North America is increasingly diverse, with new immigrants from across the globe adding to a dominant culture that has European roots.

Immigration has played a central role in populating both the United States and Canada. Most people in North America descend from European immigrants, but there are many who have roots in Africa, Asia, Middle and South America, and Oceania. New waves of migration from Middle and South America and parts of Asia promise to make North America a region where people of non-European or mixed descent will become the majority (Figure 2.28). Most major North American cities are already characterized by ethnic diversity, and in some, recent immigration has led to near majorities of foreign-born residents. Houston, Texas, for example, was the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area in the United States in 2010, with 40 percent of the population Caucasian, 36.7 percent Latino, 16.8 percent African American, and 6.5 percent Asian. 50. IMMIGRATION AND POPULATION REPORT

In the United States, the spatial pattern of immigration is also changing. For decades, immigrants settled mainly in coastal or border states such as New York, Florida, Texas, or California. However, since about 1990, immigrants have been increasingly settling in interior states such as Illinois, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah (see Figure 2.28). The influence of immigrants can also be seen in many aspects of life in North America, including the popularity of ethnic cuisines (Figure 2.29).

Why Do People Decide to Immigrate to North America? The decision to leave one’s homeland is usually not an easy one. There are almost always push factors that cause people to consider the drastic move of leaving family and friends and familiar places to strike out into the unknown, with what are usually limited resources. These push factors can be civil or political unrest, or some kind of discrimination, but most often the lack of economic opportunity and the curbs on upward mobility that cause people to overcome the natural resistance to leaving home. Recently, the forces of globalization have often been the root causes of these push factors. For example, when NAFTA encouraged large U.S. agribusinesses to relocate to Mexico to grow corn on a massive scale, small Mexican corn farmers were dislodged from land they had traditionally worked; others found they could not compete on price and had to give up farming. Yet all these farmers had families to feed and educate, so often fathers and their brothers and sons migrated north in search of work. In Texas, California, or Tennessee, they worked in construction or as field laborers, lived frugally, and sent most of their earnings home. Some entered the United States legally, but many—because of the complexities and costs of getting papers to immigrate—entered illegally. Legal U.S. immigration visas are available in far fewer numbers than both the potential immigrants and the jobs available for them to fill.

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Do New Immigrants Cost U.S. Taxpayers Too Much Money?

Many North Americans are concerned that immigrants burden schools, hospitals, and government services. And yet numerous studies have shown that, over the long run, immigrants contribute more to the U.S. economy than they cost. Legal immigrants have passed an exhaustive screening process that assures they will be self-supporting. As a result, most start to work and pay taxes within a week or two of their arrival in the country. Those immigrants, who draw on taxpayer-funded services such as welfare, tend to be legal refugees fleeing a major crisis in their homeland; they are dependent only in the first few years after they arrive. More than one-third of immigrant families are firmly within the middle class, with incomes of $45,000 or more. Even undocumented (illegal) immigrants play important roles as payers of payroll taxes, sales taxes, and indirect property taxes through rent. Because they fear deportation, illegal immigrants are also the least likely to take advantage of taxpayer-funded social services.

On average, immigrants are healthier and live longer than native U.S. residents, according to a 2004 study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They therefore represent less drain on the health care and social service systems than do native residents. The NIH attributes this difference to a stronger work ethic, a healthier lifestyle that includes more daily physical activity, and the more nutritious eating patterns of new residents compared to those of U.S. society at large. Unfortunately, these healthy practices tend to diminish the longer immigrants are in the country, and the more healthy status does not carry over to immigrants’ children, who are nearly as likely to suffer from obesity as native-born children.

Do Immigrants Take Jobs Away from U.S. Citizens? The least educated, least skilled American workers are the most likely to end up competing with immigrants for jobs. In a local area, a large pool of immigrant labor can drive down wages in fields like roofing, landscaping, and general construction. Immigrants with little education now fill many of the very lowest-paid service, construction, and agricultural jobs.

It is often argued that U.S. citizens have rejected these jobs because of their low pay, which results in immigrants being needed to fill the jobs. Others say that these jobs might pay more and thus be more attractive to U.S. citizens if there were not a large pool of immigrants ready to do the work for less pay. Research has failed to clarify the issue. Some studies show that immigrants have driven down wages by 7.4 percent for U.S. natives without a high school diploma. However, other studies show no drop in wages at all. Employers across the country speak of the superior work ethic of immigrants, especially in the construction industry, which makes them happy to pay these workers decent wages.

Professionals in the United States occasionally compete with highly trained immigrants for jobs, but such competition is usually in occupations where there is a scarcity of native-born people who are trained to fill these positions (Figure 2.30). The computer engineering industry, for example, regularly recruits abroad in such places as India, where there is a surplus of highly trained workers. In this case, it is unclear whether these skilled immigrants are driving down wages. Until the recession caused jobs to be eliminated, it was quite clear that there were not enough sufficiently trained Americans to fill the available positions. In fact, India’s growth in IT jobs and related services has been so impressive that many who came to North America to work in these jobs have elected to go back to India to work in the burgeoning IT industry in India, a development that has not been welcomed by their American employers.

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Are Too Many Immigrants Being Admitted to the United States? Many people are concerned that immigrants are coming in such large numbers that they will strain resources here. There is some validity to this. Immigrants and their children accounted for 78 percent of the U.S. population growth in the 1990s. At the current rate of entry, by the year 2050, the U.S. population would reach 422.6 million (down 20 million from estimates in 2008), with immigration accounting for the majority of the increase. But one of the problems with making these projections is that no one really knows how much undocumented (illegal) immigration there is. Most research indicates that it has reached unprecedented levels over the past 30 years, possibly exceeding legal immigration rates since the mid-1990s. While estimates of the illegal immigrant population currently in the United States range from 7 to 20 million, reports in 2012 indicated that migration—legal and illegal—was down to less than half that of previous years.

Undocumented immigrants tend to lack skills, and they are not screened for criminal background, as are all legal immigrants. However, research also shows that undocumented immigrants are not only less likely to partake of social services, but also less likely to participate in criminal behavior than the general population, with only tiny percentages of them having committed offenses. Further analysis of the 2010 census will help researchers formulate factually based conclusions about the effects of illegal immigration.

47. AMERICAN CENSUS REPORT

51. IMMIGRATION LABOR SHORTAGE REPORT

Research shows that the decision to migrate without legal documentation is a very difficult one, undertaken because of severely limited economic, educational, and social opportunities at home. Few Americans are aware that children of all ages get caught up in these migration patterns, and their migratory experiences remain largely unrecorded. Despite tougher border security and declining adult immigration nationally and internationally, the numbers of unaccompanied children stopped at the border continually increase, illustrating yet one more of the complexities of immigration.

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Despite strong scientific evidence to the contrary, people across the world still perceive skin color and other visible anatomical features to be significant markers of intelligence and ability. This racialized view of skin color is partially a remnant of European colonialism, which was based on assigning some to a perpetually low status while giving others privilege. As discussed previously (see Chapter 1), the science of biology tells us there is no scientific validity to such assumptions and practices. The same is true for ethnicity, which is the cultural counterpart to race, in that people may ascribe overwhelming (and unwarranted) significance to cultural characteristics such as religion, family structure, or gender customs. Thus, race and ethnicity are very important sociocultural factors not because they have to be, but because people make them so.

Extending Equal Opportunity Numerous surveys show that a large majority of Americans of all backgrounds favor equal opportunities for minority groups. Nonetheless, in both the United States and Canada, many middle-class African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos (and to a lesser extent, Asian Americans) report experiencing both overt and covert discrimination that affects them economically as well as socially and psychologically. And indeed, even a cursory examination of statistics on access to health care, education, and financial services shows that, on average, Americans have quite unequal experiences based on their racial and ethnic characteristics.

Diversity is increasing across North America as is the acceptance of diversity. Take, for example, the enthusiasm with which various cultural festivals are attended by Americans regardless of their ethnic heritage (Figure 2.31). Still, the issue of race remains important in both the United States and Canada, where whiteness is considered the norm and African Americans, Native Americans and First Nations people, and Latinos often find themselves seen as exceptions to the norm. Prejudice has clearly hampered the ability of these three groups to reach social and economic equality with Americans of other ethnic backgrounds. In the United States—and to a considerably lesser degree in Canada—despite the removal of legal barriers to equality, these groups (with the notable exception of Asians) still have higher poverty rates and thus lower life expectancies, higher infant mortality rates, lower levels of academic achievement, and more unemployment than other groups.

Figure 2.32 shows the changes in the ethnic composition of the North American population from 1950 to 2010, and the projected changes for 2050. In 2001, Latinos overtook African Americans as the largest minority group in the United States. Because of a higher birth rate and a high immigration rate, the Latino population increased by 58 percent in the 1990s, to 14.7 percent of the total population by 2010. By 2010, Asian Americans made up just 5 percent of the U.S. population, but their numbers increased by 80 percent between 1990 and 2010. Of the foreign-born population in Canada in 1981, Asians made up 14.1 percent and those of European birth, 66.7 percent. Asians appear to be the fastest-growing nonnative-born group in both countries. It is estimated that if present trends continue, Asians will comprise 55 percent of North Americans born abroad by 2031.

Income Discrepancies Over the past few decades, many non–Euro-Americans and those of mixed heritage have joined the middle class, achieving success in the highest ranks of government and business. In particular, African Americans have completed advanced degrees in large numbers, and more than one-third now live in the suburbs. Yet, as overall groups, African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans remain the country’s poorest and least educated people (Figure 2.33).

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The Culture of Poverty Is anything other than prejudice holding back some in these ethnic minority groups? Some social scientists suggest that persistently disadvantaged Americans of all ethnic backgrounds may suffer from a culture of poverty, meaning that poverty itself forces coping strategies that are counterproductive to social advancement. Plans to get higher education, for example, must be abandoned because of lack of funds. This and low social status have bred the perception among the poor that there is no hope for those trapped in the culture of poverty and therefore no point in trying to succeed. This perception is perpetuated and even exaggerated by a daily existence on the fringes of American mainstream life. The reality is that these poorest people rarely encounter examples of success, and they have few opportunities to complete a collegiate education, be hired into jobs with livable wages, or find a decent dwelling.

One component in the culture of poverty is the growing numbers of low-income, single-parent families. In 2005, only 23 percent of Euro-American children and 17 percent of Asian American children lived in single-parent families, while 65 percent of African Americans, 49 percent of Native Americans, and 36 percent of Latinos did. The reasons for these stark differences are often systemic. For example, many U.S. states prohibit or severely limit the amount of income support allowed to intact families who fall on hard times. In these states, it is easier to qualify for welfare if the family is missing one parent. Fathers who lose their jobs may simply absent themselves so the mothers can qualify for assistance. In these situations, children usually stay with their mothers, and fathers often are no longer active in their support and upbringing. This perpetuates the idea that males are not active, participating family members. The assistance packages always fall far short of meeting actual needs, and the enormous responsibilities of both child rearing and breadwinning are often left in the hands of undereducated young mothers who, being in need themselves, are unable to help their children advance.

Another particularly geographic aspect of the culture of poverty is that it is part of a larger problem of economic and social spatial segregation based on class. In both the United States and Canada, the increasingly prosperous middle class, of whatever race or ethnicity, has moved to the suburbs—even to gated residential enclaves. Their children seldom encounter children from poorer families. Those who are successful have difficulty developing empathy for the poor because they do not know any poor people; in turn, the very poor rarely have the chance to associate with models of economic success.

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Because so many early immigrants to North America were Christian in their home countries, Christianity is currently the predominant religious affiliation in North America. In surveys taken in 2012, seventy-three percent of those living in the United States identified themselves as Christian, as did 67 percent of those in Canada. In the United States, most Christians are Protestants; in Canada, most are Catholic. Despite the numerical dominance of Christianity, about 15 percent of people in both countries reported no religious affiliation. This group includes atheists, agnostics, and the majority who simply claim no religion by choice. Minority religions are growing in both countries. Virtually every medium-sized city across the region has at least one synagogue, mosque, and Buddhist or Hindu temple. In some localities, adherents of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism are numerous enough to constitute a prominent cultural influence (see, for example, California and Ontario in Figure 2.34).

The Geography of Christian Subgroups There are many versions of Christianity in North America, and their geographic distributions are closely linked to the settlement patterns of the immigrants who brought them here (see Figure 2.34). Roman Catholicism dominates in regions where Latino, French, Irish, and Italian people have settled—in southern Louisiana, the Southwest, and the far Northeast in the United States, and in Québec and other parts of Canada. Lutheranism is dominant where Scandinavian people have settled, primarily in Minnesota and the eastern Dakotas. Mormons dominate in Utah.

Baptists, particularly Southern Baptists and other evangelical Christians, are prominent in the “Bible Belt,” which stretches across the Southeast from Texas and Oklahoma to the Eastern Seaboard. Evangelical Christianity is such an important part of community life in the South that frequently the first question newcomers to the region are asked is what church they attend.

The Relationship of Religion and Politics Just how interactive religion and politics should be in North American life has long been a controversial issue in the United States, more so than in Canada. This is true in large part because the framers of the U.S. Constitution, in an effort to ensure religious freedom, supported the idea that church and state should remain separate. In the past three decades, however, many conservative Christians have successfully pushed for a closer integration of religion and public life. Their political goals include banning abortion, promoting prayer in the public schools, teaching the biblical version of creation instead of teaching evolution, and preventing gays and lesbians from participating openly in the public sphere and marrying each other.

New immigrants have brought their own faiths and belief systems, and they are contributing to the debate about religion and public life. Muslims, as yet a tiny minority, have had trouble gaining the same rights as other religious minorities, such as Buddhists or Jews. Some immigrants leave their traditional faith and adopt another. Such is the case with the 15 percent of Latino immigrants to the United States who have left the Roman Catholic faith, either while still in their home country or after immigrating, and are now evangelical Christians. In Canada, Catholicism is growing.

National surveys have consistently indicated that a substantial majority of North Americans favor the separation of church and state and support personal choice in belief and behavior.

The family is often seen as endangered by North America’s fast-changing culture. A century ago, most North Americans lived in large extended families of several generations. Families pooled their incomes and shared chores. Aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, and grandparents were almost as likely to provide daily care for a child as were the mother and father. Though it has long been present in society, the nuclear family, consisting of a married father and mother and their children, became especially widespread in the post-1900 industrial age.

The Nuclear Family Becomes a Shaky Norm Beginning after World War I, and especially after World War II, many young people left their large kin groups on the farm and migrated to distant cities, where they established new nuclear families. Soon suburbia, with its many similar single-family homes, seemed to provide the perfect domestic space for the emerging nuclear family.

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This compact family type suited industry and business because it had no firm ties to other relatives and so was portable. Many North Americans born since 1950 moved as many as ten times before reaching adulthood. The grandparents, aunts, and uncles who were left behind missed helping raise the younger generation and had no one to look after them in old age. This separation of older from younger generations is one reason nursing homes for the elderly proliferated.

In the 1970s, the nuclear family encountered challenges from many areas, including changing gender roles. Suburban sprawl meant onerous commutes to jobs for men and long, lonely days at home for women. Women began to want their own careers, and rising consumption patterns made their incomes increasingly useful to family economies. By the 1980s, seventy percent of working-age women were in the paid workforce, compared with 30 percent of their mothers’ generation.

Once employed, however, a woman could not easily move to a new job location if she had an upwardly mobile husband. Also, working women could not manage all of the family’s housework and child care, as well as a job. Some married men began to handle part of the household management and child care, but the demand for commercial child care grew sharply. With family no longer around to strengthen the marital bond and help with child care, and with the new possibility women in unhappy marriages had of being able to financially support themselves, divorce rates rose into the mid-1970s, while birth rates fell. Those who married after 1975, however, have had a slowly declining rate of divorce. This may be related to the growing number of couples with college educations, as this group is less likely to divorce.

The Current Diversity of American Family Types There is no longer a typical American household, only an increasing diversity of household forms and ways of family life (Figure 2.35). In 1960, the nuclear family—households consisting of heterosexually married couples with children—comprised 74.3 percent of U.S. households. This number declined to 56 percent by 1990 and to 49.3 percent by 2010. Family households headed by a single person (female or male) rose from 10.7 percent in 1960, to 15 percent in 1990, to 18 percent in 2010. Nonfamily households (unrelated by blood or marriage) rose from 15 percent of the total in 1960, to 29 percent in 1990, to nearly 34 percent in 2010.

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While most of these families function well, a few of these new forms may not provide adequately for the welfare of children. In 2006, more than 29 percent of U.S. children lived in single-parent households. Although most single parents are committed to rearing their children well, the responsibilities can be overwhelming.

Children and Poverty in North America Single-parent families tend to be hampered by economic hardship and lack of education (Figure 2.36). Young women head the vast majority of single-parent households, and their incomes, on average, are less than two-thirds those of single male heads of household. Low income and low levels of education are closely linked, as Figure 2.36B shows. One result of the pattern of single-parent households having lower education levels and incomes is that children in the United States are disproportionately poor. In 2010 in the United States, 22 percent of children aged 0 to 17 (16.4 million) lived in poverty, whereas only 11.4 percent of adults did. In Canada, 14.2 percent of children were poor. By comparison, in Sweden, just 2.4 percent of children lived in poverty; in Ireland, 12.4 percent; and in Poland, 12.7 percent.

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