The following is a reprint of the lead article in the National Council for
Research on Women's Issues Quarterly, volume 1, number 2, focused on
immigrant women and girls.  For more information, contact Lorraine Kenny,
coordinating editor, National Council for Research on Women, 530 Broadway,
10th floor, New York, NY 10012. 212-274-0730; fax 212-274-0821; email
kenny@is.nyu.edu


The Feminization of Immigration:
Give us your tired, your hungry, your poor, no more


Among their election strategies, proponents of Californias "Save Our
State" initiative deployed the image of a young, brown-skinned, pregnant,
single mother from Mexico living illegally in the barrios of Los Angeles,
sending her children to public schools, and making her way to the
state-funded health clinic for free prenatal care. The approach worked.
Californians passed the initiative, Proposition 187, by a three-to- two
margin. Whites constituted 75 percent of the voting electorate, which cast
its ballots in favor of cutting off social services like schooling and
nonemergency medical care to undocumented immigrants and their children.1

Why was the idea of this immigrant woman and her children so effective in
getting out the vote?

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Gendered Transitions: Mexican
Experiences of Immigration, contends that the recent anti-immigration
campaign in California and in the nation at large scapegoats women because
women are key players in settling and building communities. "The
xenophobia of the early 80s focused on labor, while the more recent
backlash against immigrants focuses on reproduction, or everything it
takes to bring a new generation into the labor force," says
Hondagneu-Sotelo.

Since the passage of the first immigration restrictions in the
late-nineteenth century, immigration opponents in the US have blamed
"unchecked" immigration for the countrys so-called overpopulation and the
depletion of its social and natural resources. One such group, the
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), played a significant
role in promoting California's Proposition 187 and in fostering similar
anti-immigrant forces in other states, including Florida, Arizona, and
Texas. Founded in 1979, by former president of Zero Population Growth,
John Tanton, FAIR is a national educational and lobbying network
"concerned with the adverse effects of out-of-control immigration." The
group believes that immigration causes overpopulation, which in turn
encroaches on the countrys fragile coastal wetlands and consumes its prime
farmlands. Likewise, immigration fuels unemployment, depresses wages, and
overburdens the USs "sophisticated social safety net."2 With a membership
of over 50,000, FAIR is living proof that "invasion rhetoric" sells.

Who overpopulates a nation more than an influx of young, nonwhite women?
Or so the argument goes.

The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 ostensibly sought to
limit immigration in the name of safeguarding jobs for US-born laborers by
penalizing employers who hire undocumented workers.  However, efforts by a
strong agricultural lobby saw to it that their sector of the workforce,
the mostly male Mexican and Central American seasonal employees, could now
apply for permanent resident status under a Special Agricultural Workers
provision. As a result of what amounted to IRCAs gender-biased amnesty
program, more Mexican women and their children began to cross the border
without legal authorization.3 Some came to join their newly legalized
husbands and fathers and some to fill the growing demand for female
workers in the hidden service economy.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) calculates that between
1980 and 1990, the total population of unauthorized immigrants in the US
hovered at 2.6 million, and following the 1986 IRCA amnesty program, the
number of unauthorized immigrants in California decreased. As such, an INS
report concludes, "Population size is not the primary reason for the
greater concern about unauthorized immigrants...in California in 1994."4

Likewise, it is not true that immigrants drain more than they contribute
to the economy. Recent Urban Institute studies show that immigrants pay
significantly more in taxes than they cost in services: when all is said
and done, they generate a $25 to $30 billion annual net surplus.5
Similarly, immigrants create more jobs than they take. And as factory
workers, housekeepers, and home-based child-care and health-care
providers, immigrants fill low-wage, no-benefits jobs that the native
population doesnt want, while providing needed services that substantially
contribute to middle-class quality of life. Researchers also project that
as baby boomers come of age and start to cash in on their entitlements,
employed young-adult immigrants will ultimately keep the Social Security
system solvent.6

So whats really going on? Why all the public outcry over immigration, and
why are women bearing the brunt of the attacks?

"The easiest thing for a politician to do is blame immigrant women and
children because they dont vote,"  says Wendy Walker, author of the
forthcoming The Other Side of the Asian American Academic Success Story.
Walker suggests that singling out women in the anti-immigration/social
services debate masks the real problem: the graying of America. The Center
on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, DC reports that in 1993,
nearly two-thirds of the federal Medicaid budget underwrote the costs of
providing health care to the elderly. In 1994, the Congressional Budget
Office estimated that cutting off Medicaid to immigrants would only save
the federal government two billion dollars in a budget that nears 100
billion. In light of these numbers and the fact that the elderly represent
a solid and consistent voting bloc, targeting immigrant women and children
is politically expedient.

Class Comforts

Ironically, immigrant women increasingly care for our aging population as
well as our children through informal, private-sector employment. While
recent US Department of Labor statistics show a shrinking pool of domestic
workers--942,000 in 1983 to 755,000 in 1991--they also show a rise in the
number of women working. In 1991, nearly two-thirds of all women age 16
and over were in the labor force; in 1992, more than 16 million mothers
with pre-school children worked full time.7 Such figures beg the question:
Who is home cleaning the house, making the meals, and taking care of the
kids?

The "Nannygate" scandal of 1993--set off when a congressional committee
discovered that Clintons first nominee for attorney general, Zo=EB Baird,
had hired two illegal Peruvian immigrants to work in her home-- vividly
answered the question. The International Labour Office estimates that more
than 350,000 illegal immigrant women work as domestics in the current US
market.8 Though these women are ultimately statistically invisible, the
effects of their labor are more than apparent in the lives of professional
families throughout the US.

Among legal immigrants, women significantly outnumbered their male
compatriots in 1993 for the first time since the early 1980s. A study by
the Rand Corporation attributes this demographic shift to the fact that
women can easily find jobs in the unregulated private sector.9 Like their
illegal sisters, documented women domestics remain hidden from government
statisticians because many of their employers pay them under the table and
do not pay Social Security taxes on their wages.

What is known about the last decade paints a polarized picture of the US
economy. The Women's Bureau of the US Department of Labor documents that
though womens overall earnings grew faster than mens, the number of women
living in poverty skyrocketed and the disparity between white and black
workers of either gender also grew. "Whats true in todays economy is a
greater inequality of income among women.  Anytime you create a situation
where rich women can buy poor womens labor, you create divisions among
women," cautions economist Nancy Folbre.

The Center for Immigrants Rights (CIR) in New York City is one of several
organizations around the country that advocates for immigrant household
workers through its Workers' Rights Project. "This is a worldwide women's
issue, for household workers are increasingly immigrant women from the
Caribbean, from Eastern Europe, Central America, and the Philippines. For
these women work, any kind of work in the developed world, still means a
step up from the limited opportunities at home,"  argues Ursula Levelt,
director of education at CIR.10 Through a joint project with NOW Legal
Defense and Education Fund, Nannies, Caretakers, Housekeepers: You Have
Rights!, CIR distributes information to immigrant women and their
employers about domestic-workers' rights under US immigration and labor
laws.

The global picture

As Levelt suggests, womens immigration experiences in the US are part of a
complex global story that has been in the making for some time. The
international debt crisis; trade agreements; foreign assistance programs;
the end of the cold war; civil, ethnic, and religious strife;
government-sponsored human rights violations; famine; AIDS and other
infectious diseases; floods, earthquakes, and massive fires; industrial
disasters; overpopulation; and economic inflations, recessions, and
embargoes have all set the stage for an unprecedented number of people to
leave their homes in pursuit of safety, economic stability, and cultural
freedoms. The Womens Commission for Refugee Women and Children reports
that in 1993, 80 percent of the worlds 44 million refugees were women and
their dependent children either displaced within their own countries or
compelled by dire living conditions to migrate across international
borders.11

A statement issued by the 1994 American Assembly on World Migration and US
Policy, Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders, notes that during the cold
war, US migration policy intended to stabilize "friendly" governments like
El Salvador and destabilize "unfriendly"  ones, like Cuba.12 Recent US
military interventions in Haiti, along with the Clinton administrations
struggle to rescue Mexicos plummeting currency and its failed attempts to
leverage peace treaties and work with UN forces in the former Yugoslavia
underscore the degree to which the US still bears considerable
responsibility for fostering or disrupting global stability in the
post-cold war era.

US domestic and foreign policies play an instrumental role in setting
international populations in motion--a fact largely missing from current
state and federal immigration debates.  "We have chosen to not view
ourselves as part of the international situation," says Wendy Walker.
Such blind spots make it easier to scapegoat certain groups of people
rather than address the larger national and global policy issues.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Given that the world has undergone major political and social shifts since
the US last recast its immigration policies in 1986 and 1990, it is not
surprising that the nation is currently embroiled in a battle over whom to
welcome and how to welcome them. The legacy of US immigration policy is
deeply entrenched in racial, ethnic, class, and gender battles. Starting
with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, immigration legislation ebbed and
flowed around national-origins quotas and prohibitions, until the 1965
Immigration and Nationality Act made it illegal to base INS policy on
nationality, race, or ancestry. As current anti-immigrant forces
increasingly hold pregnant immigrant women and their children responsible
for the nation's woes, it becomes clear that race, ethnicity, class, and
gender still motivate the discussion. Congressional leaders underscore
this connection in their strident calls for cutting welfare benefits to
immigrant and low-income women of color.

Organizations throughout the country are starting to forge links between
immigrant populations and US- born communities of color. For example, the
Filipina Career Awareness Program in Union City, CA partners immigrant
with US-born Filipina girls to strengthen the leadership, academic, and
social skills of girls in both groups. (See IQ, Girls Report.) The new
Workers Center Movement unifies immigrant and nonimmigrant workers around
labor and community concerns. "The Workers' Center model functions across
racial, ethnic, and regional differences. It allows for diversity,"
explains JoAnn Lum of the Chinese Workers Association in New York City's
Chinatown. (See IQ, Working Trends.) Leni Marin of the Family Violence
Prevention Fund in San Francisco reports that the battered immigrant
womens provision made it into the 1994 Violence Against Womens Act because
immigrant-rights and anti-domestic violence advocates worked together.
(See IQ, Policy in Action I.) And, in the wake of the passage of
Proposition 187, immigrant advocacy organizations and progressive social
service groups in California are shoring up their joint opposition to
welfare reform proposals currently making their way through Congress.
(See IQ, Special Report.)

These and other programs underscore the fact that the immigration
debate is as much about community issues and values as it is about the
economy, legislation, and the INS. As Pierrette Hondagneu- Sotelo asserts,
"Political and economic transformations may set the stage for migration,
but they do not write the script."13 How factory-owners and professional
families treat the immigrant women they employ affects the day-to-day
lives of individual women workers as well as public perceptions of
immigrants and immigration. Likewise, understanding how the national
discussion positions immigrant women as the literal and figurative bearers
of culture makes it clear that the current anti-immigration fervor is not
just about demographics and labor markets; it is about how we see
ourselves as a nation at home and abroad.


1B. Drummond Ayres Jr., "Californians Pass Measure on Aliens; Courts Bar
It," New York Times, Thursday,
November 10, 1994: B7.

2.Federation for American Immigration Reform, "Are You Concerned About
Immigration? You Should Be."
Brochure.

3.Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Gendered Transitions: Mexican Experiences of=

Immigration (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1994), 26.

4.Robert Warren, "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population
Residing in the United States, by
Country of Origin and State of Residence: October 1992." Immigration and
Naturalization Services, Statistics
Division, April 29, 1994. Photocopy, 23, 21.

5."A Sourcebook for the Immigration Debate," Urban Institute Policy and
Research Report volume 24,
number 2 (Summer 1994): 21.

6.David E. Hayes-Bautista, Werner O. Schink, and Jorge Chapa, The Burden
of Support: Young Latinos in an
Aging Society (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988).

7.US Department of Labor, Womens Bureau, 1993 Handbook on Women Workers:
Trends & Issues
(Washington, DC: US Department of Labor, 1994), 19, 1.

8.Peter Stalker, The Work of Strangers: A Survey of International Labour
Migration (Geneva, Switzerland:
International Labour Office, 1994), 149.

9.Frank D. Bean, Barry Edmonston, Jeffrey S. Passel, Undocumented
Migration to the United States: IRCA
and the Experience of the 1980s (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1990).

10.Ursula Levelt, "Household Work: The Oldest Sweatshop," Women &
Philanthropy News volume 17,
number 3 (Fall/Winter 1994): S4.

11.Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Annual Report 1993,
2. According to the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in the 1970s there were
approximately 2.7 million refugees
worldwide, and in the 1980s, 8.2 million. Sima Wali, "Developing
Gender-Based Program and Donor Policies
as if Refugee and Displaced Women Mattered," (Washington, DC: Refugee
Women in Development, 1994).
Photocopy. 1.

12.Threatened Peoples, Threatened Borders: World Migration and US Policy.
Final report of the 86th
American Assembly, (November 10-13, 1994), 8.

13.Hondagneu-Sotelo, 187.