Final Paper
19 December 2017
The Study of Immigrants’ Selection of Destination
Introduction
In the contemporary world, mobility has always been one of the most relevant issue, and the advance of transportation method also significantly contributes to the international migration between developing nations and industrial countries; moving cost has been reduced and becomes a less important pull factor for a migration that people could consider more about other beneficial determinants over only choosing a short-distance destination, and those determinants could be economic opportunities, safety, and freedom (Darboe, 2003). In many studies about nowadays migration behaviors, there has been much discussion of the mechanisms involved in immigrant selection. From the perspective of economic scholars, most would argue that wage is considered as the most important factor as high wages are a pull factor that attract immigrants to a country and encourage natives to stay, while low wages are a push factor that induce emigration from a country and deter immigrants from coming. Besides considering the impacts of wages, this paper is going to evaluate other important pull factors like education facilities and price of housing that attract immigration choose between different states in the U.S.
In summation, this final paper will research, examine, and attempt to explain the question about what factors would affect immigrants’ selection of destination state in the U.S when they are making migration choices, as well as the characteristics that the usual popular destination communities for migration commonly share.
Methodology
The goal of this research was to analyze immigrant populations in different states within the United States of America. The results of the analysis are intended to learn more about the trend of immigration influx and study the reason behind those changes, and by that this research could serve as a prediction for future immigration flow within the U.S. Major processes for this work included data collection, conversion, joining, calculating, layer creation, analyzing, and graphing data.
For this research, multiple data sets were required. The main sources of data were the US Census and American Community Survey (ACS) data. To be specified, the datasets are Place of birth for foreign-born population (Table B05006) ranging from 2005-2016 using the 1-Year Estimates.
Data from these sources were used to create maps and perform analysis of the immigrant populations. QGIS was used to generate and manipulate data necessary for analysis in the study. Many of the tools utilized data manipulation included: clipping, merging, and joins data sets. Once layers were manipulated and successfully joined, the layers were imported into a geodatabase for analysis.
Section 0
From the 2005 American Community Survey (ACS) data, there are in total 35,689,467 foreign-born population in the United States. This number had continuingly grown and reached 38,059,555 in 2007. However, in 2008, with no growth, the number of immigration even incurred a negative flow as it dropped to 37,960,773. It is reasonable that this negative immigration growth should be correlated with the Great Recession. According to the Department of Labor, about 8.7 million jobs were lost from 2008 to 2010, and GDP contracted by 5.1%, unemployment rose from 4.7% in November 2007 to peak at 10% in October 2009. A solid, strong pace of job growth was not seen until 2011. According to the data from ACS, although through the years of 2008 to 2010, the immigration population is still experiencing a positive growth, but the rate of growth is relatively smaller than the rates before the year of 2008 and the years following 2011. 就是写一下美国的depression影响了移民然后原因大概是就业率是一个pull factor。但是这个变化也不是特别大比较subtle，所以可以认为就业率或者wage并不是唯一或者最重要的导致移民迁移的原因。
Section 1
就是大概写移民在美国选择目的州发生了变化，从传统的几个州现在也向其他的州迁移。一个就是往midwest迁移。最好有midwest当地工资不高的数据。没有就算了我自己找。。
当美国native离开midwest的时候，反而移民开始迁移过去，证明移民并不是因为工资高。最好能分析原因是什么（我还没找到。。希望网上能有，没有就算了）。移民的impact还帮助了当地的经济，provide labor force，之类的。
Historically, the traditional popular destinations for immigrants are primarily in California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. There are various reasons cause these states becomes the traditional gateways for immigration,
Immigrants are saving the Midwest
“More Americans are leaving Middle America than moving there (with the exception of North Dakota). But immigrants are forestalling Middle America's demographic decline. A Chicago Council study in 2014 found four metro areas (including Davenport, Iowa, on the Illinois border, and Duluth in eastern Minnesota) that grew between 2000 and 2010 solely because of the immigrant population, and another five where immigrants made up more than 50 percent of the metro area's total growth over that time. But immigrants might be having an even bigger impact in rural areas in Middle America, where the demographic crunch is most acute. In Kansas, immigrants make up 5.3 percent of the rural population; in Nebraska it's 4.8 percent. Just as importantly, immigrants are making these areas demographically younger. The Chicago Council report found that Wichita, Kansas, for example, lost 24 percent of its 35- to 44-year-old, native-born population from 2000 to 2010 — but its immigrant population in that age range grew by 87 percent.”(https://www.vox.com/2015/1/12/7474897/immigration-america-maps)
Section 2
讲但是最明显的移民rate of growth增长是在rural counties。原因有在后面，但是感觉不够，而且我是直接copy paste的希望能rephrase一下。最好能有别的数据作支撑！
In the past decades, the highest increase of the rates of immigrant population in the United States is in rural America. Some counties in rural areas have seen immigrant population increases of over 1,000 percent. "Between 1990 and 2000, the immigrant population grew faster in nonmetro [rural] counties (76 percent growth) than in metro counties (58 percent). By 2000, more than 1.4 million foreign-born persons lived in rural America." Those figures are according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau numbers by the Housing Assistance Council, a Washington DC advocacy group pushing affordable housing for the rural poor.
The reason that immigrants are moving to rural communities is that the meatpacking plants moved there first. Beginning in the 1950s, packers began closing their urban plants and opening new ones closer to their supply of cattle, hogs, and chickens. There were several factors driving these changes.
Consumers began demanding more convenient, pre-packaged food; instead of buying whole chickens, for example, they wanted just the breast.
Consumers wanted cheaper food, and the chicken industry discovered they could drastically reduce costs by integrating vertically – that is contracting with growers for a specific number of birds on specific dates with all nutritional inputs controlled down to ounces of feed. Other livestock packers learned the lessons of the poultry packers quickly. Packers found it was easier to control their supply of animals by moving their plants closer to the producers.
Urban plants had long been unionized; rural areas were not and so the packers could pay workers less.
Urban plants were subject to stricter environmental concerns than rural ones.
Refrigerated trucks got bigger and better, so it was cheaper to ship the processed meat to urban market than it was to ship live animals to urban stockyards and packing plants.
https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe70s/life_13.html
CONCLUSION
Works Cited
Boffi, Mario, and Matteo Colleoni. “Human Behaviour and GIS.” Netcom, no. 28-1/2, 2014, pp. 131–144., doi:10.4000/netcom.1584.
Borjas, George J. “Does Immigration Grease the Wheels of the Labor Market?” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, vol. 2001, no. 1, 2001, pp. 69–133., doi:10.1353/eca.2001.0011.
Ahmed, Abdi. 2013. Using GIS to Analyze Immigrant Populations Service Needs in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Counties, Minnesota USA. Volume 15, Papers in Resource Analysis. 7 pp. Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota University Central Services Press. Winona, MN. Retrieved (date) from http://www.gis.smumn.edu
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2014/12/changing-patterns-in-us-immigration-and-population
https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe70s/life_13.html
https://www.vox.com/2015/1/12/7474897/immigration-america-maps
