and those who hire them are rarely fined. The result:

1.75 million California workers – one in every 11 – are here illegally. NEWS 3-7

When Geraldine Wattswas diagnosed withbreast cancer, she

feared that no one would want tohelp her because she was home-less. To her amazement, she ex-perienced generosity at everyturn – from the hospital employ-ee who arranged for her to get amuch-needed shower before sur-gery to the nonprofit that paidfor three months’ rent. She’s oneof the many local women helpedby the annual Susan G. KomenRace for the Cure. NEWS 16

When you have 744 friends onFacebook, it might mean you’rethe kind of guy who can help peo-ple expand their goofy zone bycracking eggs on their heads.

Sure, there was a serious sideto Brian Loughman, 24, a side thatmade him a star athlete in highschool, a side that earned him anengineering degree from UC Ir-vine.

But the Nellie Gail resident sawhis main purpose in life as sharingpositive energy – and that meantcracking eggs on his own head aswell. Loughman waved to strang-ers on the sidewalk. He struck upconversations with random peo-ple. And he didn’t shy away frommaking friends with people inneed.

TODAY

More than 10 millionundocumented

immigrants have movedto the United States

since Congress vowed a crackdown in 1986.

A key reason: the government’s failure tolock them out of jobs.

SEPT. 26

Immigrants havedriven down wages in low-

skilled trades. Butthey’ve made lifeeasier for middle-and upper-income

Californians.

SEPT. 12

California relies moreon immigrant labor than

any other state and almost any developed

country. That’s the result of decades-long

economic and demographic shifts as

well as political choices.

OCT. 3

Overhauling U.S.immigration policymeans grapplingwith polarizing

choices – such asamnesty and a

national ID card.

DAVID WHITINGREGISTER COLUMNIST

Findinglaughter in grief

SEE WHITING ● PAGE 8

RACE

CURE

FOR THE

THE REFORMTHAT FAILEDTHE REFORMTHAT FAILEDLAX ENFORCEMENT OF 1986 LAW ENTICED

MILLIONS TO IMMIGRATE ILLEGALLY.

SERIES AT A GLANCE

Special sectionLook inside today’s Register for the20 1 0 Race for the Cure section. Wom-en diagnosed with breast cancer, sur-vivors and the people who love themdescribe the battles and the hope.More essays are at ocregister.com/sections/life/health-and-fitness/.

IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/investigations

The Orange County Register Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010 | NEWS 3

On Nov. 6, 1986, President Ronald Reagansigned the bill that was supposed to endillegal immigration.

Instead, it became one of the biggestpublic policy failures since Prohibition.

The Immigration Reform and ControlAct legalized most of the illegal immigrants thenin the United States. To keep others out, it for-bade businesses to hire undocumented workersand threatened those that didwith fines.1

Almost a quarter-century later,the undocumented populationhas soared from about 500,000after the amnesty to about 11 mil-lion. The primary reason: thebreakdown of worksite enforce-ment, which Reagan had called“the keystone” of the 1986 law.2

“We’ve been running a verycynical policy for the last 15years,” said Doris Meissner, the government’stop immigration official from 1993 to 2001. “Whatwe are saying out of one side of our mouth is, ‘Wewill make it harder for you to cross the border. …But there will be a job for you when you gethere.’ ”3

“The ’86 Act was built around this idea ofworkplace enforcement,” said Meissner’s suc-cessor, James Ziglar, who headed the Immigra-tion and Naturalization Service from 2001through 2003. But when the INS tried to carryout the law, “members of Congress whose dis-tricts were affected started to complain. … So itjust didn’t get funded.”4

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

San Diego’s Las Americas Premium Outlets and Baja-Mex Insurance are within walking distance of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Register

Sources: Federal agencies and Pew Hispanic Center

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

0

Immigration and Naturalization Service

Department of Homeland Security

Pew Hispanic Center

Highestimate

Low estimate

‘86 ‘88 ‘90 ‘92 ‘94 ‘96 ‘98 ‘00 ‘02 ‘04 ‘06 ‘08

Highestimate

Low estimate

Congressional Research Service

Estimated illegal immigrant populationFor the United States, by federal agencies and think tank, 1986 to 2009:

In millions

POLICY ENCOURAGESILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 4

With worksite enforcementas touchstone, U.S. strategytacitly sustains steady flow.

RONALDCAMPBELL

REGISTERWRITER

Sources: Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, 3/2/2005 (1980-1990), Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (1991 only), Border Patrol (1992-2009), Budget bill (2010) The Register

22,904 agents2010

$3,556,759,000 budget2010

Growth of the Border PatrolTotal agents and the agency’s annual budget, 1980 to 2010.

Age

nts

(In

thou

sand

s)

25

20

15

10

5

0

Budget (In billions of dollars)

$5

4

3

2

1

0 ‘80 ‘82 ‘84 ‘86 ‘88 ‘90 ‘92 ‘94 ‘96 ‘98 ‘00 ‘02 ‘04 ‘06 ‘08 ‘10

1 For a description of the law, see Government Ac-countability Office, “Foreign Workers: Information onSelected Countries’ Experiences,” September 2006(GAO-06-1055). 2 “Soared from about 500,000”: The law legalized 2.7million out of a population estimated in 1986 at 3.2 mil-

lion; see “Unauthorized Aliens Residing in the UnitedStates: Estimates Since 1986,” by Ruth Ellen Wasem,Congressional Research Service, RL33874, Aug. 25,2009. “… to 11 million”: See “Illegal immigration esti-mates, 1986-2008.xls,” spreadsheet derived from esti-mates from Congressional Research Service, Immi-

gration and Naturalization Service, Department ofHomeland Security and Pew Hispanic Center. “Thekeystone”: from Reagan’s signing statement; seewww.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/1 10686b.htm. 3 Interview, Doris Meissner, Dec. 17, 2009.

FOOTNOTES

IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE

EARTHWEEK MOVES THIS WEEK TO LOCAL 8

NEWS 4 | Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010 The Orange County Register

Over the decades, presidentsand Congresses of both partieshave chosen other priorities forimmigration enforcement – se-curing the border, deportingpeople already in jail for violentcrimes, preventing illegal immi-grants from getting jobs at nu-clear plants or airports.

Despite the post-9/11 crack-down, more than 500,000 illegalimmigrants entered the countryeach year between 2000 and2006. The flow began to ebb onlyin 2007, when immigrants en-countered a much more formid-able foe than the Border Patrol:the recession.5

Federal immigration policieslargely ignore the millions al-ready here and almost entirelyignore the reason they illegallycrossed the border or over-stayed their visas: jobs.

The Obama administration,like the Bush and Clinton admin-istrations before it, has focusedon the border and on immi-grants who break non-immigra-tion laws.

In testimony to the Senate Ju-diciary Committee in May 2009,Department of Homeland Secu-rity Secretary Janet Napolitano,the former governor of Arizona,said, “A scattershot approachwhere DHS targets any and allof the around 12 million people inthe United States illegally doesnot amount to an approach thatmaximizes public safety.”6

These policies have contrib-uted to California’s growing de-pendence on immigrant labor.Some 1.75 million Californiaworkers, one of every 11, is hereillegally.7

“What you observe in the datais not like the weather,” said Ste-ven Camarota of the Center forImmigration Studies, a groupthat favors restrictions on immi-gration. “It’s the result of policychoices.”8

‘CLOSING THE BACK DOOR’Illegal immigration became a

hot issue in the early 1970s whenlabor unions persuaded HouseJudiciary Chairman Peter Rodi-no, D-N.J., to introduce a bill tofine employers who hired illegalimmigrants. It went nowhere.9

In 1981, a presidential com-mission on immigration, headedby Notre Dame University Pres-ident Theodore Hesburgh, rec-ommended employer sanctionsas a means of “closing the back

door to illegal/undocumentedimmigration, (and) opening thefront door a little more.”10

After several tries, Congresspassed a compromise bill con-taining employer sanctions inlate 1986.

The new law scrapped a 1952-vintage loophole that had al-lowed employers to hire illegalimmigrants for jobs those work-ers legally could not hold.11

But the sanctions containedin the 1986 law were, by design,weak. Congress set the fines lowand the government’s burden ofproof high: Businesses had to“knowingly employ” illegal im-migrants.12

Business and civil rightsgroups had objected to employ-er sanctions, Meissner recalled.

If the provisions had been anytougher, the bill would havedied.13

Workplace arrests of undocu-mented immigrants plunged 85percent in the first full year afterthe enactment of the 1986 law.They slowly recovered, peakingat 17,552 in 1997, midwaythrough Meissner’s eight-yeartenure as INS commissioner un-der President Clinton. Thenthey fell again.14

In 2008, one of the biggeryears for worksite enforcement,the odds of an undocumentedimmigrant getting busted on thejob were about 1 in 1,300.15

The maximum fine for a busi-ness that “knowingly employs”undocumented workers is$11,000, a fraction of the amount

charged in other countries. InGermany, for example, the maxi-mum fine is 500,000 euros($640,000).16

But the potential amounthardly matters, because few em-ployers are fined or even threat-ened with a fine. In 1992, the INSissued a record-high 1,461 no-tices of intent to levy a fine. In2009, it issued just 172 such no-tices.17

IMMIGRATION ENFORCERFrom the start, worksite en-

forcement has been unpopularwith employers. It requires aboss to play immigration cop,sorting through as many as 26forms of identification to spotthe fakes.18

Some employers ignore therequirement or pay it little mind.Mariela, a 29-year-old illegal im-migrant and Highland residentwho speaks unaccented English,got her first job at a restaurantwithout showing any identifica-tion. Her current employer ac-cepted a photocopy of a crudelyforged Social Security card.19

Illegal immigrants surveyedby retired UC San Diego politi-cal scientist Wayne Corneliusand his students said that whilemost employers asked for identi-fication, almost half of the em-ployers knew they were unau-thorized and another 11 percentprobably knew.20

Raids and audits are rare, but

PHOTOS: CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Near San Diego, the United States, at left, and Mexico are separated only by a border fence that has been breached countless times.

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 3

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 5

Jerry Conlin, a Border Patrol agent, stands near the U.S.-Mexico border during a media tour.

Sources: Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, 3/2/2005 (1980-1990), Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (1991 only), Border Patrol (1992-2008); Mexican Migration Project

The Register

0

2,0004,0006,0008,000

10,00012,00014,000

16,000

18,00020,000

1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 20050

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

$3,000

Coyote chargeBorder Patrol agents

Notes: Coyote charges are in 2008 dollars and are for calendar year. Border Patrol staffing for fiscal years ending Sept. 30.

President and percentage change in staffing

Reagan74.9%

G.H.W.Bush7.3%

Clinton128.7%

G.W. Bush 78.2%

Border Patrol staffing and coyotes’ prices

4 Interview, James Ziglar, Feb. 9, 2010. 5 “More than 500,000”: “U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows AreDown Sharply Since Mid-Decade” by Jeffrey S. Passel and D’VeraCohn, Pew Hispanic Center, Sept. 1, 2010. Also see “Illegal immigra-tion estimates, 1986-2008.xls,” Register compilation of estimates byDepartment of Homeland Security, Congressional Research Service,Pew Hispanic Center and others. The illegal immigrant population rosefrom about 8 million in 2000 to about 12 million in 2007 before declin-ing to 11.1 million in 2009. Pew, which does the most widely cited stud-ies of illegal immigration, estimates the annual inflow at 850,000 fromMarch 2000 through March 2005, 550,000 from March 2005 throughMarch 2007 and 300,000 from March 2007 through March 2009. 6 Testimony of Secretary Napolitano before the Senate Committee onthe Judiciary, May 6, 2009. See www.dhs.gov/ynews/testimony/testimony_1241706742872.shtm.7 “One of every 11”: 1.75 million unauthorized workers in a work forceof 19 million, or 9.3 percent. See Passel and Cohn, “U.S. UnauthorizedImmigration Flows Are Down Sharply Since Mid-Decade,” Sept. 1,

2010. Their estimate of the total work force is about 500,000 morethan the Census Bureau estimate used in these stories. See also “APortrait of Unauthorized Immigrants” by Jeffrey S. Passel and D’VeraCohn, Pew Hispanic Center, April 14, 2009. 8 Interview, Steven Camarota, Nov. 18, 2009. 9 “Declining Enforcement of Employer Sanctions” by Peter Brownell,Migration Policy Institute, Sept. 1, 2005. 10 Cited in “DHS and Immigration: Taking Stock and CorrectingCourse,” by Doris Meissner and Donald Kerwin, Migration Policy In-stitute, February 2009. 11 “Loophole”: Brownell, “Declining Enforcement of Employer Sanc-tions,” Sept. 1, 2005. The 1952 law barred “harboring” undocument-ed immigrants, but the so-called “Texas Proviso” said that employingan immigrant did not amount to “harboring.” 12 “Knowingly employ”: Brownell, “Declining Enforcement of Em-ployer Sanctions,” 9/1/2005. 13 Interview, Doris Meissner, Dec. 17, 2009. 14 “Worksite investigations, 1986-2008.xls”, provided by Depart-

ment of Homeland Security; this is more complete than summaries inthe department’s official Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. 15 “One of the bigger years”: In 2008 the federal government made6,265 immigration-related arrests as a result of employer investiga-tions, the highest number since 1998; a small portion of those arrest-ed were citizens, including owners and managers of businesses thatwere accused of knowingly employing illegal immigrants. See “Work-site investigations, 1986-2008.xls,” Register analysis of Departmentof Homeland Security data. “1 in 1,300”: The Pew Hispanic Center es-timated there were 8.2 million illegal workers in 2008; see Passel andCohn, “U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down SharplySince Mid-Decade,” Sept. 1, 2010. Assuming all 6,265 of those ar-rested were undocumented, the odds against an illegal immigrant be-ing arrested through a worksite investigation were 1,309 to 1. 16 GAO, “Foreign Workers: Information on Selected Countries’ Expe-riences,” September 2006. 17 “Worksite investigations, 1986-2008.xls”. The Department ofHomeland Security stopped reporting several metrics, including no-

tices of intent to fine, in 2004. The Register obtained the 2009 num-ber through a request under the federal Freedom of Information Act.A notice of intent to fine is the first step in levying a fine against anemployer; the number of notices filed each year fell below 500 in1999 and has consistently remained below that number since then; ithit a record low of 22 in 2007. 18 “As many as 26 forms of identification”: The current Form I-9, Em-ployment Eligibility Verification, last revised Aug. 7, 2009, lists sixdocuments that establish both identity and work eligibility, 12 docu-ments that establish identity and eight documents that establish em-ployment authorization. The form is available atwww.uscis.gov/files/form/i-9.pdf.19 Interview, Mariela, Feb. 12, 2010.20 “Current Migration Trends from Mexico: What Are the Impacts ofthe Economic Crisis and U.S. Enforcement Strategy?” by Wayne Cor-nelius, UCSD Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, present-ed to congressional staff June 8, 2009. “Almost half”: 49.6 percent,according to the survey of illegal immigrants.

FOOTNOTES

IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/investigations

The Orange County Register Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010 | NEWS 5

the consequences for the em-ployer can be devastating.

After an audit of employeedocuments in the early 1990s,immigration authorities told Po-way landscaper John Mohns todismiss 50 of his 150 employees –“really good guys that we hadput a lot of effort into training.”But his ex-employees were notdeported. Instead, Mohns said,most of them “went down thestreet and got a job with mycompetitors.”21

An Immigration and CustomsEnforcement raid at six Swift &Co. meatpacking plants on Dec.12, 2006, resulted in the arrest of1,300 employees and cost thecompany $30 million, Swift VicePresident John Shandley testi-fied.22

Swift had been participatingsince 1997 in E-Verify, the federalgovernment’s voluntary Web-based program for confirmingthat workers are legal. Everyone of the arrested Swift work-ers had passed an E-Verifycheck.23

“Simply put,” Shandley testi-fied four months after the raid,“a company cannot legally andpractically do more than wehave done to ensure the legalworkforce under the currentregulations and tools availablefrom the government.”24

POLITICAL ‘THIRD RAIL’No wonder then that Meissn-

er calls worksite enforcement “abit of a third rail” or that her suc-cessor, Ziglar, says “nobodywanted to touch it.”25

In 1999, responding to pres-sure from Midwestern con-gressmen, Meissner told topINS career official Mark Reed tofind a way to drive undocument-ed immigrants out of Nebraska.Reed sent meatpacking plantsletters identifying thousands ofworkers whose employmentdocuments did not match feder-al databases.

As a result, “3,500 people fledthe state of Nebraska,” Reedsaid. “Two weeks later, all thosepeople (who had urged action)kicked me out of their state forruining the economy.”26

Ziglar, the INS commissionerfrom 2001 until 2003 when it wasdissolved into the Departmentof Homeland Security, had nobetter luck making worksite en-forcement politically palatable.

He remembers watching acongressman on television com-plaining aboutlax INS en-forcement.

“I was litera-lly watching iton TV and aspokesmanbrought in a let-ter he had sent”complainingthat INS raidswere hurtingthe harvest inhis district, Zi-glar recalled. He wouldn’t iden-tify the congressman but said hewas a fellow Republican.27

BORDER WARInstead of funding worksite

enforcement, Congress pouredmoney into border enforcement.And funds have continued flow-ing in ever-larger amounts since1993, even as the undocumentedpopulation nearly tripled.28

In 2003, UC San Diego econo-mist Gordon H. Hanson calcu-lated, the federal governmentdevoted 53 times more man-hours to the border than it did toworksite enforcement.29

In 2009, the Department ofHomeland Security budgeted$126.5 million for worksite en-forcement and 27.8 times more –$3.5 billion – for the Border Pa-trol. DHS spent more money

training the workers who X-rayluggage at airports than it did onworksite enforcement.30

Even in the agency that en-forces immigration laws insidethe borders, Immigration andCustoms Enforcement, work-site enforcement isn’t a priority.In 2009, the agency devoted just5 percent of its man-hours toworksite enforcement.31

The Border Patrol had 3,200officers whenthe 1986 actpassed and4,000 when BillClinton be-came presidentin 1993. By thetime he left of-fice, it hadmore than dou-bled to 9,200agents. UnderPresidentGeorge W.

Bush, it nearly doubled again, to17,500.32

Last year, under PresidentBarack Obama, it had 20,000agents – far more than the FBI.33

In addition to expanding theBorder Patrol, Congress in 2006authorized a high-tech borderfence to discourage illegal cross-ings of the 2,000-mile frontierwith Mexico. Average cost permile: $2.91 million.34

For all the billions spent andthe thousands hired, it is unclearwhether the border crackdownhas worked.

At least one-third of illegal im-migrants walked right by borderguards. They entered legallyand overstayed their visas. De-spite more than a decade of ef-fort, the government is stillstruggling to track the comingsand goings of tens of millions of

foreign visitors.35

The undocumented popu-lation, about 4.5 million whenthe border crackdown began in1993, swelled to 12 million in2007. It declined to 11.1 million in2009, the first drop in decades.36

The Bush and Obama admin-istrations have claimed partialcredit for the drop. But it alsocoincided with the deepest re-cession in 75 years.37

The recession has hit illegalimmigrants particularly hard,giving prospective immigrantsreason to stay home. Federal Re-serve economist Pia Orreniusreported last year that immi-grants are especially vulnerableto a downturn because they areless educated than other work-ers and more likely to work inconstruction or other recession-sensitive jobs.38

While the recession has dis-couraged prospective immi-grants and caused 1 million im-migrants to leave, millions moreare waiting it out.

One of them is Luciano, an il-legal immigrant who welds irondoors and window frames inAnaheim. During the boom, heworked 45 hours a week. He nowworks 15 hours a week. He stays,he says, because of his daugh-ters, both born in the U.S. “Wewant the girls to have a betterfuture.”39

BOON FOR COYOTESSurveys of illegal immigrants

by Cornelius, the UC San Diegopolitical scientist, have showedconsistently that most immi-grants make it past the BorderPatrol. Although about 45 per-cent are caught at least once,97 percent eventually succeed.40

The buildup on the border hasmade one big difference, howev-er: It has forced immigrants torely on immigrant smugglers,known along the border as“coyotes.” Coyote fees have ris-en nearly in lockstep with Bor-

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 4

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Jose Moreno, a professor at Cal State Long Beach and president of the Anaheim City School District, andhis daughters Karina, 10; Melina, 6; and Olivia, 7, from the top, are framed by doors showing the girls’studies in dual-language immersion. Moreno and his wife, Lorena helped start the only dual-language im-mersion program in Anaheim. His parents brought Moreno into the country illegally when he was a child.

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 6

Nov. 6, 1986, Immigration Reform and Control Act

signed

Deportations

Sources: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Enforce Alien Removal Module (EARM), February 2009, Enforcement Case Tracking System (ENFORCE), December 2008.

*Removals and criminal removals combined before 1993.

Illegal immigrant voluntary returns, criminal and non-criminal removals.

02004006008001,0001,2001,4001,600

1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2009

Voluntary returns

In thousands

Criminal removals*Removals

The Register

580,107

264,944

128,345

21 Interview, John Mohns, Benchmark Landscaping, Poway, Feb.9, 2010. 22 “Problems in the Current Employment Verification and WorksiteEnforcement System,” House subcommittee hearing, April 24,2007, testimony of John Shandley, senior vice president for humanresources, Swift & Co. 23 Interview, Mark Reed, Sept. 24, 2009. 24 Shandley testimony, April 24, 2007. 25 Interview, Doris Meissner, Dec. 17, 2009. Interview, James Zi-glar, Feb. 9, 2010. 26 Interview, Mark Reed, Sept. 24, 2009. 27 Interview, James Ziglar, Feb. 9, 2010. 28 “Illegal immigration estimates, 1986-2008.xls”: The undocu-mented population was estimated at 4.5 million when border fund-

ing began to rise; it peaked at about 12 million in 2007. 29 “Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States” by GordonH. Hanson, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper12141, March 2006. 30 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, FY 2009.The training budget for the Transportation Security Administrationwas $197.3 million. See also Meissner and Kerwin, “DHS and Im-migration,” February 2009.31 See “ICE case hours by program, 2004-2010.xls,” compiledfrom ICE reply July 27, 2010, to an Oct. 28, 2009, Freedom of In-formation Act request by the Register. 32 “Border Patrol budget, 1980-2009.xls”, Register compilationfrom Border Patrol, Senate Appropriations Committee and Trans-actional Records Access Clearinghouse.

33 “Border Patrol budget, 1980-2009.xls”; “more agents than theFBI”: FBI website: Quick Facts, lists 13,492 special agents (seewww.fbi.gov/quickfacts.htm). 34 “Secure Border Initiative Fence Construction Costs,” Govern-ment Accountability Office, Jan. 29, 2009 (GAO-09-244R).35 “At least a third”: “Modes of Entry for the Unauthorized MigrantPopulation,” Pew Hispanic Center, May 22, 2006. See also “Esti-mates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in theUnited States: 1990 to 2000,” Office of Policy and Planning, U.S.Immigration and Naturalization Service, undated but circa 2002.“Struggling to track”: Congress in 1996 mandated an electronicsystem, now known as US-VISIT, to record and match entries andexits of people with visas; see Pew, “Modes of Entry”, 2006;“Homeland Security: Key US-VISIT Components at Varying Stages

of Completion, but Integrated and Reliable Schedule Needed,” Gov-ernment Accountability Office, November 2009 (GAO-10-13).“Tens of millions of foreign visitors”: “Nonimmigrant admissions,1999-2009.xls,” from Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 2009,Table 25; in 2009 36.2 million temporary foreign visitors were ad-mitted to the U.S. for tourism, business or study.36 “Illegal immigration estimates, 1986-2008.xls”. Passel andCohn, “U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down SharplySince Mid-Decade,” Sept. 1, 2010. 37 “Both the Bush and Obama administrations”: See statements by DHSSecretary Michael Chertoff, Oct. 23, 2008, and his successor, Janet Na-politano, on Nov. 13, 2009. Chertoff statement is atwww.dhs.gov/xnews/speeches/sp_1224803933474.shtm. Na-politano statement is at www.dhs.gov/ynews/speeches/sp_1258123461050.shtm.

FOOTNOTES

“The border is reallysymbolism. It’s in theworkplace that it has

to happen.”T A M A R J A C O B Y

P R E S I D E N T O F

I M M I G R A T I O N W O R K S

U S A

IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/investigations

The Orange County RegisterNEWS 6 | Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010

der Patrol staffing. A one-way trip that cost$500 when the 1986 law was passed and $722when the border campaign began in 1993 cost$2,848 in 2008.41

Here’s another way of looking at it. In 2007,when taxpayers spent $2.3 billion on the BorderPatrol, coyotes collected perhaps $800 millionto sneak immigrants past the guards.42

Hard evidence is scarce, but rising coyotefees might force undocumented immigrants tostay put rather than go back and forth betweenthe U.S. and Mexico. In a 2001 study, Corneliuswrote that by driving up coyote costs, the gov-ernment might be “keeping more unauthorizedmigrants in the UnitedStates than it is keepingout.”43

Luciano’s wife, Mar-tha, last visited Mexicoin 2000. She wascaught on her first at-tempt to return northand took a “very rough”trek through the desertto finally make it hometo Orange County. Shehas not dared go southagain, not even to seeher grandson born inlate 2009.44

“We empoweredalien smugglers,” saidReed, the former top INS official. “Now they(immigrants) have to bring their families withthem because they can’t go back and forth. … Itwill be worse tomorrow than it is today.”45

E-VERIFY IMPERFECTIONS“The border is really symbolism,” said Ta-

mar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorksUSA, a business-backed group that lobbies forexpanded immigration. “It’s in the workplacethat it has to happen.”46

If she is correct, the future of worksite en-forcement rests with E-Verify. But despite 14years in development, E-Verify has yet to deliv-er on its promise: a simple, nearly instant wayfor employers to make sure workers are legal.47

E-Verify was designed to combat the use offake documents, a problem since the beginningof worksite enforcement. But while E-Verifycan detect document fraud, it cannot detectidentity fraud – the use of real documents bor-rowed or stolen from legal workers.48

The result: Undocumented workers morelikely than not will get a pass from E-Verify.That was among the findings of the most recentreview of the program by the government’s so-cial science consultant, Westat. The consultantfound that 54 percent of the time, E-Verifywrongly says that an undocumented worker iseligible for a job.49

E-Verify also wrongly tries to deny jobs tonaturalized citizens. The system issues falsewarnings that a particular worker is not autho-rized 1 percent of the time. But naturalized citi-zens, who are legally equal to native-bornAmericans, are 32 times more likely than na-tives to get a false warning, requiring them toprove the U.S. government wrong or lose theirjobs.50

The agency that runs E-Verify, U.S. Citizen-ship and Immigration Services, said in re-

sponse to the Westat re-port that E-Verify “accu-rately detects the status ofunauthorized workers al-most half the time” and is“much more effective” thanhand-checking documents,as most employers do. Theagency also is making iteasier for naturalized citi-zens to challenge falsewarnings.51

About 780,000 of the na-tion’s 7.7 million workplac-es use E-Verify. Legislationto mandate E-Verify for allhires is pending in Con-gress.52

Reed, the former INS official, is skepticalabout E-Verify. It was very good at spotting fakegreen cards, he said, but “it’s got a huge blindspot” for undocumented immigrants who claimto be citizens.53

He places more hope in the Obama adminis-tration’s strategy of auditing employment doc-uments at businesses suspected of hiring unau-thorized workers.

In July 2009, ICE issued 652 audit notices –more than it had issued in the entire previousyear. It announced 1,000 more audits Nov. 19.54

By using audits instead of raids, Reed ex-plained, “One agent can go after 300 companiesrather than 300 agents go after one. … Nowthey’ve got some real economies built into thisthing. They’ve got a nuclear bomb now.”

The question, he added, is whether the gov-ernment will use it.

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 5

The Register

Worksite enforcement actions

Administrative arrests

Criminal arrests

Fines

02,0004,0006,0008,000

10,00012,00014,00016,000

Sources: Yearbook of Immigration Statistics (1997, 2002 and 2003); ICE 2008 Annual Report; Peter Brownell

‘92 ’94 ‘96 ’98 ‘00 ’02 ‘04 ’06 ‘08

5,173

18 1,092

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Bright lights, the Border Patrol and a high-tech fence discourage illegal immigrants from crossing from Mexico, left, at the border in San Diego.

“What we are saying out ofone side of our mouth is,

‘We will make it harder foryou to cross the border. …But there will be a job foryou when you get here.’ ”

D O R I S M E I S S N E R

T O P U . S . I M M I G R A T I O N O F -

F I C I A L F R O M 1 9 9 3 T O 2 0 0 1

CONTACT THE WRITER:

7 1 4-796-5030 or rcampbell@ocregister.com

Behind the numbersIllegal immigrants avoid public attention. So how

can they be counted?The answer boils down to subtraction: The for-

eign-born population minus naturalized citizens, le-gal permanent residents and people here on visasequals the illegal immigrant population.

That’s journalistic shorthand taken to an ex-treme. The complete explanation is more complex.

Jeffrey S. Passel, now at the Pew Hispanic Cen-ter, developed the “residual” method in the late1 980s to analyze the 1 980 census. It has becomethe standard, adopted by the Department of Home-land Security and by immigration experts on allsides of the debate.

Although it appears simple, there are several un-certainties built into the formula – and several waysof resolving those uncertainties.

For example, the Census Bureau acknowledgesthat it misses millions of people; analysts must ad-just for the undercount. Through post-census sur-veys and analysis of birth and death records, theCensus Bureau estimated that the 2000 censusmissed between 3.3 percent and 6.7 percent of allforeign-born people. The undercount was smallestfor legal residents (1 percent to 2 percent) andhighest for illegal immigrants (1 0 percent to 1 5 per-cent).

Experts consulted by the census at the time be-lieved the 1 5 percent undercount for illegal im-migrants was too high. In its own estimates, the De-partment of Homeland Security assumes a 1 0 per-cent undercount of the illegal population by thecensus.

Although the count of legal foreign-born resi-dents is based on government records, it too hasuncertainties: How many have died or left the coun-try? Where do they live right now? What do they dofor a living?

Estimates of the undocumented population tendto have a wide margin of error. Passel recently esti-mated there were 1 1.1 million undocumented im-migrants in the country in 2009, give or take500,000.

Given how hard it is to count undocumented im-migrants, how can the census make estimates aboutthe age, education and occupation of foreign-bornresidents?

The answer is a random sample based on ad-dresses. The Census Bureau uses a “master addressfile,” a continuously updated list of all residentialaddresses in the United States.

During the once-a-decade census, it sends ashort questionnaire to every address. It also sendsa longer questionnaire to a sample of householdsdrawn from the master address file. The longerquestionnaire went to tens of millions of house-holds in the once-a-decade censuses conducted in1 970, 1 980, 1 990 and 2000.

Since the launch of the American CommunitySurvey in 2005, the longer questionnaire has goneeach year to 3 million randomly selected addressesdrawn from the master address file. A MayflowerSociety matron in a Boston mansion and an un-documented construction worker in a Santa Anaapartment are supposed to have an equal chance ofreceiving the long questionnaire.

Because the sample is random and answers areboth mandatory and confidential, the Census Bu-reau believes it paints an accurate picture of theforeign-born population.

38 “Tied to the Business Cycle: How Immigrants Fare in Good and BadEconomic Times,” by Pia M. Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny, Migra-tion Policy Institute, November 2009, 40 pages. 39 Interview, Luciano, Jan. 22, 2010. 40 Cornelius, cited in Meissner and Kerwin, “DHS and Immigration,”February 2009. Cornelius and his students surveyed immigrants in thesouthwestern U.S. as well as former immigrants who had returnedhome to Mexico. 41 “Border Patrol staffing and coyote charges, 1980-2008.xls,” Reg-ister analysis. Coyote charges from Mexican Migration Project (a jointventure of Princeton University and the University of Guadalajara), ine-mail from Douglas Massey, Princeton, Dec. 24, 2009; charges are in2008 inflation-adjusted dollars. Border Patrol staffing as follows:1980-1990 from Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, March 2,2005; 1991 from Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Syra-cuse University; 1991-2008 from Border Patrol (e-mail, Dec. 4, 2009). 42 “$2.3 billion”: “Border Patrol budget, 1980-2009.xls”. “Perhaps$800 million”: Register calculation based on the following: Illegal im-

migration increased by a net of 500,000 that year (see “Illegal im-migrant estimates, 1986-2008.xls”); we assume that a third over-stayed visas and that 95 percent of the rest, 316,000, hired a coyote,paying $2,500 each to cross the border illegally; see “Border Patrolstaffing and coyote charges, 1980-2008.xls”. An alternate method ofmeasuring the coyotes’ revenue, suggested by David FitzGerald of UCSan Diego, is to simply multiply the number of illegal immigrantscrossing the border by $2,500. This is a conservative estimate be-cause it disregards the return flow of immigrants, estimated by PewHispanic Center at 400,000 per year; counting that return flow,900,000 illegal immigrants would have had to enter the U.S. in 2007 tomake a net increase of 500,000, and most of the 900,000 would haveused coyotes. 43 “Death at the Border: The Efficacy and ‘Unintended’ Consequencesof U.S. Immigration Control” by Wayne A. Cornelius, Center for Com-parative Immigration Studies, UC San Diego, Working Paper 27, De-cember 2001. 44 Interview, Martha, Jan. 22, 2010.

45 Interview, Mark Reed, Sept. 24, 2009. 46 Interview, Tamar Jacoby, Sept. 24, 2009. 47 Congress mandated the Basic Pilot, predecessor of E-Verify, in theIllegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.Basic Pilot was one of three electronic verification pilots authorized bythe 1996 law; the other two were dropped in 2003. See “ImmigrationEnforcement: Preliminary Observations on Employment Verificationand Worksite Enforcement Efforts,” Government Accountability Of-fice, June 21, 2005 (GAO-05-822T). 48 E-Verify cannot detect identity fraud: “Findings of the E-Verify Pro-gram Evaluation,” Westat, December 2009. 49 Westat, “Findings of the E-Verify Program Evaluation,” December2009. 50 Westat, “Findings of the E-Verify Program Evaluation,” December2009.51 “Westat Evaluation of the E-Verify Program: USCIS Synopsis of KeyFindings and Program Implications,” USCIS, Jan. 28, 2010. 52 “780,000”: This is the number of offices, including branch offices,

using E-Verify; e-mail from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Servicesspokeswoman Mariana Gitomer, Aug. 30, 2010. Between Oct. 1, 2009,and Aug. 14, 2010, 14 million prospective employees were runthrough the system. “7.7 million”: This is the most recent number ofbusiness “establishments,” a term that includes branch offices andthus is comparable to the E-Verify number; from U.S. Economic Cen-sus, 2007. “Legislation to mandate E-Verify”: HR 2028 by Rep. SamJohnson, R-Texas, and HR 2083 by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.Broader immigration reform bills, including the outline released bySenate Democrats in May, also mandate E-Verify. 53 Interview, Mark Reed, Sept. 24, 2009. 54 “In July 2009”: ICE media release – www.ice.gov/pi/nr/0907/090701washington.htm “Nov. 19”: ICE media release –www.ice.gov/pi/nr/091 1/091 1 19washingtondc2.htm ICE doesnot have an estimate of the annual number of audits it has conducted;in its July 27, 2010, reply to a Freedom of Information Act request fromthe Register, the agency said it does not centrally track the number ofaudits.

FOOTNOTES

The Orange County Register Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010 News 71

Jose Moreno lived hischildhood in the shadows.

He arrived in Californiaat age 4, the youngest in afamily of illegal immigrants.

He and his siblings weretaught to shut the curtains,keep the television volumelow and stay out of trouble.His parents split their fourchildren among threeschools to avoid notice.

Growing up in the segre-gated La Colonia neighbor-hood of Oxnard, the twoyounger children quicklylost their Spanish.

By second or third grade,“I was totally American,”Moreno recalled. “I con-vinced myself I was born inthe U.S.”

He would tell people thathe was born at St. John’sHospital in Oxnard – and hebelieved it himself.

But the transition toAmerican life, while easyfor him, was hard on hisparents.

His mother, a social but-terfly in Mexico, “dove intothe telenovela world,”watching Spanish-lan-guage soaps for three hoursa night after returninghome from work.

His father, a teacher inMexico, worked mainte-nance in a cannery. An in-tellectual with no outletsand no time for furtherschooling, he became a rec-luse.

“The one requirement hehad for us (was) doing wellin school,” Moreno said.The children did very well.That was partly because oftheir parents’ urging but al-so because they knew that ifthey got in trouble, “werisked our family presence.We risked our family.”

For the Moreno children,school was “a sanctuaryplace,” he said. “A schoolfor many immigrants canbe the only humane placewhere kids can be kids.”

In the mid-1970s, the riskhaunting the family becamereal. Immigration author-ities raided the factorywhere his mother workedand sent her home with adeportation notice. Thefamily hired a lawyer to

stave off deportation withrepeated appeals.

At least once a year, thefamily drove to Los Angelesto immigration court. Mo-reno remembers the judgequestioning the family, eventhe children. He’d ask aboutschool, whether they’d got-ten in trouble, their feelingsabout the United States,“cultural loyalties.” Thechildren understood awrong answer could meandeportation. “That’s some-thing I wouldn’t wish on anychild,” Moreno said.

In 1986, Congress ap-proved an amnesty for ille-gal immigrants who hadbeen in the country since1980. The Morenos appliedimmediately and were ac-cepted.

Amnesty opened doorsfor the Moreno children.

His sister had deferredmedical school for threeyears, knowing she couldnot get financial aid as an il-legal immigrant. Post-am-nesty, she earned her med-ical degree and became anobstetrician. An olderbrother became a surgeon.Jose Moreno earned a doc-torate in education fromHarvard and became a col-lege professor.

Amnesty came too latefor the eldest brother. Yearsbefore, he had joined a gangand gotten into drugs. Hedied of an overdose at age36.

“He encountered the realnastiness of being a maleimmigrant,” Moreno said.

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Jose Moreno, 41, looks at his childhood pictures from Guasave in Sinaloa, Mexico, withdaughters Melina, 6, at top, and Olivia, 7, at their home in Anaheim.

‘I CONVINCED MYSELF IWAS BORN IN THE U.S.’Assimilationcame easily

to Jose Moreno,but not for his

Mexican parents.By RONALD CAMPBELL

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Jose MorenoJob: Latino studies pro-fessor, Cal State LongBeach; Anaheim CitySchool District boardpresidentHome: AnaheimBirthplace: Guasave, Si-naloa, MexicoAge: 41Status: Naturalized citi-zenFamily: Married, four chil-dren

The Mexican-borngranddaughter of Ameri-can citizens, smuggled intothe U.S. at age 9, Hilda Cruzlearned young what itmeant to be an illegal immi-grant.

She learned as a child “tostay indoors as much aspossible and la migra was agreen bus.”

But the real lesson beganin her teens.

While in high school, sheworked at a pharmacy inSanta Ana. She loved thejob and the owner, “a won-derful old man who becamemy mentor in the customerservice world.”

That ended when shewas asked about her SocialSecurity number. It wasfake.

Next stop: sales clerk at achildren’s clothing store.

“Same thing there,” Cruzremembered.

“I realized that I was hereillegally and that getting ajob was going to be harderand harder because theywanted to see my docu-ments,” she said.

Cruz is part of a genera-tion of immigrant children

legalized by the Immigra-tion Reform and ControlAct of 1986. The amnesty,which remains controver-sial nearly a quarter-centu-ry later, allowed her andmillions of others to buildnew lives in the UnitedStates.

Cruz, a teenager whenthe 1986 law passed, volun-teered with the Catholicdiocese’s amnesty pro-gram. She filled out her ownapplication, got a visa, thena green card and finally, in1999, U.S. citizenship.

After marrying her highschool sweetheart andstarting a family, sheworked a succession of jobs.Apart from a few job-relat-ed classes, her educationstopped when she earnedher GED. But, she added, “Igave myself a Ph.D. in

motherhood.”She was a teacher’s as-

sistant in the Santa Anaschools for seven years,then a part-time outreachand social justice directorfor a Catholic parish. Shenow works as a communityorganizer for an interfaithnonprofit in San Bernardi-no.

“I think God just took mefrom place to place,” Cruzsaid. “I was able to learnwhat I need to know andthen move on.”

Her five brothers and sis-ters became a teacher, ateacher’s assistant, a policeofficer, a sheriff’s deputyand a social worker.

“We got a wonderful op-portunity,” Cruz said. “Weblossomed.”

Cruz doubts that herfamily could have gottensimilar opportunities if theyhad remained in Mexico.Mexico, she said, “haschanged for the worse.”

“It saddens me to see thisgreat huge wall, to see thosewho are here undocument-ed seen as criminal when allthey are trying to do is sur-vive,” she added. “Give us achance. Give them achance. My family got achance.”

MEXICAN IMMIGRANT GOESWHERE OPPORTUNITIES ARE

By RONALD CAMPBELL

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER Hilda CruzJob: Community organ-izerHome: RiversideBirthplace: Mexico City,MexicoAge: 41Status: Naturalized citi-zenFamily: Married, children

DAVID WHITINGREGISTER COLUMNIST

STORIES BY RONALD CAMPBELL ON NEWS 3-7

The Orange County Registeris a Freedom Communicationsnewspaper.Copyright 20 1 0Customer servicetoll-free 1 -877-OCR-7009 [627-7009]

After closing on a San Clemente condo,Douglas Garhartt and Brandon Livelyfound themselves in a legal battle with agroup of investors that had purchasedthe same property. REAL ESTATE 1

JUDGE BARS STAFFINGCHANGES AT JAILSThe Sheriff’s Department is barredfrom staffing changes at its jails fornow, a judge said, approving deputies’request to keep the department fromshifting jobs to civilian jailers. LOCAL 8

CALIFORNIA LAGS ONHIGHWAY PROJECTSCalifornia has not begun 41 percent ofhighway projects for which it receivedfederal stimulus money, trailing onlyVirginia on a percentage basis, an anal-ysis shows. NEWS 18

SAN CLEMENTE CONDOSOLD TO TWO PARTIES 84/63

Coast

102/60Inland

TODAY’S WEATHER

SUNDAY PRICE: $1.50 FOUNDED IN 1905SUNDAY, SEPT. 26, 2010 ••

Sitting on the floor with3-year-old LucianaGonzalez at the state-

funded Hands Together pre-school, I get lost in the mo-ment and forget why I’mhere.

Luciana, big brown eyesunder matching bangstopped with a plastic turqu-oise barrette, thrusts a wadof purple play clay towardmy face.

“Snowman!” she an-nounces.

Not quite, I think. Lucia-na needs two more wads tomake a snowman. But Iknow better than to offeradvice. My daughter longago taught me about thehazards of critiquing art.And I’m here to learn why

Budgetimpasse

endangerspreschool

SEE WHITING ● PAGE 1 2

MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Amy Sanchez, left, and Luna Contreras look at bookstogether at Hands Together preschool in Santa Ana.

TRAVELAUTUMN COLORS AMAZEUCLA STUNS TEXASSPORTS

«»

IMMIGRATIONWHO WINS?If you are middle classand well educated,immigrants make yourlife easier and cheaper.

If you are less educated,whether an immigrantor not, you are hurt byimmigrants who do thework for less.

As more than 6 million

foreign-bornworkers laboron California

soil, somepeople benefiteconomically

more thanothers.

SEPT. 12

California relies more onimmigrant labor than any

other state and almost anydeveloped country. That’sthe result of decades-long

economic and demographicshifts as well as political

choices.

TODAY

Immigrants have driven down wages

in low-skilled trades. But they’ve made life

easier for middle- and upper-income

Californians.

SEPT. 19

More than 10 million un-documented immigrants

have moved to the UnitedStates since Congressvowed a crackdown in

1986. A key reason: thegovernment’s failure tolock them out of jobs.

OCT. 3

Reforming U.S. immigration policymeans grappling

with polarizing choicessuch as amnesty

and a national ID card.

WHO LOSES?

In the California StateUniversity system, thetitle of president brings

a big payday regardless ofthe size of the campus.

The presidents of Hum-boldt, Sonoma, Channel Is-lands, Bakersfield, SanMarcos and Stanislaus re-ceive more than $300,000in compensation, but over-see fewer than 10,000 stu-dents. Channel Islands has

only a slightly larger en-rollment than Santa AnaHigh School.

A faculty association of-ficial cited a sense of entit-lement among the reasonsbehind trustees overpay-ing for what are perceivedto be prestigious posts.

But CSU officials say thepay is appropriate for theresponsibility of running auniversity – of any size.

CSU presidentsearn top salaries

As system faces budget cuts, officialsdefend pay on small campuses.

COURTESY OF CAL STATECHANCELLOR’S OFFICE

STORY BY TONY SAAVEDRA ON NEWS 16

$353,000-

The salary of HumboldtState University President

Rollin C. Richmond, shown above

The Orange County Register Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010 | NEWS 3

IMMIGRATION AND THE CHANGING WORKFORCE

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/investigations

1 “Occupations and wages, 1970-2008.xls”: Register analysis of IPUMS data. See the CPI worksheet for inflation-adjusted wages for 90 occupations. See the comparisons worksheet for changes in the native-immigrant balance and mean, inflation-adjustedwage for 13 occupations. See the CPI worksheet for inflation-adjusted wages for 90 occupations. Other worksheets (1970, 1980, etc.) list the mean annual wages in “nominal dollars” (as of that year) for more than 300 occupations.

2 “Five million workers over the past four decades”: “Native and foreign-born workers, CA, 1970-2008.xls”, Register analysis of IPUMS data. California added 5.4 million immigrant workers over the period.

FOOTNOTES

If you are middle class and college educat-ed, immigrants make your busy life a littleeasier – and cheaper.

Over the past generation, immigrantssuch as manicurist Trang Le, a citizen, andcosmetologist Maria Rosa, who immigrated

illegally, have flocked to thehairdressing and cosmetol-ogy business. Since 1970,wages in that field havedropped by 20 percent.1

Immigrants such as Mar-tha, an undocumentedworker in Anaheim, havelargely taken over thehousekeeping business.Wages for housekeepershave dropped by 30 percent

since 1970.No state and almost no developed econo-

my has absorbed so many immigrant work-ers so quickly as California. The arrival ofmore than 5 million foreign workers over thepast four decades raises a basic question:

Who wins, and who loses?2

Among foes of immigration, particularlyillegal immigration, it is an article of faiththat everyone loses. Immigrants, they say,have driven down wages for natives whilesaddling taxpayers with the bill for billions

of dollars for public services.But the truth is that there are winners

and losers. The winners from mass mi-gration are the people in the middle and atthe top of the economic pyramid. The los-ers are those at the bottom.

Economists agree that immigrantshave depressed wages for the least-edu-cated workers. In California, where immi-grants dominate the ranks of the leasteducated, that means immigrants largelyare hurting other immigrants.

The burden on taxpayers is a murkierissue. In 2007, the president’s Council ofEconomic Advisers concluded that overthe long term, immigrants contributemore in taxes than they consume in ser-vices. But other studies say that the poor-est and least-educated immigrants – in-cluding most illegal immigrants – costmore than they pay.

And finally, there is the impact on the

PHOTOS: CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

All eyes are on drivers as they roll into a Laguna Beach day labor center to hire for the day. Day laborers run toward cars and shout forwork. As a group, immigrants are not as well educated as natives. One in three immigrant workers lacks a high school diploma.

IMMIGRATION’S BENEFITSARE SPREAD UNEVENLY

1970 1980 1990 2000 2008

1970 1980 1990 2000 2008

Dropouts High school grads Some college Bachelor’s degree Graduate study

The Register

Education, the workforce and earningsThe number of native- and foreign-born workers in California’s workforce:

Sources: IPUMS, The Register

3,000,000

2,500,000

2,000,000

1,500,000

1,000,000

500,000

0

$120,000

100,000

80,000

60,000

40,000

20,000

0

Foreign-bornNative-born

The mean yearly income of workers depending on the level of their education:

2,09

7,10

0

1,63

9,82

0

Dropouts High schoolgraduate

Bachelor’sdegree

Bachelor’sdegree

Bachelor’sdegree

Bachelor’sdegree

Dropouts High schoolgraduate

Dropouts High schoolgraduate

Dropouts High schoolgraduate

Dropouts High schoolgraduate

1,39

5,95

4

1,21

1,17

6

966,

557

2,22

9,30

0

2,76

3,52

0

2,52

2,77

7

2,21

2,53

1

2,52

8,37

8

544,

200

943,

260

1,96

8,91

6

2,52

9,33

8

390,

100 82

0,48

0

1,67

6,80

7

1,87

0,59

5

2,13

7,70

7

196,

600

364,

480

625,

764

784,

345

1,23

3,75

7

51,9

00

154,

220

464,

224

726,

014

1,05

1,44

3

$31,341.68 $23,313.59$39,121.66

$40,565.53

$60.887.30

$76.387.90

$33,186.65

$42,650.98

$70,004.66

$106,978.28

Note: Wages are adjusted for inflation

2,20

3,95

2

Bachelor’sdegree

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 4

RONALDCAMPBELL

REGISTERWRITER

The well educated and middle class profit most from a cheap supply of workers.Depressed wages, however, have injured the lowest rungs of the socio-economic strata.

Day laborers pay $1 to take part in a worklottery. The chosen then pay another dol-lar for the privilege of working.

NEWS 4 | Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010 The Orange County Register

IMMIGRATION AND THE CHANGING WORKFORCE

EARTHWEEK MOVES THIS WEEK TO LOCAL 2

3 “Occupations and wages, 1970-2008.xls”: See especially thecomparisons worksheet. 4 “Education score by occupation, 1970-2008.xls”: Registeranalysis of IPUMS data. See “CollGrads” sheet; on line 244, per-centage of auto mechanics with a four-year college degree or bet-ter rose from 2.1% in 1970 to 5.4% in 2008; on line 64, percent-

age of registered nurses with a four-year degree or better rosefrom 21.4% in 1970 to 60.9% in 2008. 5 “Wages by nativity and education, 1970-2008.xls,” Registeranalysis of IPUMS data. See CPI worksheet for wages in inflation-adjusted dollars. Also see “Total personal income by education,1970-2008.xls,” CPI worksheet. Personal income is the broadest

gauge of income, including wages and other forms of incomesuch as dividends. 6 “Educational attainment of CA workforce, 1970-2008.xls,”Register analysis of IPUMS data. See the native worksheet. 7 “Education by nativity for workers, 1970-2008.xls,” Registeranalysis of IPUMS data.

8 “Income by education and ability to speak English, 2006-2008.xls,” Register analysis of census PUMS data. 9 Interview, Maria Rosa, Dec. 16, 2009.10 Interview, Alex Ortega, Jan. 21, 2010.

FOOTNOTES

economy. Highly skilled immi-grants such as Budapest, Hun-gary-born Andrew Grove, whoheaded Intel for many years,and Sergey Brin, the Moscownative who co-founded Google,helped transform California’seconomy.

But Martha, the housekeep-er, and Trang Le, the manicu-rist, have remade the economytoo. Low-paid housekeepershave allowed women with ad-vanced degrees to work longerhours. Vietnamese immigrantssuch as Le have made mani-cures a commonplace luxury.

BLUE-COLLAR PARADISEAn analysis by The Orange

County Register of nearly 40years of census data indicatesthat immigration has contrib-uted to a sharp decline in real,inflation-adjusted wages inmany jobs requiring little for-mal education. But wages haverisen for jobs requiring a col-lege education – even in fieldssuch as software developmentwhere immigrants greatlyswelled the supply of workers.

In short, well-educated na-tives have competed success-fully with immigrants.

The Register analyzedchanges in wages and the pro-portion of immigrants in 90 oc-cupations that employ about80 percent of the Californiaworkforce.

Few occupations illustratethe changes better than automechanics and registerednurses.

In 1970, auto mechanicsearned slightly more and regis-tered nurses earned slightlyless than the statewide averagewage, about $34,930 adjustedfor inflation. U.S.-born workersdominated both fields.3

By 2008, the mean annualwage for RNs had more thandoubled.

Auto mechanics, meanwhile,had suffered a 16 percent de-cline in earning power. That’slike working eight weeks a yearfor free.

Both occupations have ab-sorbed tens of thousands of im-migrants.

Why have these two jobs,both once firmly planted in themiddle of the California middleclass, moved in opposite direc-tions?

Education is a big part of theanswer.

Today, as in 1970, few automechanics go to college. But to-day’s nurses are much bettereducated than their counter-parts of 40 years ago. In 1970,most RNs had two years of col-lege or less. Today, most have atleast a bachelor’s degree.4

In the California of 1970, itwas still possible to drop out ofhigh school and enter the mid-dle class through blue-collarjobs in auto shops and factories.By 1980, the dropout’s gatewayto the middle class was narrow-ing. By 1990, it had all but shut.

The difference in pay be-tween the best-educated work-ers and high school dropoutshas widened with time. In 1970,a typical worker with a gradu-ate degree earned twice asmuch as a high school dropout.By 2008, he earned nearly 4 1⁄2

times as much.5

Native workers got themessage: Education pays.

In 1970, just 40 percent of na-tive workers made it past highschool. By 2008, 71 percent hadgone to college.6

With better educations, na-tive-born workers moved upthe job chain. Factory workerswent to college, or their chil-dren did, and became teachers,accountants and managers.

Nearly half of the state’s im-migrant workers have gone tocollege.

But most of the state’s work-ers who were dropouts – and90 percent of the least-educat-ed workers, those who nevereven started high school – areimmigrants.7

Many of these poorly educat-ed immigrants have another

disadvantage in competingwith native workers: language.At the bottom of the education-al scale, an immigrant highschool dropout who speaksEnglish well can expect to make70 percent more than an immi-grant dropout who speaks Eng-lish poorly.8

In today’s economy, most ofthose workers are condemnedto low-wage jobs.

BEATING THE ODDSNot all, however. There are

opportunities even at the bot-tom of the job ladder, even inthe worst recession in 75 years.

When Maria Rosa, an illegalimmigrant, sneaked across theborder from her native Mexicoin 1990, she was 27 years oldand had a ninth-grade educa-tion. She quickly fell into a se-ries of low-paying jobs: hotelhousekeeper, flower arranger,banquet server.9

But she was ambitious. TheAnaheim resident spent part ofevery day studying English.She went to cosmetologyschool and got a new job as ahairdresser and manicurist.

Now, with both of her U.S.-born children in gifted pro-grams, she is taking classespart time at night. She hopes toget her high school diploma thisyear, then study psychology incollege.

“People see problems,” Ma-ria Rosa said. “I see solutions.”

Alex Ortega, 35, crossed theborder at age 16, having nevermade it past middle school.

He, too, followed the familiartrail of low-paid work: paintinghouses, making clothing, layingcarpet.10

But seven years ago, afterlearning the carpet business,he opened his own store.

“I’m the only employee,” Or-tega said. “I sell, I install, I doeverything.”

Ortega got a work visa a fewyears ago and is applying for agreen card. He hopes to be-come a U.S. citizen someday.

The carpet shop has givenhim a tentative hold on the mid-dle class. He, his wife, theirthree children and small whitepoodle, Jack Jr., live in a Gar-den Grove tract home. A late-model truck is parked outside.He hopes to expand into kitch-en remodeling.

ECONOMISTS DEBATEGeorge J. Borjas is a Cuban

immigrant, a Harvard econo-mist and the leading exponent

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The Rev. Arturo Querijero Ferreras immigrated to America in 2004. He now leads a small congregation at St. Matthew Church in Orange.

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 3

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 5

Cooks, variously defined

Machine operators

Masons, tilers and carpet installers

Painters, construction and maintenance

Assemblers of electrical equipment

Gardeners and groundskeepers

Packers and packagers by hand

Housekeepers, maids, butlers, stewards

Farmworkers

Textile sewing-machine operators

Gardeners and groundskeepers

Janitors

Supervisors and proprietors of sales jobs

Nursing aides, orderlies and attendants

Construction laborers

Housekeepers, maids, butlers, stewards

Managers and administrators

Farmworkers

Truck, delivery and tractor drivers

Cooks, variously defined

Foreign-born

U.S.-born

Foreign-born workers and occupationsOccupations with the highest percentage of foreign-born workers compared with U.S.-born workers in 2008 in California.

Occupations with the highest number of foreign-born workers in 2008 in California.

55,217 total workers / 91.5% foreign-born

229,802 foreign-born / 61.6%

208,151 / 45%

207,152 / 84.4%

201,008 / 24.8%

180,725 / 81.2%

164,227 / 57.6%

163,1 17 / 44.9%

162.132 / 30.6%

158,1242 / 54%

151,150 / 69.2%

245,338 / 84.4%

222,561 / 81.2%

85,663 / 75.8%

218,412 / 69.2%

140,497 / 69%

94,152 / 65.4%

54,837 / 64.8%

121,925 / 64.3%

372,851 / 61.6%

Source: IPUMS The Register

The Orange County Register Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010 | NEWS 5

IMMIGRATION AND THE CHANGING WORKFORCE

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/investigations

11 “The Labor Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Im-pact of Immigration on the Labor Market,” by George J. Borjas,The Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2003. 12 “Wages by nativity and education, 1970-2008.xls,” Registeranalysis of IPUMS data. See CPI worksheet. 13 Interview, George J. Borjas, Feb. 16, 2010. 14 Interview, Giovanni Peri, May 26, 2010. 15 “Immigrants and the Labor Market in California, 1960-2005,”by Giovanni Peri and J. William Ambrosini, May 2010. Preparedfor the Gifford Center for Population Studies at UC Davis. 16 “How Immigrants Affect California Wages and Employment”by Giovanni Peri, California Counts, Public Policy Institute of Cal-

ifornia, February 2007. 17 “The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets ofState and Local Governments,” Congressional Budget Office,Publication #2500, December 2007. CBO said researchers for theUrban Institute, Migration Policy Institute, Pew Hispanic Centerand the Center for Immigration Studies all assume a 55 percentcompliance rate by illegal immigrants with income, Social Secu-rity and Medicare taxes. “Social Security estimates”: “The Impactof Immigration on Social Security and the National Economy,” byJoel Feinleib and David Warner, Social Security Advisory Board,Issue Brief #1, December 2005. 18 “It believes most ITIN holders legally cannot work in the Unit-

ed States”: See “Immigration Enforcement Benefits and Limita-tions to Using Earnings Data to Identify Unauthorized Work,”Government Accountability Office, July 11, 2006, GAO-06-814R.“Collected $5.2 billion in taxes”: See “IRS ITINS 2001-2005.xls,”provided to the Register by IRS spokesman Raphael Tulino. 19 “Grown so quickly”: Numbers contained in correspondencefrom Social Security Administration to the Register March 18,2010. “Much of the money”: “Status of the Social Security Ad-ministration’s Earnings Suspense File,” report by SSA InspectorGeneral James G. Huse Jr. to House Ways and Means subcom-mittee on Social Security, Nov. 18, 2002. 20 “Social Security Number Misuse for Work and the Impact on

the Social Security Administration’s Master Earnings File,” by In-spector General Patrick P. O’Carroll Jr., Report #A-03-07-27152,Sept. 29, 2008.21 “$7 billion a year to Social Security:” “The High Cost of CheapLabor: Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget,” by Steven A.Camarota, Center for Immigration Statistics, August 2004. “CostSocial Security about $22 billion”: Letter, Congressional BudgetOffice Director Peter Orzag to House Judiciary Committee Chair-man John Conyers, April 4, 2008; the letter addressed potentialcosts of HR4088, a 2007 bill that would have required all employ-ers to electronically verify the immigration status of new workers. 22 Interview, Doris Meissner, Dec. 17, 2009.

FOOTNOTES

of the view that immigration isdriving down wages.

In a widely cited 2003 paper,Borjas wrote that immigrationreduced the wages of the aver-age U.S.-born worker by3.2 percent from 1980 to 2000.High school dropouts were hithardest, suffering an 8.9 per-cent wage cut, while even col-lege graduates saw a 4.9 per-cent drop.11

The Register found similartrends among less-educatedCalifornia workers. From 1970to 2008, dropouts’ wages fell25 percent after adjusting forinflation while high schoolgraduates’ wages dropped16 percent. But contrary toBorjas’ conclusion, the Regis-ter found that college gradu-ates enjoyed a 15 percent wageincrease, and those with gradu-ate degrees got a 50 percentraise.12

Poorly educated workers arecaught in a bind because of theinflux of immigrants compet-ing for jobs, Borjas said. Whilea carpenter could become, say,a plumber if there were toomany immigrant carpenters inhis field, he said, a high schooldropout cannot easily becomea college graduate.13

Borjas said even the best-educated native workers arehurt by immigrants. While theRegister’s analysis indicatedthat wages rose for collegegraduates, Borjas said that“the wages for these workerswould have gone up even more”if there hadbeen no influxof well-edu-cated immi-grants.

To all this,UC Daviseconomistand ItalianimmigrantGiovanni Perihas a one-word answer:California.

In each of the past four dec-ades, Peri said, California hasabsorbed a greater number ofimmigrants than Israel didright after the Soviet Unioncollapsed and a higher percent-age increase than Miami did af-ter the Mariel boat lift from Cu-ba in 1980.14

“If there is a U.S. state or aneconomy in the world wherethe labor market consequencesof immigration should havebeen dramatic,” Peri and col-league J. William Ambrosiniwrote recently, “Californiaclearly qualifies.”15

Yet Peri finds little impact onnatives’ wages, save among theleast educated.

The reason, Peri said, is thatimmigrant workers differ from

natives. There are laborers andengineers but not many in themiddle, with skills comparableto most native workers.

Even at the bottom, he ar-gued, an influx of immigrantsbrings opportunity for natives.More immigrant constructionworkers need English-speakingsupervisors. More immigranttaxi drivers need English-speaking dispatchers. More im-migrant landscapers need Eng-lish-speaking managers andsalespeople.

But the arrival of millions ofnew immigrant workers is badnews for one group, Peri said:older immigrants. Unlike mostnatives, older immigrants aresimilar in education and skills tothe newcomers. He calculated

that the wag-es of immi-grants whoarrived be-fore 1990were 17 per-cent to 20percent low-er than theywould havebeen had im-migrationstopped in1990.16

PAYING THE TAXMANDozens of economists and in-

terest groups have debatedwhether immigrants, particu-larly illegal immigrants, con-sume more in public servicesthan they pay in taxes.

Here again, there are clearwinners and losers.

The biggest winner is the So-cial Security Administration,which collects billions of dollarsannually from illegal immi-grants who are ineligible forbenefits.

The biggest losers are stateand local governments.

Contrary to popular belief,most illegal immigrants work“on the books” and, therefore,must pay taxes. The InternalRevenue Service estimates that

6 million illegal residents filetax returns. Social Security es-timates that half of the undocu-mented pay into the system.17

The IRS issues “IndividualTaxpayer Identification Num-bers,” ITINs, to taxpayers whoare ineligible for Social Securi-ty numbers. It believes mostITIN holders are unauthorizedworkers, a category that in-cludes illegal immigrants andpeople such as tourists who arein the U.S. legally but not al-lowed to work. In 2005, it col-lected $5.2 billion in taxes on$95 billion in income from peo-ple using ITINs.18

An obscure Social Securityfund sheds light on the hiddentax payments of illegal immi-grants.

The “Earnings SuspenseFile” is a multibillion-dollarstash of pay records with mis-matched names and Social Se-curity numbers. Many mis-matches are the result of inno-cent error: someone whochanges her name because ofmarriage or divorce but ne-glects to alert Social Security.But the file has grown so quick-ly, from $30 billion posted in1998 to $89.7 billion posted in2007, that officials believemuch of the money comes from

unauthorized workers.19

For example, a Georgia meatprocessor reported payingwages to a 31-year-old Texanwho was receiving disabilitybenefits. After five investiga-tions, Social Security conclud-ed the Texan really was dis-abled but that identity thieveshad used his Social Securitynumber to report $915,000 inwages over 16 years from 58employers.20

The Center for ImmigrationStudies, which favors restric-tions on immigration, estimat-ed in 2004 that illegal immi-grants contributed $7 billion ayear to Social Security but costthe federal government a net$10 billion overall. The Con-gressional Budget Office said in2008 that if illegal immigrantswere driven “off the books,” itwould cost Social Securityabout $22 billion over 10 years.21

“At the federal level,” saidformer Immigration and Natu-ralization Service Commission-er Doris Meissner, “it’s conven-ient to look the other way.”22

UNCLEAR COSTSWhile the federal govern-

ment gets billions of dollars in

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 4

PHOTOS: CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGECOUNTY REGISTER

Santa Anaresidents An-gel, who askedthat his lastname not beused, left, andhis father, Ig-nacio, waitunsuccessful-ly to be hiredat the LagunaBeach day la-bor center.

Santa Ana residents Angel, 42, right, and his 70-year-old father, Ignacio, usually get work throughthe Laguna Beach day labor center. However, they were lucky this day and scored work from a friend.

Irma Ronses, a manager at the Laguna Beach day labor center,right, was born in Mexico but is an American citizen.

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 6

“If there is a U.S. state or aneconomy in the world where

the labor market conse-quences of immigration

should have been dramatic,California clearly qualifies.”

U C D A V I S E C O N O M I S TG I O V A N N I P E R I A N D

C O L L E A G U E J . W I L L I A MA M B R O S I N I

NEWS 6 | Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010 The Orange County Register

IMMIGRATION AND THE CHANGING WORKFORCE

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/investigations

23 “The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgets ofState and Local Governments,” Congressional Budget Office,Publication #2500, December 2007. 24 “The Costs of Illegal Immigration to Californians,” by JackMartin and Ira Mehlman, Federation for American ImmigrationReform, November 2004. “Should not be treated as citizens”: Akey case establishing “birthright citizenship” for persons born inthe U.S. to foreign parents was United States v. Wong Kim Ark,169 U.S. 649, decided 6-2 by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1893. Ark

was born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese parents; after he re-turned from a visit to China in 1895, port authorities in San Fran-cisco refused to admit him, arguing that he was a Chinese nationaland that the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred his entry. Thecourt declared he was an American citizen, based on the firstclause of the 14th Amendment. Opponents of this interpretationargue that Congress can, under the fifth clause of the 14thAmendment, restrict birthright citizenship to descendants of legalresidents. For text of US v. Wong Kim Ark, see

supreme.justia.com/us/169/649/case.html. 25 CBO, “The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budgetsof State and Local Governments,” December 2007. 26 “The Effect of Low-Skilled Immigration on U.S. Prices: Evidencefrom CPI Data,” by Patricia Cortes, Journal of Political Economy,Vol. 8, No. 3 (2008). 27 “Low-Skilled Immigration and the Labor Supply of Highly Edu-cated Women,” by Patricia Cortes and Jose Tessada, draft paper,June 2009. Cortes and Tessada excluded data on women in the top

immigrant cities – including New York, Miami and every Californiacity – “to show that our results are not driven by outliers.” 28 Interview, Martha, Jan. 22, 2010. 29 “Vietnamese Manicurists: Are Immigrants Displacing Nativesor Finding New Nails to Polish?” by Maya N. Federman, David E.Harrington and Kathy J. Krynski, Industrial and Labor RelationsReview, Vol. 59, issue 2 (2006). 30 Interview, Doris Meissner, Dec. 17, 2009.

FOOTNOTES

Behind the numbersThe Register based its analysisof wages and immigration inCalifornia on nearly four dec-ades of data gathered by theU.S. Census Bureau.Some of this information isreadily available among thehundreds of tables the censuspublishes after each once-a-decade national populationcount and annual AmericanCommunity Survey.But to get the full picture, weused “microdata” – randomsamples of raw census ques-tionnaires, minus personallyidentifiable information such asnames and addresses. Microda-ta allowed us to compare thewages of natives and immi-grants in dozens of occupationsacross decades.We obtained microdata for 2005through 2008 directly from theCensus Bureau’s Public Use Mi-crodata Sample, or PUMS.1

The historic data comes fromIPUMS-USA – the IntegratedPublic Use Microdata Series, aservice of the Minnesota Popu-lation Center at the Universityof Minnesota(usa.ipums.org/usa). The au-thors are Stephen Ruggles, J.Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek,Ronald Goeken, Matthew B.Schroeder and Matthew Sobek.2

The Census Bureau occasionallychanges how it lists occupa-tions. IPUMS produced a stan-dardized list of occupations forthe entire period from 1 970through 2008, making compari-sons possible.We analyzed wages and the pro-portion of foreign-born workersin some 300 occupations from1 970 through 2008. Dozens ofoccupations had only a fewthousand workers; even withthe large sample sizes that thecensus uses, seemingly bigchanges in those occupationscould be due to chance.So we narrowed our focus to 90occupations, each of which hadat least 50,000 workers in 2008.Some 1 4.7 million people, 80.5 percent of the state laborforce, worked in those 90 occu-pations in 2008.3

We also calculated the meanwage for each occupation, thenadjusted for inflation. All histor-ic wages and incomes listed inthe accompanying story andcharts are adjusted to 2008 lev-els based on the ConsumerPrice Index for all urban con-sumers, the CPI-U, as reportedby the Bureau of Labor Statis-tics.4

taxes from illegal immigrants,most of the bills for their healthcare and schooling go to stateand local governments.

How much is anyone’s guess.After reviewing 29 studies, the

Congressional Budget Office saidthere was a consensus that illegalimmigrants consume more instate and local services than theypay in taxes.23

But, the agency said, “that im-pact (on state and local budgets)is most likely modest” – less than5 percent of total spending inmost states and a higher amount,but still less than 10 percent, insome parts of California.

Not so, says the Federation forAmerican Immigration Reform,which favors slashing legal immi-gration by two-thirds. In a 2004report, the group said that illegalimmigrants cost California $8.8billion more than they pay in tax-es. Half of the bill comes fromschooling U.S.-born children of il-legal immigrants, who the groupsays should not be treated as citi-zens.24

The contrast between the Con-gressional Budget Office’s “mod-est” impact and the advocacygroup’s $8.8 billion estimate forCalifornia reveals the many un-certainties surrounding this is-sue. No one lists immigration sta-tus when signing a tax return orenrolling a child inschool or visitingan emergencyroom.

Every cost esti-mate relies on sta-tistical profiles ofthe illegal immi-grant population –their numbers, in-come, age, familysize, tax payment and use of pub-lic services such as hospitalemergency rooms. Those statis-tics become steadily less reliableas one drills down from nation tostates to counties.25

‘CHEAP MAIDS AND NANNIES’The biggest gainers from im-

migration may be middle- andupper-class natives, particularlywomen. Immigration has helpedmake cheap personal services acommon feature of middle-classlife in California.

University of Chicago econo-mist Patricia Cortes found thatprices for housekeeping, garden-ing, child care and other servicesfell during the 1980s and ’90s in

cities where many low-skilledimmigrants settled.26

As a result, she and colleagueJose Tessada reported, womenwith professional or doctoral de-grees spent more time at work.In economic terms, it’s a simpletradeoff: A female physician,lawyer or professor earns moremoney by hiring someone else toclean her house, do her laundryor care for her children.27

An earlier version of Cortes’and Tessada’s study carried theprovocative title: “Cheap Maids

and Nannies: HowLow-Skilled Im-migration IsChanging the La-bor Supply ofHigh-SkilledAmerican Wom-en.”

Cortes and Tes-sada also foundthat the more

schooling a woman had, themore likely she was to hire do-mestic help. About 3 percent ofwomen with high school diplo-mas hired housekeepers; therate rose to 15 percent of womenwith a college degree and 25 per-cent of those with graduate de-grees.

Martha, the undocumentedhousekeeper in Anaheim, cleansone house a day, six days a week,collecting $60 to $90 cash foreach house. A high school gradu-ate and social worker in Mexico,she has no complaints aboutcleaning other people’s houses:“I earn more (doing) somethingelse than what I studied.”28

Immigration has made life

easier for women in smaller waysas well.

Consider the manicure. From 1987 to 2002, the num-

ber of manicurists in Californiaalmost doubled. During thatsame period, Vietnamese wom-en such as Trang Le largely tookover the business.

Vietnamese immigrants ex-panded the market for mani-cures through innovations suchas standalone nail salons offeringwalk-in service, economistsMaya N. Federman of Pitzer Col-lege and David E. Harringtonand Kathy J. Krynski of KenyonCollege, Ohio, wrote in a 2006study.29

The new Vietnamese manicu-rists drove out some non-Vietnamese competitors anddissuaded more from enteringthe business, Federman and hercolleagues wrote. But the num-ber of manicurists per capitarose by 45 percent, “implyingthat the Vietnamese manicuristsfound many new nails to polish.”

Set aside the debates overwages and budgets, and you areleft with this: For many Califor-nians, mass immigration hasmeant cheap nannies and gar-deners, cheap restaurant mealsand cheap construction labor.

“We are all complicit in this,”said Meissner, the immigrationcommissioner under formerPresident Bill Clinton. “We haveall enjoyed lower prices” becauseof immigration.30

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Chef Danny Godinez of Anepalco’s Cafe came to America from his native Mexico in 1997 for work opportunities and the weather in Cali-fornia. He studied culinary arts at Saddleback College and runs the restaurant in Orange.

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 5

Nurses and mechanicsIn 1970, registered nurses and auto mechanics made an average of about $35,000 a year in inflation-adjusted

wages. By 2008, nurses had doubled their income while auto mechanics suffered a 16 percent pay cut. Tens of

thousands of immigrants flocked to both fields over the years. A key difference: Nurses in 2008 were much

better educated than their 1970 counterparts.

Number of workers, in thousands Average wage

Average wage for nurses Average wage for auto mechanics

0

50

100

150

200

Foreign-born registered nurses

U.S.-born registered nurses

20082000199019801970$20,000

$30,000

$40,000

$50,000

$60,000

$70,000

$80,000

Foreign-born auto mechanics

U.S.-born auto mechanics

Source: IPUMS The Register

CONTACT THE WRITER:

7 1 4-796-5030 or

rcampbell@ocregister.com

$7 billion-

Estimated contribution toSocial Security by illegal

immigrants in 2004

The Orange County Register Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010 News 71

Arturo Querijero came tothe United States for love.

He was a Roman Catholicpriest, a missionary in Gua-temala, who wanted to mar-ry. So when his superiorssent him to the U.S. to raisemoney, he sought a new life.

Querijero had spent mostof his 20s and 30s as a semi-narian and priest in CentralAmerica. As a young priestin Guatemala, he chaired aninterfaith group on humanrights – a dangerous job inthe aftermath of a 36-yearcivil war.

One day in 2002, twoarmed men entered Querije-ro’s church and took himaway in their car. They drovehim to a soccer field, let himout and told him to look atthe trees at the far end. Heheard their rifles click. Theytold him to run.

His religious superiorssent him to Rome for twomonths. Two years after hisreturn, in the summer of2004, they sent him awayagain, this time to the UnitedStates. He filled in for vaca-tioning American priests,saying Mass, preaching ser-mons and, in return, takingthe collection – $10,000 on agood day – for the Guatema-lan mission.

While raising money, hesearched for a new home,one where no one knew Ar-turo Querijero, the priest,and no one would be scandal-ized if he married.

He had fallen in love yearsearlier, before his ordina-tion. He had thought that heand his girlfriend wouldbreak it off after he became apriest. Now he knew better.

He told some friends, fel-low priests, that he was go-ing to quit the priesthood,get married and work for arelative in Denver, driving a

recycling truck.“We can’t picture you

driving a truck,” they toldhim. At their urging, he vis-ited St. Matthew Church inOrange, part of the Ecumen-ical Catholic Church, a de-scendant of the “OldCatholic” movement, whichbroke with Rome over papalinfallibility in the 1870s.

He joined the tiny churchas a priest, married and be-gan a ministry to fellow im-migrants. The church spon-sored him for a religious visaand then for a green card.

Today, he volunteers witheconomic and social justicegroups. He has talked tobusiness owners on behalf oftheir workers – somethinghe would never have thoughtof doing in Guatemala – andwith city officials aboutaffordable housing and childcare.

“Imagine,” Querijero said,“I came to the United Statesplanning to leave the priest-hood. And I ended up here.

“I believe there’s more toit than being here acciden-tally in the U.S.,” he added.“We are led as exiles to thisland to do something.”

A PRIEST’S UNCOMMON PATH

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Arturo Querijero Ferreras leads a congregation, com-prised mostly of immigrants, at St. Matthew Church.

Arturo QuerijeroFerrerasJob: PriestHome: AnaheimBirthplace: Manila, thePhilippinesAge: 45Status: Legal permanentresidentFamily: Married, one child

By RONALD CAMPBELL

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

He was 22 in 1979 when theRed Army invaded.

He was 32 in 1989 when theSoviets left and a brief, falsepeace came to his homeland.

And he was 36 in 1993, hiscountry again convulsed bywar, when the United Statesgranted him refugee statusand permission to immigrate.

“I had (a) great job and hap-py life in Afghanistan,” Frai-doon Rasoul said, “but the war(took) away everything fromus.”

He had been an accountant,a well-educated man in a na-tion where few men and al-most no women finish highschool.

He had kept the books for anexport-import company thatsold Russian cars and Japa-nese TVs. The company soldthese foreign goods at a steepmarkup to those who could af-ford them. Somebody, whethera company man or govern-ment official Rasoul neverknew, pocketed the difference.

Then the war came, wreck-ing his comfortable life.

By 1986, he was in Pakistan,one of millions of Afghans whofled the fighting. That year, heapplied to immigrate to theUnited States. His sister, whowas married to an Americancitizen and living in OrangeCounty, sponsored him.

Then he waited.Seven years passed. At last,

in February 1993, permissioncame. Rasoul, who had neverboarded a plane in his life, flew13 time zones from Karachi toOrange County via Manila, To-kyo and Seattle.

He spent much of his firstyear in school, learning Eng-lish.

He found work the next yearin the shipping department at

a meat packer in Kalamazoo,Mich. Next came a job makingmetal and plastic parts at a hy-draulic machinery maker inGrand Rapids.

But after a few years, likemillions of Midwesterners be-fore him, Rasoul got tired ofthe winter chill and longed forSouthern California. Workingnights, he recalled, he wouldoften have to clear snow fromhis car roof before returninghome. Even for someoneraised in Kabul, where wintertemperatures dip well belowfreezing, the cold and wind ofMichigan was too much.

In 1997, he returned toOrange County, taking a job asa book binder.

The 9/11 attacks rivetedAmericans’ attention on Af-ghanistan. Rasoul shakes hishead at the memory, sayingone word, “tragic.”

But in other respects, 2001was one of the best years of hislife: He became an Americancitizen, brought his fiancéehere from Pakistan, marriedher and had the first of theirthree children.

He now works as an assem-bler at a medical devices mak-er. Nearly a quarter-centuryafter fleeing Afghanistan, Ra-soul has no regrets and no de-sires to return.

“I don’t want to go back be-cause here I’m safe, I’m hap-py,” he said. In Afghanistanthere is only “war, fighting. …Why? Why fight?”

A LIFE DEFINED BY WARFINDS SOLACE IN PEACE

Fraidoon RasoulJob: AssemblerHome: Garden GroveBirthplace: Kabul, Afghan-istanAge: 53Status: Naturalized citizenFamily: Married, three chil-dren

By RONALD CAMPBELL

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

IMMIGRATION AND THE CHANGING WORKFORCE

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/immigration

TRAVEL

The Orange County Registeris a Freedom Communicationsnewspaper. Copyright 20 1 0Customer service toll-free1 -877-OCR-7009 [627-7009]

Thousands of activists rallied in Wash-ington, D.C., on Saturday, calling onyoung or disillusioned Democrats tovote in the November elections.NEWS 20

BUDGET DETAILS ARRIVEAS STALEMATE LINGERSNew details about California’s budgetdeal emerged, including estimates ofrevenue and federal aid the state willreceive and of cuts on which the partiesagreed. NEWS 18

INVESTMENTS GONEBAD TAKE A TOLL Bankruptcy court records indicatedthat nearly 700 mostly older investorsentrusted their savings in an Irvine-based apartment company that de-clared bankruptcy. REAL ESTATE 1

ACTIVISTS RALLY IN D.C.TO INSPIRE DEMOCRATS 71/60

Coast

78/58Inland

TODAY’S WEATHER

SUNDAY PRICE: $1.50 FOUNDED IN 1905SUNDAY, OCT. 3, 2010

In 1964, two young guys withfreshly minted degrees from SanFrancisco State University de-

cided to start a theater company inOrange County. Almost five decadeslater, South Coast Repertory co-founders Martin Benson and DavidEmmes are preparing to surrenderthe reins of their creation, whichgrew to become one of the nation’smost prestigious theater companies.

Their path to success was any-thing but assured in the early years,when money was tight, Hollywood’ssiren call was loud and seductive,and survival sometimes dependedon the kindness of strangers.

LEONARD ORTIZ, THE REGISTER

Martin Benson, left, and DavidEmmes have led South Coast Rep-ertory since founding it in 1964.

A dreamto cherishat SCR

STORY BY PAUL HODGINS ON NEWS 9

PHOTOS: CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

AN INVESTIGATION BY RONALD CAMPBELLPART FOUR OF FOUR

SERIES AT A GLANCET

here are times when we take adeep breath, leap over theprecipice that marks the end

of our comfort zone and discover wecan fly.

In many respects, Kat Swigartembodies the bold men and womenwho built Orange County astridethousand-pound animals that couldcarry them from San Clemente to LaHabra in a single day.

In short, Swigart is a self-de-scribed horse person.

But you might call her a horsewhisperer. She doesn’t just ride,teach riding and care for horses.This woman who chucked her MBA

DAVID WHITINGREGISTER COLUMNIST

SEE WHITING ● PAGE 1 6

Horsewhispererchallengesboundaries

STORIES ON NEWS 3-6 | READER COMMENTS ON NEWS 7

NO EASYANSWERSAN IMPERFECT IMMIGRATION SYSTEM

ROILS AMERICANS. CONGRESS CAN’T AGREE

ON A SOLUTION, WHICH APPEARS ELUSIVE.

HOW CAN THE U.S. BREAK EMPLOYMENT’S LURE?Millions of illegal immigrants came to the United States for work. Without an effective way to deny themjobs, they’ll probably keep coming. But breaking the attraction of jobs could require a secure ID card for

everybody, including American citizens, and stiff fines for employers who hire illegal immigrants.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE TO THOSE HERE ILLEGALLY?Some 1 1 million illegal immigrants live in the U.S. Presidents Bush and Obama have said they should be given

a chance to legalize. That’s political poison to many. But there aren’t enough agents to deport them all.

IS IT TIME TO SHUT THE DOOR?For the past decade, the U.S. has admitted a million permanent immigrants each year and hundreds of

thousands of temporary guest workers. Before the recession, the booming U.S. economy created plenty ofjobs for them and for natives. Does it still make sense to welcome so many?

• •

SEPT. 12

California relies more onimmigrant labor than otherstates and most developed

countries. Economic anddemographic shifts have

shaped decisions.

SEPT. 19

More than 1 0 million undocumented immigrants

have moved to the U.S.since 1 986. A key reason:the government’s failureto lock them out of jobs.

TODAY

Overhauling U.S. immigration policy

means grappling withpolarizing choices,

such as amnesty anda national ID card.

SEPT. 26

Immigrants have drivendown wages in low-skilled trades. But

they’ve made life easierfor middle- and upper-

income Californians.

»SIERRA GETAWAYS

SURF GUITAR GURUA&E

«

The Orange County Register Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010 | NEWS 3

IMMIGRATION AND THE DECISIONS AHEAD

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/investigations

1 After describing his own plan for an immigration overhaul,Bush noted that the House of Representatives had alreadypassed a bill. “The Senate should act by the end of thismonth so we can work out the differences between the twobills, and Congress can pass a comprehensive bill for me tosign into law,” he said. The full text of his speech is at georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060515-8.html.2 “Most of Bush’s Republican allies”: The June 28, 2007,motion to halt debate failed 46 to 53, 14 short of the 60 re-quired. Voting in favor were 12 Republicans, 33 Democratsand one independent; voting against were 37 Republicans,15 Democrats and one independent. For roll call, see sen-ate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=1 10&session=1&vote=00235#position.3 “McCain disavowed”: During a Republican presidentialcandidates’ debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley onJan. 30, 2008, McCain was asked if he would vote for the

McCain-Kennedy immigration bill, which included a path-way to citizenship for illegal immigrants, if it came to a voteon the Senate floor. His answer: “No, I would not, becausewe know what the situation is today. The people want theborder secured first.” See the debate transcript at cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/30/GOPdebate.transcript/index.html.4 Obama outlined his plan in a July 1, 2010, speech atAmerican University. For the text, seewhitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-comprehensive-immigration-reform.5 The centerpiece of the Immigration Reform and ControlAct of 1986 was workplace sanctions, or fines against em-ployers who knowingly hired illegal immigrants. Rep. PeterRodino, D-N.J., first promoted the idea in a 1973 bill. A pres-idential commission endorsed it in 1981. See Part 2 of thisseries for additional background. 6 “Failure of the 1986 act”: See Part 2 of this series. “Some11 million”: “Illegal immigration estimates, 1986-2009.xls,”

Register compilation of estimates from Pew Hispanic Cen-ter, Congressional Research Service and Department ofHomeland Security. “Exceeding the entire population of Mi-chigan”: Michigan had 10 million residents in 2008; see“Native and foreign-born, all states, 1850-2008.xls,” Regis-ter compilation of Census data. 7 Gov. Jan Brewer: Official text for her remarks is at azgovernor.gov/dms/upload/SP_042310_SupportOurLawEnforcementAndSafeNeighborhoodsAct.pdf.8 For border, see “Border Patrol budget, 1980-2009.xls,”Register compilation of data from Border Patrol, Senate Ap-propriations Committee and Transactional Records AccessClearinghouse. For prosecutions, see “FY 2009 federalprosecutions sharply higher,” Transactional Records Ac-cess Clearinghouse, Syracuse University, Dec. 21, 2009,trac.syr.edu/tracreports/crim/223/. 9 “Illegal immigration estimates, 1986-2009.xls,” Registercompilation of estimates by Department of Homeland Secu-rity, Pew Hispanic Center and Congressional Research Ser-

vice. 10 “Nearly 20 times the legal supply”: About 200,000 un-skilled workers were admitted in 2009 under the H-2A andH-2B programs; see “Nonimmigrant admissions, 1999-2009.xls” “7.8 million illegal immigrant” workers: see Pas-sel and Cohn, “U.S. Unauthorized Immigration Flows AreDown Sharply Since Mid-Decade,” Sept. 1, 2010. 11 Interview, James Ziglar, Feb. 9, 2010. 12 “More than doubled”: See “Illegal immigration esti-mates, 1986-2009.xls” 13 For official documents on the McCain-Kennedy bill, go tothomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d1 10:SN1639:Click on the “CRS Summary” link to read the CongressionalResearch Service summary. For the Democrats’ conceptualproposal, go to nationaljournal.com/congressdaily/issues/images/graphics_2010/cd-100428-rsm-bill-outline-draft.pdf.14 Interview, Steven Camarota, Aug. 23, 2010.

FOOTNOTES

On May 15, 2006, in a nation-ally televised speech, Pres-ident George W. Bush chal-lenged the Senate to passan immigration overhaul

bill within the month.1

Thirteen months and 13 dayslater, hopelessly deadlocked, theSenate gave up. Most of Bush’sRepublican allies had desertedhim.2

Underscoring immigration leg-islation’s political toxicity, Sen.John McCain later disavowed the

bill he had oncechampioned.3

Now PresidentBarack Obama istrying to honor hispromise to over-haul immigration.4

It won’t be easy.Immigration legis-lation never is.The last major im-migration law, in

1986, drew on ideas proposed morethan a decade earlier.5

Haunting the debate is the failure ofthe 1986 act to curb illegal immigration.The law granted legal status to most ofthe 3.2 million illegal immigrants wholived in the United States at the time.Nearly a quarter-century later, at least10.5 million more illegal immigrantshave settled here – exceeding the entirepopulation of Michigan.6

When she signed her state’s immi-gration enforcement law in April, Ari-zona Gov. Jan Brewer called illegal im-migration “a crisis we did not createand the federal government refuses tofix.”7

The truth is more complex.

SYSTEM FAILUREOver the past decade, Presidents

Bush and Obama and successive Con-gresses have spent billions on the Bor-der Patrol and prosecutors. Their twoprincipal aims: block immigrants atthe border and deport those already injail.8

Neither tactic sufficed. The illegalimmigrant population grew by500,000 a year for most of the pastdecade. It took the recession to stemthe tide.9

At its heart, the failure of the immi-gration system is economic: Employ-ers want cheap labor. Illegal immi-grants want jobs.

The demand for unskilled labor is

nearly 20 times the legal supply.Some 7.8 million illegal immi-grants, most of them unskilled,are working in the U.S.10

They far outnumber the im-migration authorities. They al-ways will, no matter how manymore Border Patrol officersCongress authorizes.

“We need to fundamentallyreform the system,” said JamesZiglar, commissioner of the Im-migration and NaturalizationService from 2001 to 2003.“There’s no magic bullet,whether it’s building a fence orhaving 100,000 Border Patrolagents.”11

Here are some strategies get-ting attention now.● Border security: Fortifying theMexican border has been thecentral focus of immigrationpolicy since the mid-1990s. Andsince then, the illegal immigrantpopulation has more than dou-

bled.12

But putting more agents and moretechnology on the border is popular.The failed 2007 bill and pending legis-lation promised additional resourcesfor the border. And both the old billand the leading Democratic proposalcontain a trigger: No immigrant-friendly changes will take effect untilthe border is secure.13

The border-first emphasis is “a wayof looking like you’re doing somethingabout immigration,” said Steven Ca-marota, research director for theCenter for Immigration Studies,which campaigns for restrictions on

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Phuc Tran, 41, of Westminster practices in a mock swearing-in ceremony at St. Anselm’s Cross Cultural Community Center in Garden Grove.

DARING TO TOUCHTHE THIRD RAIL

An overhaul of immigration policy means Americans must grapplewith polarizing issues, such as amnesty and a national ID card.

Legal immigration to U.S. by type

In thousands

Source: Department of Homeland Security The Register

0

200

400

600

800

1,000

1,200

'09'08'07'06'05'04'03'02'01'00

Family-sponsored

Immediate family

Employment

Other

Total legal immigration in 2006: 1,266,129

Immediate family: spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens. Family-sponsored includes grandchildren, spouses of children, brothers and sisters, adult children of both U.S. and legal foreign-born residents.Other includes refugees and those seeking political asylum.

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 4

RONALDCAMPBELL

REGISTERWRITER

IMMIGRATION AND THE DECISIONS AHEAD

EARTHWEEK MOVES TO LOCAL 11 THIS WEEK

NEWS 4 | Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010 The Orange County Register

15 See Obama speech, July 1, 2010, at whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-comprehensive-immigration-reform.16 “Lessons from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of1986,” by Betsy Cooper and Kevin O’Neil, Migration Policy In-stitute, August 2005.17 For a discussion of biometric IDs, see “The Next Generationof E-Verify: Getting Employment Verification Right,” by DorisMeissner and Marc R. Rosenblum, Migration Policy Institute,July 2009.18 “Illegal Aliens: Fraudulent Documents Undermining the Ef-fectiveness of Employment Verification System,” Government

Accountability Office. GAO/T-GGD-HEHS-99-175, July 22,1999.19 “Employment Verification: Challenges Exist in Implementinga Mandatory Electronic Employment Verification System,” Gov-ernment Accountability Office. GAO-08-895T, June 10, 2010.20 USCIS spokeswoman Mariana Gitomer, e-mail, Aug. 30,2010. Some 219,000 employers representing 780,000 work-sites – about 10 percent of the national total counted by the Cen-sus Bureau – are enrolled in E-Verify. From Oct. 1, 2009,through Aug. 14, 2010, they ran 14 million queries. The Govern-ment Accountability Office estimated that a mandatory E-Verifywould process 63 million queries each year. See “Employment

Verification: Challenges Exist in Implementing a MandatoryElectronic Employment Verification System,” GAO-08-895T,June 10, 2008.21 “It is critical not to lose sight of the fact that illegal immigra-tion has a clear economic logic: It provides U.S. businesses withthe types of workers they want, when they want them and wherethey want them.” See “The Economic Logic of Illegal Immigra-tion” by Gordon H. Hanson, Council on Foreign Relations, April2007.22 “DREAM vs. Reality: An Analysis of Potential DREAM ActBeneficiaries” by Jeanne Batalova and Margie McHugh, Migra-tion Policy Institute, July 2010.

23 For more on the DREAM Act in California, see universityofcalifornia.edu/educators/counselors/resources/materials/AB540_08.pdf (UC system) andfullerton.edu/ab540/ (CSU system).24 The most recent version of the AgJOBS bill was introduced inMay 2009 in the House by Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., andin the Senate by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. See thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d1 1 1:1:./temp/̃bdKH1z::|/home/LegislativeData.php.25 “Immigration Enforcement: Benefits and Limitations to Us-ing Earnings Data to Identify Unauthorized Work,” GovernmentAccountability Office. GAO-06-814R, July 11, 2006.

FOOTNOTES

of new hires this year wentthrough an E-Verify check.20

● Guest workers: America hastwo channels for importing la-bor. One is fast, cheap, respon-sive to employers – and illegal.The other is slow, expensive andusually requires a lawyer.21

Both the 2007 bill and theleading Democratic proposalcall for admitting hundreds ofthousands of temporary work-ers to fill unskilled jobs. Theidea is that these legal workerswould displace illegal immi-grants on the job.● DREAM Act: More than 2 mil-lion illegal immigrants came toAmerica as children. TheDREAM Act – short for the De-velopment, Relief and Educa-tion for Alien Minors Act –would extend conditional legalstatus to high school graduatesand green cards to those whocomplete two years in college orthe military.22

California’s version of theDREAM Act, passed by the Leg-islature in 2001, extended in-state tuition at the University ofCalifornia and California StateUniversity to eligible illegal im-migrants. But until they becomelegal residents, most can’t findjobs to match their education. 23

● AgJOBS Act: Pushed by bigfarm interests and the UnitedFarm Workers, the AgriculturalJob Opportunities, Benefits andSecurity Act would allow illegalimmigrants who worked in thefields at least 150 days in a two-year period to legalize. Theyand their families would get

immigration. “It’s sort of a de-fault policy.”14

● Amnesty: Three words sankthe 2007 bill: “path to citizen-ship.” The proposal would havegranted legal status to most ofthe nation’s illegal immigrantsif they registered and paid afine. The Democratic plan con-tains a similar provision.

Presidents Bush and Obamaaccepted the continued pres-ence of illegal immigrants as in-evitable. Both called for legali-zation. Obama said that deport-ing them “would be logisticallyimpossible and wildly expen-sive.”15

● Worker ID card: During the de-bate over the 1986 immigrationact, Congress rejected a pro-posal for a national identifica-tion card – a bugaboo for boththe right and the left. Instead, itdecided workers could use sev-eral existing forms of ID to es-tablish they were in the nationlegally and authorized towork.16

That didn’t work.A tamper-proof Social Secu-

rity card or a secure identitycard is likely to be a key part ofthe next immigration law. Thefailed 2007 bill would have en-couraged – and the currentDemocratic alternative wouldrequire – workers to present asecure ID whenever they starta new job. To defeat identitythieves, the card would carry aphoto and biometric data suchas fingerprints or an iris scan.17

It will cost billions. In the late1990s, when federal officialsfirst began grappling with theuse of fake IDs by illegal immi-grants, the Social Security Ad-ministration estimated a tam-per-resistant card would costbetween $3.9 billion and$9.2 billion.18

● Mandatory E-Verify: E-Verify,the Web-based system for con-firming people are authorizedto work, has been voluntarysince its inception in 1996. Allthe leading bills in Congresswould make it mandatory. Theagency that runs E-Verify, U.S.Citizenship and ImmigrationServices, pegged the cost for amandatory system at $765 mil-lion over four years if just newhires are screened.19

E-Verify covers roughly onein every 10 U.S. employers – buta much larger share of the bigemployers. Close to one-third

temporary “blue cards” andeventually could become legalpermanent residents.24

HARDER CHOICESThose ideas have all found

their way into pending legisla-tion. But other, more controver-sial ideas could get traction –particularly if Congress stale-mates and if illegal immigrationbegins growing again. Here area couple of those ideas.● Data sharing: If E-Verifydoesn’t work, the governmentcould turn to more intrusiveways of finding illegal workers.In a 2006 report to Congress,the Government AccountabilityOffice reviewed letting SocialSecurity and the Internal Reve-nue Service share their data-bases with immigration author-ities. The GAO warned thatsharing the data “could involvedivulging information abouthundreds of thousands or evenmillions of U.S. citizens andwork-authorized aliens.”25

A milder form of data sharing– the Bush administration’s2007 attempt to send employ-ers “no-match” letters identify-ing workers whose informationdid not match Social Securityrecords – provoked oppositionfrom the U.S. Chamber of Com-merce and the AFL-CIO. A fed-eral judge halted the letters,and the Obama administrationlater gave up the idea.26

● Birthright citizenship repeal:The 14th Amendment grants ci-

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Supporters of Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law get vocal before the All-Star Game at Angel Stadium on July 13.

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 3

0

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

CaliforniaU.S.

200720001990198019701960195019401930192019101900

Foreign workers in the U.S. in 2007: 23.9 million (15.6%)Foreign workers in California: 6.3 million (34.4%)

California historically has had a higher percentage of foreign-born residents and workers than the United

States as a whole. Since 1970, California consistently has had at least twice the nationwide percentage of

immigrant workers.Percentage foreign workers

U.S. and California foreign-born workforce

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau and IPUMS The Register

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 5

Critical dates in immigrationhistory1907: The great immigrationwave of the 1 890s and 1 900scrests as 1,285,439 immigrantsare admitted to the UnitedStates. During the decade from1 900 through 1 909, 8.2 millionimmigrants are admitted. Thatrecord stands until the 1 990s,when the United States wasthree times larger than it hadbeen in 1 9 1 0.1924: Congress passes andPresident Calvin Coolidge signsthe National Origins Act, settingnationality quotas limited to 2percent of each nation’s shareof the U.S. population in 1 890.The quota system severely re-duces immigration from south-ern and eastern Europe, whichhad surged dramatically after1 890. For example, immigrationfrom Italy is capped at 4,000per year, down from a peak of200,000. Overall immigration iscapped at 1 50,000 per year.1942: In a wartime measure,Congress allows farmers tobring in temporary workersfrom Mexico. The bracero pro-gram is repealed in 1 964.1952: Congress passes the Im-migration and Nationality Actover President Harry Truman’sveto. The law modifies the na-tionality quotas set by the 1 924law and creates new prefer-ences for immigrants with spe-cial work skills or family ties tocurrent residents. Truman op-poses the bill because he con-siders the nationality quotasdiscriminatory.1965: Congress passes andPresident Lyndon Johnsonsigns the Immigration and Na-tionality Act of 1 965. The lawabolishes nationality quotasand sets up a new system offamily preferences.1981: Responding to increasedconcern over illegal immigra-tion, a presidential commissionrecommends levying finesagainst employers who hire il-legal immigrants.1986: Congress passes andPresident Ronald Reagan signsthe Immigration Reform andControl Act. The law offers am-nesty to illegal immigrants whowere in the country before Jan.1, 1 982; nearly 2.7 million peo-ple get amnesty and legal per-manent residence. The law alsoimposes sanctions on employ-ers who knowingly hire illegalimmigrants.

The Orange County Register Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010 | NEWS 5

IMMIGRATION AND THE DECISIONS AHEAD

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/investigations

26 No-match letters: See Federal Register, Oct. 7, 2009, for a briefhistory of the rule. edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-24200.pdf.27 LEAVE Act, HR-994; see thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d1 1 1:1:./temp/̃bduqf0::|/home/LegislativeData.php?n=BSS;c=1 1 1|.28 “4 million U.S.-born children”: See Passel and Cohn, “A Por-trait of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States,” April 14,2009.

29 “A million legal immigrants”: See “Legal immigration sum-mary, 1907-2009.xls,” from Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. 30 Interview, Tamar Jacoby, Aug. 27, 2010. 31 Interview, Mark Krikorian, Aug. 30, 2010. 32 The “Know Nothings” drew their name from the answer mem-bers were supposed to give when asked about the movement: “Iknow nothing.” Organized as the American Party, it ran formerPresident Millard Fillmore for president in 1856. 33 See Part 1 of this series.

34 The 1924 law set nationality quotas based on each sendingcountry’s share of the U.S. population in 1890 – after the peak ofthe Irish and German immigration and before immigration fromsouthern and eastern Europe took off. As a result, 70 percent ofthe annual quota was reserved for just three countries: the UnitedKingdom, Ireland and Germany. See “Three Decades of Mass Mi-gration: The Legacy of the 1965 Immigration Act,” Center for Im-migration Studies, September 1995.35 “Mexicans have dominated”: Mexicans make up about 32 per-

cent of all current immigrants, legal and illegal; that compareswith 33 percent for Irish from 1850 to 1870 and 26 percent forGermans from 1850 to 1900. See “Mexican Immigrants in theUnited States, 2008,” Pew Hispanic Center, April 15, 2009; see al-so “Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States” by Gor-don H. Hanson, National Bureau of Economic Research, WorkingPaper 12141, March 2006.

FOOTNOTES

tizenship to everyone born inthe United States. Several Re-publican senators have pro-posed hearings to explore re-pealing birthright citizenshipfor the U.S.-born children of il-legal immigrants. Two Housebills, including one introducedby Rep. Gary Miller, R-DiamondBar, would try to do this by re-vising immigration law.27

There are 4 million U.S.-bornchildren of illegal immigrants;the Miller bill, as written, wouldonly apply to children born inthe future.28

● Limit legal immigration: A mil-lion legal immigrants have en-tered the U.S. each year overthe past 20 years – more thanthree times the rate during the1960s. If the “jobless recovery”continues, the decades-old po-litical consensus in favor of ex-panded legal immigration couldbreak down.29

GETTING TO ‘YES’George W. Bush and Barack

Obama both sought a “compre-hensive” immigration overhaul,a bill that would legalize mil-lions of illegal immigrants,tighten enforcement and admitmore immigrant workers.

Bush couldn’t persuade hisfellow Republicans. Obama sofar hasn’t been able to move theissue through the most Demo-cratic Congress in decades.And the next Congress proba-bly will be more Republican.

Tamar Jacoby sees potentialfor a comprehensive bill comingfrom a divided Congress. Sheheads ImmigrationWorks USA,a business group that favors in-creased immigration.

“No one in their right mindwould be hopeful and rosy,” Ja-coby said. But “both Democratsand Republicans have a bigstake in getting immigration be-hind them before 2012.”30

Democrats, she said, have tokeep their promise to Latinovoters to enact immigration leg-islation; just trying won’t beenough.

Meanwhile, “Republicansprobably think there won’t beanother Republican presidentuntil they get immigration offtheir demerit list with Latinos.”

As for her own group’s favor-ite cause, importing more labor,Jacoby admits it will be hard toget anywhere in the midst of arecession. But a flexible cap,one that admits few immigrantsnow but more when the econo-my booms, might pass, she said.

“Even in the worst of times,

we need some workers,” shesaid. Even now, “people aren’tleaving Detroit … to clean toiletsin hotels or pick fruit.”

Mark Krikorian heads theCenter for Immigration Stud-ies, which favors restrictions.He believes there is no chancefor a comprehensive bill in thenext two years.

“The core dynamic” of com-prehensive bills was to trade le-galization for the promise ofstronger enforcement. The2007 bill died, he said, because“nobody believes the promise offuture enforcement.”31

That leaves “small ball” legis-lation, such as the DREAM Actand AgJOBS, Krikorian said.The first covers the most sym-pathetic group of illegal immi-grants, the second a powerfulinterest group.

“Small ball may be what youwant to do,” Krikorian said.“When I hear the word ‘com-prehensive,’ I grab my walletand look for cover.”

AN UNEASY HISTORYThe United States has a long

history of uneasy relations withits newest immigrants.

In the 1850s, the “KnowNothings” sought unsuccessful-ly to end the mass migration ofIrish and German Catholics.32

In the 1870s and the early1900s, Californians persuadedthe federal government to shutout Asian immigrants.33

In 1924, having made theirpeace with the Irish and Ger-mans, restrictionists slammedthe door on Jewish and Italianimmigrants.34

In 1965, a descendant of Jew-ish immigrants, Rep. EmanuelCellar of New York, co-authoredthe bill that welcomed a newwave of immigrants.

Mexicans have dominatedthat wave, accounting for near-ly one-third of all immigrants,legal and illegal, since 1990. On-ly two other ethnic groups inAmerican history have dom-inated immigration to that ex-tent: Irish and Germans in the19th century.35

In time, Mexican immigrants

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

A driver confronts backers of Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Angel Stadium.

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 4

Percentage of foreign-born workers, 2007

Under 5% 5% to 10% 10% to 15% 15% to 24% Greater than 25%

Immigrant workers, population

Percentage of foreign-born population, 2008

Under 5% 5% to 10% 10% to 15% 15% to 20% Greater than 20%

The RegisterSource: U.S. Census

During the past 20 years, immigrants have spread beyond the “gateway” states – California, New York, Texas and Florida.

Nevada, Arizona, Illinois and New Jersey now host large immigrant populations and workforces.

34.9%

27.9%

20.5%

27%

25.6%25.6%

SEE IMMIGRANT ● PAGE 6

Critical dates in immigrationhistory1990: The illegal immigrant pop-ulation reaches 3.5 million, pass-ing pre-amnesty levels. It hits7 million in 2000 and about1 2 million in 2007.1994: A presidential commissionwarns that the prohibition on em-ploying illegal immigrants hasbroken down because of thewidespread use of phony im-migration documents. Separately,Congress and President Bill Clin-ton begin rapidly increasing theBorder Patrol’s budget; it doublesbetween 1 994 and 1 998.1996: Congress orders immigra-tion authorities to test ways ofverifying that people legally canhold jobs. The mandate leads totoday’s voluntary, Web-based E-Verify system. Congress alsoauthorizes the federal govern-ment to permit local law enforce-ment agencies to enforce im-migration law.2003: The Department of Home-land Security is created. The Im-migration and Naturalization Ser-vice is shut down, its responsib-ilities divided among three newHomeland Security agencies: Im-migration and Customs Enforce-ment, Customs and Border Pro-tection (including the Border Pa-trol) and U.S. Citizenship and Im-migration Services. May 2005: Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., propose an immigrationbill. Illegal immigrants could be-come citizens after paying a fine.Employers could import tempo-rary immigrant workers.May 2007: President George W.Bush outlines his ideas for im-migration changes in a nationallytelevised address. Two days later,senators announce a deal paral-leling Bush’s proposal: legal sta-tus for illegal immigrants whopay fines, tighter border securityand a program to admit 400,000to 600,000 temporary workersannually. The proposal provokes afirestorm among conservatives.June 2007: The Senate fails toend debate on the immigrationbill, effectively killing it.July 2010: President BarackObama calls for a comprehensiveimmigration overhaul. His propos-al would let illegal immigrants ap-ply for citizenship after regis-tering and paying a fine. It alsowould include stepped-up borderenforcement and an improvedsystem for verifying worker eligi-bility.

Sources: Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Government Accountability

Office, Migration Policy Institute, Center for Immigration Studies,

The Orange County Register

NEWS 6 | Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010 The Orange County Register

IMMIGRATION AND THE DECISIONS AHEAD

For more coverage, go to ocregister.com/investigations

36 For Reed’s account of the 1999 Nebraska audits, see Part 2 of this series. 37 Interview, Mark Reed, Sept. 24, 2009. 38 Interview, James Ziglar, Feb. 9, 2010.

FOOTNOTES

Mariela has her feet in twolands. Mexican by birth, she isAmerican by education, cultureand attitude.

She is also among a generationof illegal immigrants brought hereas children, educated at public ex-pense but stuck in dead-end jobsbecause of their legal status.

She’s a shift manager at a coffeeshop, a job she got six years agowith a fake Social Security card.An honors graduate of Cal StateSan Bernardino with a degree insocial work, she earns perhapshalf what she could make as a so-cial worker.

“At this point, there’s nothingelse I can do,” Mariela said. “Ican’t work with my degree. Youmight get hired, but when they askfor an ID, there’s nothing I cangive them.”

Her father, a gardener, movedfrom Mexico to the San Bernardi-no area in 1988. The family, includ-ing 8-year-old Mariela, followed in1990.

Growing up in a traditionalMexican family – “You’re Mexican,that’s it,” her father would say –Mariela nonetheless quickly be-came American. Her English isunaccented, her clothing and jew-elry straight out of a shoppingmall.

She did well in high school but

thought college was out of reach.State law at the time charged ille-gal immigrants out-of-state tui-tion – two to three times the in-state rate – at the University ofCalifornia and California StateUniversity.

AB540, enacted in 2001, openedcollege doors to illegal immigrantswho had graduated from Califor-nia high schools, lived in the statefor at least three years and prom-

ised to seek legalization.Mariela took advantage of

AB540 to get her degree.If she could get a social work

job, Mariela said, she would like towork with battered women.

Mariela hopes to return toschool soon to earn a master’s de-gree. It will take two years andcost her at least $12,000.

But it won’t solve her funda-mental problem. It won’t make herlegal.

As the wife of an American citi-zen, she could apply for citizen-ship. But because she entered ille-gally, Mariela said, she would haveto return to Mexico first.

And there is a further complica-tion: Mariela is pregnant with herfirst child, due on Christmas Day.

“Hopefully something’s got togive,” she said.

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Mariela, left, and her husband, Ramon, watch an impromptu dance during a birthday celebration for her mother. Mariela, an honors graduate ofCal State San Bernardino with a degree in social work, was born in Puebla, Mexico, and is undocumented. Ramon is an American citizen.

LIMITED OPPORTUNITIESJob prospects dry up for Mexican immigrant.

By RONALD CAMPBELL

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

MarielaJob: Coffee shop managerHome: HighlandBirthplace: Puebla, MexicoAge: 29Status: UndocumentedFamily: Married

More than a hundred yearsago, there would have been noth-ing unusual about the son of anIrish dairyman immigrating tothe United States.

Dire poverty drove nearly4 million Irish here in the 19thcentury. One million came in asingle awful decade, the 1840s,the years of the potato famine.

But no onemust flee Irelandanymore. A typi-cal year’s worthof Irish immi-grants wouldbarely fill a largecollege dorm.

That makesWalter O’Brien,hacker turned

computer entrepreneur, note-worthy. O’Brien came to Americanot because of need but becauseof want. He was an exile in hisown land.

At age 9, in that most Catholicof countries, he quit going tochurch.

At 11, he began teaching him-self about computers. Telling hisfather then that he wanted towork with computers was, hesaid, like telling him he wanted tobe a ballerina.

By 12, he had hacked intoNASA’s network.

At 13, he was working for anIrish bank, doing business underhis hacker nickname, Scorpion.

At 18, he represented Ireland inthe International Olympics in In-fomatics, a competition for youngcomputer programmers.

His father, the dairy farmer,

told a television reporter at thetime, “He’s some kind of typist,but they pay him well.”

At 22, in 1997, O’Brien moved tothe United States. He has rarelyreturned home.

“If you succeed (in Ireland),there’s so much jealousy,” he said.“And if you fail, the attitude is, ‘Itold you so.’

“That was not quite me.”Since his arrival in California,

O’Brien has worked for an Oraclesubsidiary and mutual fund man-ager The Capital Group. He nowruns Scorpion Computer Servic-es, a corporate information tech-nology consultant.

O’Brien is impatient with hisadopted country’s immigrationsystem. It took 11 years for him tobecome a citizen.

He entered in 1997 on an H-1Bvisa. After four years, he earnedhis green card under a quota foraliens with “extraordinary abili-ty” – a quota so competitive thatjust one in every 3,000 immi-grants qualifies.

Then, like every other greencard recipient, he had to wait fiveyears to apply for citizenship.And then he had to wait an addi-tional year for an interview.

“Either make it tough butquick,” O’Brien said, “or don’tbother me.”

VALUED SKILLS RUNINTO BUREAUCRACY

O’Brien

Walter O’BrienJob: Business executiveHome: South PasadenaBirthplace: Wexford, IrelandAge: 35Status: Naturalized citizen Family: Single

By RONALD CAMPBELL

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

and their descendants – likeIrish, Germans, Jews and Ital-ians before them – will win po-litical and economic power.

For now, however, millions ofthem can only watch as Con-gress debates the broken immi-gration system and their future.

Since the collapse of Bush’simmigration plan in 2007, at-tempts to broker a compromisehave gone nowhere.

People on one side advocatean enforcement-only approach,saying nothing else should bedone until the border is finallysecured. People on the otherside say nothing can be done un-til the country accepts the pres-ence of millions of illegal immi-grants.

“Once polarization starts, ittends to be the opposite of a vir-tuous circle,” said Jacoby, theimmigration advocate.

Obama, she said, needs tostop attacking the Arizona im-migration law and explain whathe will do to improve enforce-ment. Republicans, she added,“need to be telling other Repub-licans, ‘Tone it down.’ ”

Krikorian, the advocate forrestrictions on immigration,said that outside Washington,the public has already adopteda calm, unpolarized stance – infavor of stronger enforcement.

Look at the changing publicreaction to employer audits,Krikorian said.

In 1999, during President BillClinton’s administration, se-nior Immigration and Natural-ization Service official Mark

Reed checked the immigrationstatus of workers at severalNebraska meatpackers. Theaudit forced 3,500 illegal work-ers to flee, disrupting businessand outraging Nebraska offi-cials. Reed, the INS and theClinton administration duckedfor cover.36

Fast-forward 10 years. In thesummer and fall of 2009, theObama administration sentaudit notices to nearly 2,000employers. It was orders ofmagnitude bigger than Reed’sbrief one-state, one-industrycampaign. Yet few objected.

“The center of gravity hasclearly moved toward more en-forcement,” Krikorian said.“Things that were unaccept-able in the past clearly arewithin the pale now.”

Reed, a consultant now, saysa crackdown on employmentcould push millions of illegalimmigrants home.

“They came here to work,”Reed said. “So you don’t (needto) arrest anybody. This is allabout jobs.”37

But James Ziglar, the for-mer INS commissioner, said anenforcement-only approachwon’t work.

“Until we reform our lawswith regard to how people gethere and how long they stay,we will never get control of im-migration,” Ziglar said.

“You can put all the guards,all the fences you want at theborder, and you can do all theworksite enforcement you can,and you will still have illegalimmigration.”38

IMMIGRANTFROM PAG E 5

CONTACT THE WRITER:

7 1 4-796-5030 or

rcampbell@ocregister.com

The Orange County Register Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010 News 71

IMMIGRATION AND THE DECISIONS AHEAD

The Register has re-ceived more than 500comments about its se-ries on immigrants

and the California economy.Here’s a sample.

‘A STATE POWEREDBY IMMIGRANTS’

(posted online Sept. 1 0, 20 1 0,published Sept. 1 2, 20 1 0)

Teamsterphilip: “Thank youfor adding relevant facts tothe discussion about immi-grants in California. TheUnited States immigrationpolicy has created a secondclass of residents who arenow called “illegal immi-grants.” One hundred yearsago we would have calledthese same people “wel-come Immigrants” becausethey filled important em-ployment gaps. The realcriminal in this scene is theemployer who knowinglyhires these immigrants.That employer enjoys thecurrent system. When heknows the person is “ille-gal” he can pay that persona lower wage, withhold ben-efits, and even eliminate re-quired safety rules becausehe knows the illegal workerwill not turn him in to au-thorities.”

Michael Sumners (via e-mail):“A story of ‘immigrants’ orthe issue of ‘immigration’ issimply what the illegal alienactivists call it to try andown the conversation [and]deflect the subject awayfrom the real issue(s) of ille-gal immigration. The issuesof legal and illegal immigra-tion are two very differentsubjects that do not belongunder the same banner.”

SouthOC: “The fact is thatthe American middle classis dying thanks to uncon-trolled immigration. Wageshave been undercut andeducational systems havebeen over burdened.”

Philip Henderson (via e-mail):“Thank you for your

thoughtful research on theissue of immigration and itseffect on the Californiaeconomy. All the rhetoricfrom politicians seems tobe based on emotion ratherthan facts. In your storyyou state the facts – peopledon’t have to like the facts,but they can use the infor-mation to craft sensiblelaws to protect our State.”

Anaheimlvr: “I am im-pressed with RonaldCampbell’s balanced re-porting of the history anddata about immigration, le-gal and illegal, in California.Unlike the many othersmaking comments, I ac-tually read the entire arti-cle. California and the U.S.have had laws restrictingimmigration which hadgreat success. Likewise,both legal and illegal immi-gration has had positiveand negative impacts uponCalifornia’s economy andsociety. Those who arguethat the only way to dealwith illegals is to deportthem are not consideringhow un-realistic and expen-sive this would be. … I sup-port both a secure borderand a pathway for citizen-ship for those who are ille-gal. This seems the mosthumane way to deal withthe problems we currentlyexperience with illegal im-migration.”

“THE LAW THAT FAILED”(posted online Sept. 1 7, 20 1 0,

published Sept. 1 9, 20 1 0)

Steve3: “Bravo! Finally anarticle that addresses theroot problem rather thanjust feeding the polariza-tion that exists on this is-sue. Immigrants are an im-portant part of our econo-my. Attempting to close thedoor on them at the borderwhile jobs are available tothem if they can cross is aclassic political ‘solution.’ ”

OCFan92648: “Good Article

with plenty of facts. Itseems pretty straightfor-ward that we need seriousworkforce enforcement tosolve this problem. I don’tunderstand how the gov-ernment (IRS) can be so dil-igent in collecting taxesfrom hard working Ameri-cans, but we can’t simplyvalidate whether someoneis in the country legally. It’spretty obvious it’s aboutmotivation and priority, notability.”

“WHO WINS? WHO LOSES?”

(posted online Sept. 24, 20 1 0,published Sept. 26, 20 1 0)

Rdeight: “What? We all losefrom mass in-migration toCalifornia. Jammed free-ways and highways (excepton illegal-alien boycott day,when illegal aliens and theirsympathizers stay home).Schools, even in Caucasianareas, that are up to 93%Hispanic, where assembliesand parent-teacher nights

have translators because sofew speak English. Strainedsocial services and emer-gency rooms that are likewaiting rooms in ThirdWorld hospitals.”

CMGirl: “Something I have ahuge issue with is havingthe culture and traditions ofmy country changed be-cause of a huge influx ofpeople in the country ille-gally. The American cultureis one of assimilation. Wehave people from many

countries here but for themost part we all try to be-come American. We speaka common language – welove our country – we areloyal to our country, etc. Il-legal aliens spoil that proc-ess in so many ways. Someof them assimilate butmany of them have no de-sire to.”

Fstedie: “Wow, a well-rounded and unbiased arti-cle on immigration fromOCR. Kudos.”

Readers sound off on investigative series