USA Today: Family, better jobs pull Mexicans to USA

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051207/ts_usatoday/familybetterjobspullmexicanstousa;_ylt=AmecnGK_gHN.7IT8vkE_27Cs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-

Most of the estimated 6.3 million Mexicans who are in the USA illegally came because of family connections and better job opportunities here, not because they were unemployed or destitute in their homeland, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The survey of 4,836 Mexicans by the Pew Hispanic Center shows that only 5% of respondents who have been here two years or less were jobless in Mexico. The center is a non-profit research group in Washington.

Other highlights of the survey:

• Recent immigrants are better educated than those who have been here longer, reflecting higher educational levels in Mexico.

• Undocumented Mexican immigrants have little problem getting work. The unemployment rate among those surveyed is about 15% in the first six months they're in the USA but drops to about 5% after that. However, work is not always stable and tends to be low-paying, Kochhar says.

• Newcomers are less likely to work in farming than those who came in previous decades, he says. More work in hospitality, construction and manufacturing.

• Because they go where the jobs are, more Mexicans are flocking to New York to work in hotels and restaurants and to Atlanta, Dallas and Raleigh, where construction is booming.

• Family networks are key to jobs. More than 80% of respondents said they have a relative other than a spouse or child in the USA.


Mods: Do bullet points count as separate paragraphs or do all the bullet points count as one paragraph? Don't want to infringe on copyright.

Let alone his own country, so why do we have to pick up the slack?

in the dead of summer, for that matter,changing sheets in the Hotels. We had a farmer on tv last week saying how he had an American employee once, for a couple of hours.It gets to be 110 in the shade here. Americans will not do it. Roofing , neither.

George Lloyd Murphy (July 4, 1902 – May 3, 1992) was an American dancer, actor and politician.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Murphy

He was born in New Haven, Connecticut of Irish Catholic extraction, and attended Yale University. He worked as a tool maker for the Ford Motor Company, as a miner, a real estate agent, and a night club dancer.

n the 1950s, Murphy entered politics as chairman of the California Republican State Central Committee. In 1964 he was elected to the United States Senate; he defeated Pierre Salinger, who had been appointed several months earlier to serve the remainder of the late Clair Engle's unexpired term. Murphy served from January 1, 1965 to January 3, 1971.

Murphy had stated that Mexicans were genetically suited to farm labor; because they were "built lower to the ground," it was supposedly "easier for them to stoop.


Ronald Reagan once famously referred to George Murphy as "...my John the Baptist" (in a political sense).

Anglos whould be able to work in Iowa's meat packing houses, since they are expert killers, but, Mexicans are imported for those jobs, too

working in packing houses.

Funny, I used to work for IBP in Dakota City back in the 1970s. They had Mexicans there then, too, in fact, they even had company houses for them behind the plant. It's where I first starting to learn Spanish. The white guys were always bitching about how tough it was, and the Mexicans were grinning, sharpening their knives, and saying "facil dinero." ("easy money")

enough money to work in a packing house. what an AWFUL job, blood and death, odors.

i imagine some (americans) would tho.

Americans won't do roofing? Makes you wonder how any homes ever get built in areas of the country with no illegal population. Also, from the article:

"Newcomers are less likely to work in farming than those who came in previous decades, he says. More work in hospitality, construction and manufacturing."

Many Americans are more than willing to do construction and restaurant work.

Not here in the desert. The only Anglos working on construction sites around here are operating engineers and a few electricians- and supervisors

Asks I.

"anglo" refers to all white people except whites of Spanish descent.

Illegal immigrants have no protections under the law. For example, the illegal workers who did cleanup work in NOLA and were stiffed. I think if I were a native Mexican I'd rather stay put and take my chances in Mexico, or maybe try to emigrate to Venezuela.

That this country isn't the land of opportunity where the streets are paved in gold. Katrina showed the world that we have a big problem with poverty.

They've been coming since WWII, at least. No the streets aren't paved in gold, but they are paved and that's more than what they have in parts of Mexico. Alot of people in this country need to travel abroad for a reality check.

Change the date to 1850, change "Mexican" to "Irish and Germans"

Great-great grandpa came from Germany in 1851. I'll bet the same things were said about the Germans at the time.