Characteristics of Eastern European Immigration in the ...

Characteristics of Eastern European Immigration in the United States. (22-SEP-08) Journ... Page 1 of 13

Characteristics of Eastern European Immigration in the United States.(Report)

Source: Journal of Comparative Family Studies Publication Date: 22-SEP-08

INTRODUCTION

In the last centuries, Eastern Europe has been characterized by dramatic socio-political and economic transformations. Countries were formed and revised, political ideologies were imposed and then dropped leaving lasting marks on individuals and families. Immigration from that region towards United States mirrors this region's course of events, registering various trends throughout the history. The recent overall increase in the number of immigrants in the US has been calling for more research on the immigrant adaptation processes. Although the literature on some immigrant groups has been enriched in the past years, the research on Eastern European (EE) immigrants has been lacking. This may be explained by the fact, that the communist regimes of more than half a century significantly limited the emigration from this region. The fall of communism in late 1980s and the post-communist socioeconomic and political transition determined a resurgence of EE immigrants as a new phenomenon and require their systematic study. Examining EE immigrants will increase the understanding of today's diverse immigrant population and their adaptation in the host society.

The purpose of this article is to facilitate an understanding of the characteristics of Eastern European immigration. Systematic research on EE immigrants can help advance the current knowledge on Eastern European immigrants and how they adapt to the United States. As such, the goal of the study is to examine Eastern European immigrants' human capital (education level), length of US residence and their adaptation, as measured by income and possession of health insurance.

FACTORS IMPACTING THE EASTERN EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION PROCESS

Immigration Policies

The immigration process is determined largely by the immigration laws of the receiving countries. These policies regulate the characteristics of the immigrant cohorts, indicating how many people are allowed to immigrate, their nationalities, and their human capital (education levels, occupations). Following is a brief summary of these policies, with a focus on their impact on Eastern European immigration.

Until the later 1800s, immigrants entered freely into the United States. Later on, several immigration acts in 1875, 1903, and 1917 limited the number of immigrants on a variety of moral, economic and physical grounds (Edmonston, and Passel, 1994; U.S. INS, 1991). Until 1860, almost all immigrants to US were from Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. After 1860, a growing number came form Scandinavia, Asia, and South America. Another shift occurred in the 1880s with a considerably increase in the number of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, mainly from Austria-Hungary, Italy, Greece, Poland, and Russia peaking with several years of over one million per year in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Immigration lessened during the World War I but increased again after the war (Edmonston, and Passel, 1994; U.S. INS, 1991).

In 1921 the Quota Act was passed which limited immigration to 3 percent of the foreign-born population by national origin groups in the US. This restricted sharply the number of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (and favored those from Western Europe since these were the largest groups in the US). After the World War II changes were made again to the immigration laws. The 1952 Act introduced a preference structure with separate categories for types of relatives and worker skills, but it retained the national origins quotas. In 1965 amendments eliminated the national origins quotas and gave preferences to family members of US citizens and legal residents. While before 1965 the immigration was predominantly from Europe, after that the immigration from Asia and Latin America has steadily increased, and that from Europe decreased. The Immigration Act of 1990 revised the immigration laws, supporting family reunification, imposing labor shortages-restructuring the number of visas for unskilled workers and increasing the number of visas for priority workers and professionals with US job offers, encouraging entrepreneurial immigrants (investors), and promoting a more diverse immigrant stream by using a ''diversity visas" for underrepresented countries, Eastern European countries being included (Edmonston, and Passel, 1994; U.S. INS, 1991).

Contemporary Eastern European Context

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During the communist time in Eastern Europe, the immigration to US came mainly from capitalist countries. Also, the United States was more involved in capitalist countries than in the socialist ones (Yang, 1995). The patterns of immigration to the United States are related to the U.S. military, political, economic and cultural interests and involvement in the sending regions and countries (Rumbaut and Portes, 2001). These interests and ties increase the opportunities for immigration. Since the fall of the communist regime in the Eastern Europe, the involvement of U.S. (and other western countries) in this region has increased. For example after 1990 NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a military alliance of 26 countries from North America and Europe) incorporated several Eastern European countries: Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland in 1997; in 2004 Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, and three aspirants, Albania, Croatia, and the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, hope to be invited to join NATO in the future (NATO Transformed, 2005). The aim of each round of enlargement has been to extend Euro-Atlantic security and to increase NATO's strength, and cohesion. This involvement of the U.S. in EE suggests that the number of EE immigrants will continue increase considerably in the future.

After spending decades under basically the same political authority and central economy, the transformation phase began in all the ex-communist EE countries. The post-communist inter- and intracountry differences started to widen rapidly, due partly to the different speeds at which the market economies were developing (Robila, 2004). Today there is a wide variation of socio-economic development among Eastern European countries. For example, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in 2004 varies from $19,600 in Slovenia, $16,800 in Czech Republic, $14,500 in Slovakia, $12,000 in Poland, $9,800 in Russia, $8,200 in Bulgaria, $7,700 in Romania, $6,300 in Ukraine, to $2,400 in Serbia and Montenegro, and $1,900 in Moldova (U.S. GDP per capita: $40,100) (CIA, 2005). The EE nations began to integrate into the international economy in 1990. As a result, their non-capitalist patterns of social and economic organizations were changed (Massey et al., 1998). In the process of democratization and transition to a market economy, a large number of people in Eastern Europe were displaced from their secure living arrangements, many of them losing their previously stable jobs in the state-owned industries when these closed due to their inefficiency. Unemployment rates reached 30% in Serbia, 19.5% in Poland and 12.7% in Bulgaria (CIA, 2005).

The economic situation pushed many people to emigrate abroad for work. While under communism the mobility had been very low and dominated by state-sponsored activities, after its fall, mobility rose considerably. Studies conducted in Poland (Okolski, et al., 1995), Lithuania (Sipavicience, Ciurlonyte, and Kanopiene, 1995) and Ukraine (Pyrozhkov, Malinovskaya, and Marcenko, 1995) indicate that, in general, the more integrated a country is with Western markets, the higher the rate of out-migration. In this case the mobility was greatest in Poland, followed by Lithuania and then Ukraine. It is therefore expected that, as market forces penetrate more deeply, geographically, socially and economically into the Eastern European countries, the out-migration to West will increase (Massey et al., 1998). Similarly, the more integrated the country is with Western markets the better the country is developed and the better prepared its people are to immigrate (Robila, 2007).

Types and Numbers of Immigrants

Earlier flows of Eastern European immigrants consisted in majority of manual workers-labor migrants in search of menial, agricultural, and generally low paid jobs. They settled along the north-and mid-Atlantic regions, mainly due to the proximity of their home-lands, which would make their trip from home and return(s) less expensive. However, some Central and Eastern European groups settled in Midwest due to the turn-of-the-century development of industry (e.g., auto-making) and to the minimal skills required by these jobs (Portes, and Rumbaut, 1990). For example, in 1980, only 5% of the population living in Ohio reported foreign ancestry, but those represented 15% of all nation's Croatians, 14% of Hungarians, 15% of Serbians, 22% of Slovakians, and 45% of Slovenes (Lieberson, and Waters, 1987). Other EE immigrants settled as Midwest farmers (e.g., in Iowa, Wisconsin). In mid-1800s, many of them formed the well-known Czech enclaves which attracted Czech immigrants throughout the century (Allen and Turner, 1986).

At the beginning of the twentieth century most of the European immigration did not come from the cities but from rural areas and it was formed by peasants. Their goal was not to immigrate to America but to save enough money in order to buy land in their home villages (Rosenblum, 1973). Other immigrants, such as Russian Jews were leaving without the intention to turn back to the oppressive political system (Portes, and Rumbaut, 1990; Kasinitz, Zeltzer-Zubida, and Simakhodskaya, 2000).

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Refugees and asylees are those who came to the US due to fear of persecutions or physical harm. During the communism political regime in Eastern Europe many people came as refugees asking for political asylum. For example, in 1987 a total of 7,318 of refugees came from Soviet Union, Poland, and Romania (INS Annual Report, 1987). More recently, many people came form Bosnia trying to escape the challenges of the war conflict. The granting of asylum had significant advantages over the other alternatives: they had legal status, the right to work, and obtained welfare benefits.

Currently, the majority of the contemporary immigrants from Eastern Europe are coming mainly in two ways: as part of family reunification and as professionals. Professional immigrants are those with high professional abilities and are coming here on job-sponsored visas. Many of then are coming as Masters and Doctoral students and upon graduation receive US-based job offers. The reason they immigrate is "the gap between available salaries and work conditions in their own countries and those regarded there as acceptable for people with their education" (Portes, and Rumbaut, 1990, p. 18). Professionals who earn enough at home to sustain a middle-class standard of living and who are reasonably satisfied about their chances for advancement are seldom migrating.

Unlike at the beginning of the century, the United States is not the immigration destination for Eastern Europeans who have fewer human capital and economic resources. In research done on Mexican immigrants Portes, and Rumbaut (1990) indicate that those who lack the resources to cover their costs of transportation and the other expenses are not able to emigrate. A similar process is occurring for people from Eastern Europe. Those who have more resources (human, social, economic capital) are trying to come to the US. Those who have fewer resources are trying and are able to migrate to closer geographical destinations such as Western Europe. For example, many manual labor and agricultural workers are going to Germany, Italy, or Spain.

Immigration to the United States has experienced a considerably increase in the last decades (Schmidley, 2003). During the communist regime, immigration from the former communist countries to the U.S. was limited. Between 1971 and 1985, the total numbers of immigrants from several of Eastern European countries were as follows (with the average per year given in parenthesis): from Poland-79,790 (5,319/year), former Yugoslavia-50,193 (3,037/year), Romania-34,313 (2,288/year), former Czechoslovakia-15,293 (1,020/year), Hungary-15,270 (1,018/year), East Germany-3,649 (243/year), Bulgaria-3,331 (222/year), Albania-1,086 (72/year)(INS, various years; Yang, 1995).

Following the fall of the communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Eastern European countries have allowed their residents to emigrate. The number of Eastern European immigrants admitted for legal permanent residence grew from 18,260 in 1987 to 121,083 in 2001 (Migration Information Source, 2004; Schmidley, 2001). Moreover, since 1990, several Eastern European countries have qualified among the top 10 immigrant-sending countries: Russian Federation (former USSR) (in 1995, 7th with 21,344), Poland (in 1994, 7th place with 28,048), Ukraine (in 1994, 8th place with 21,010), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (in 2001, 9th place with 23,640) (Migration Information Source, 2004).

Eastern European Immigrants Adaptation to the United States

Immigrants' adaptation to the United States is a very important issue for themselves as well as for the host society. While adaptation is associated with upward mobility, social and economic success, difficulties in adaptation are associated with downward mobility, social and psychological distress (e.g., Portes, and Rumbaut, 1996). Human capital and the length of US residence are among the most important factors impacting immigrants' adaptation to the host society.

2000 Census data indicate that there are wide differences in EE immigrants' educational level (Robila, 2007). For example, countries sending a high percentage of people with graduate/professional degree are Bulgaria (32.8%), and Russia (27.8%). The countries with a low percentage of people with graduate/professional degree are Bosnia/Herzegovina (4.4%), Macedonia (5.4%), and Yugoslavia (8.2%). Whether the education is credible in the American labor market depends, to a large degree, on the educational system in the EE countries. Although the main schooling structure is similar (elementary, middle school, high school, college, and postgraduate), education was largely under the control of the central government, funded by the state (free tuition), and there was no private education under the communist regime. The admission to college was very competitive, based on tough entrance examinations, with relatively few admissions available each year. After the fall of the communism in the region, private universities have emerged, and more people have the opportunity to have a college education if they can afford to pay for tuition. The competition for the public higher education is still high because it is free and admissions remain low. Recently, the college admission process has started to

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adopt an application system, more similar to the western/ American style. Because of differences in requirements (e.g., types of courses and number of credits), levels of technology, and economic systems, EE immigrants' education may be greatly discounted in the U.S.

The literature on recent Eastern European immigrants' adaptation to U.S. is very limited. The following review is based on research conducted on other immigrant groups. The purpose is to summarize major indicators of the adaptation of the immigrant population as a whole, which will be used to measure the adaptation of EE immigrants. Immigrants' level of adaptation is usually indicated by their economic attainment and material well-being in the host society (Suarez-Orozco, C. and Suarez-Orozco, M., 2001; Borjas 1990). The indicators of economic adaptation include income and possession of health insurance.

Immigrants are likely to be engaged in unstable, low-paid jobs because of low skills or discounted skills and have low income (Schmidley, 2001). They also encounter economic difficulties such as unemployment, due to the fact that some of their capabilities such as professional or language skills might not be perfectly transferable in the new society. For example, in 2001, 16.1 % of foreign-born were living below the poverty line (compared with 11% of natives) (Schmidley, 2001). However, naturalization, a sign of longer stay in the U.S. and assimilation to the mainstream, makes a large difference. The poverty rate was 9.1% for naturalized citizens, compared with 21.3% for non-citizens. The recent EE immigrants have been living in the US for a relatively short period of time (less than 15 years) and are more likely to be non-citizens (Schmidley, 2001), and in the process of becoming U.S. citizens.

Another important indicator of wellbeing is the possession (or lack) of health insurance. Immigrants are less likely to have health insurance. Data from the 2002 Current Population Survey indicate that of the 33.5 million foreign-born people, 33% (11.2 million people) have no health insurance coverage compared with 13% for natives (Migration Policy Institute, 2004). Among the foreign-born, non-citizens are more than twice likely to be uninsured than the naturalized citizens. In 2002, of the 12.8 million naturalized foreign-born, 2.3 million or 18% were uninsured. Out of the 20.6 million non-citizens, 8.9 million or 43% were uninsured (Migration Policy Institute, 2004).

Human capital theory explains immigrants' economic adaptation by level of educational attainment (Borjas 1990; Urban Institute 2003). Immigrants' level of education and length of US residence are important factors of immigrants' economic outcomes and adaptation. The transfer of human capital of immigrants is imperfect because immigration to a new country involves acculturation, such as learning a new language and customs (Massey et al., 1998). In addition the labor market skills, including professional skills, may not be perfectly transferable unless English is proficient.

The resurgence of EE immigrants, many of whom are highly educated, provides researchers an unprecedented opportunity to examine this group's adaptation to US. Comparisons among Eastern European nationality groups will offer a deeper understanding of this immigrant group.

METHODS

Data

The study draws data from the 2002-2004 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (March Supplement) of Current Population Survey (CPS). March CPS includes information on country of birth, human capital, and economic activities which allows studying EE immigrants in the larger context of immigrant population. The CPS March Supplements are particularly suited for this study for several reasons. First, the CPS includes information on country of birth of respondents and year of arrival. Second, CPS captures a significant presence of EE immigrants. In particular, since 2002 the CPS March Supplement has expended from 50,000 to 80,000 households, 10,000 of which are headed by immigrants. Pooling the three March CPS provides sufficient sample sizes for each nationality group. Third, the March CPS contains data on labor force characteristics, income and health insurance coverage. CPS March Supplement data are of high quality because much work has been done to ensure consistency of coding and adjustment for missing data through imputation of a plausible response based on answers to other questions and the response of other cases with similar characteristics (Urban institute, 2003). The data used in this study includes immigrants from Czech/Slovak Republics (N = 123), Hungary (N = 89), Latvia (N = 20), Lithuania (N = 54), Poland (N = 626), Romania (N = 129), Russia (N = 652), Ukraine (N = 272), and Yugoslavia (N = 223). The units of analysis are adults aged 16-64 years old.

Data Analysis

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The CPS March Supplement instrument contains questions that operationalize key concepts such as country of origin, human capital, and adaptation, as well as demographics. As a measure of human capital was used educational attainment. Income and the possession of health insurance were used to measure adaptation. The study provides detailed descriptions about the contemporary EE immigrants, including their origin country conditions, human capital, and adaptation, which are understudied in the literature. Because Eastern European immigrants are heterogeneous, the disparities among origincountry groups are emphasized.

ANOVA with post hoc multiple comparisons using Scheffe test was performed in order to examine income differences among the immigrant groups. Scheffe test simultaneously compares all pairs of means on a single variable. It is the most conservative multiple comparisons test because it requires larger differences between pairs of means to achieve statistical significance at the .05 level (Jones and Brayfield, 1997). Chi-square was run to examine if there is any significant difference among immigrants in terms of education levels.

RESULTS

Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. The mean age for all groups is around 40 years, the youngest for those from Yugoslavia and Ukraine (37 years old) and oldest for Hungarians (45 years old). The gender distribution is almost even. The mean length of residence varies between 10 years for those form Latvia and Lithuania, and 22 for those from Czech and Slovak Republic, and from Hungary. It can be observed that the mean length of Hungarians and Czech/Slovakians is higher than that of the others. A couple of reasons are in order. First, the other countries (e.g., Romania, Ukraine) were the most closed societies among the Eastern European ones studied here, the immigration laws being very rigid during the communism. Second, many people from Yugoslavia came during the conflict in Serbia and Bosnia in early 1990s.

Education levels are presented in Table 2 and it can be observed that they are relatively high, majority of the respondents having at least high school education, many of them having a college degree (e.g., Hungarians 32%) or postgraduate degree (e.g., Czech/Slovak 21%). The group with the lowest educational levels is the one from Yugoslavia (61% have high school or less). Many of the people from Yugoslavia are coming as refugees while the other Eastern European groups arc mainly coming on jobsponsored visa which requires high educational attainment.

Chi-square was run to examine whether there are significant differences among immigrants in terms of education levels. The results presented in Table 3 indicate significant differences in education, with Latvian immigrants having the highest levels while the immigrants from Yugoslavia have the lowest, significantly different than most of the other groups.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics

Country

Age

Length of Residence in US

M

S

M

SD

Czech/Slov. Rep. Hungary Latvia Lithuania Polish Romania Russia Ukraine Yugoslavia

43.50 45.22 39.70 40.20 39.98 39.65 38.28 37.28 37.04

12.07 12.20 18.49 13.63 12.54 13.02 12.84 12.47 12.26

22.66 22.89 21.20 10.05 15.62 16.67 11.94 10.04 12.05

13.56 17.51 22.13 12.51 11.62

9.29 8.01 8.13 12.11

Note. Source: 2002-2004 March Supplement of the Current Population Survey.

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