IMMIGRATION, UNAUTHORIZED

Unauthorized migration is the international movement of people through irregular or extralegal channels. At their destinations such people are often termed "illegal" or "undocumented" immigrants. States have the sovereign right to regulate entry into their territories, but the sheer volume and tenacity of unauthorized migrants speak to the tenuousness of any state's ability to exert complete control over cross-border movements. In exercising their prerogative, states attempt to identify foreigners' residence either as legal, according to their particular immigration laws, or illegal. Migration is deemed unauthorized if: (1) the migrants in question avoided inspection by crossing borders clandestinely or if they traveled with fraudulent documents (e.g., falsified visas or counterfeit passports); (2) if migrants have overstayed the time limit of a legally obtained non-immigrant temporary visa; or (3) if they have violated explicit visa conditions, e.g., obtaining employment while holding a student visa. In most of the world arrival as a non-immigrant (tourist, student, temporary laborer, etc.) and staying beyond the legally sanctioned period is the most common source of unauthorized immigration. In the United States, however, the majority of undocumented migrants have entered without inspection over land borders with Mexico and Canada.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) (2000, p. 46) estimates that smugglers, paid by migrants to arrange transportation to the country of destination, assist more than 50 percent of unauthorized migrants. In addition, a substantial number of women and children, estimated to number between 700,000 and 2 million per year globally, are "trafficked"–that is, kidnapped, coerced, or deceived into migrating, then sold or indentured in the country of destination.

If discovered by immigration authorities, unauthorized migrants are generally required to depart voluntarily or become subject to involuntary deportation to the country of most recent citizenship or to the country through which they entered (the transit country). In the United States there is a process of "expedited exclusion" to combat the high incidence of repeat unauthorized entry: first-time unauthorized offenders are barred from reentry for five years; second-time or subsequent offenders are disqualified for twenty years. Unauthorized migrants apprehended within the country are often detained in custody until a decision on their immigration status is reached.

Unauthorized migration is a volatile political, social, and economic issue in many destination countries. Supporters of tighter controls on migration often portray the unauthorized international movement of people as a strain on receiving countries' social service budgets as well as a threat to the job security and wages of the domestic labor force. Country-specific studies on such economic effects, however, have been inconclusive. Even so, the late 1990s saw a decline in the number of countries offering social services, including health care, to unauthorized migrants.

Unauthorized Labor Migration

Due to the surreptitious character of unauthorized migration, unauthorized migrants are more likely than legal migrants to be employed in low-skilled, low-paid positions that require no documentation, credentials, or licenses. For example, in the United States a major portion of the undocumented migrant population is employed in industries such as meatpacking, construction, housekeeping, childcare, and agricultural work.

As demand for low-skilled labor rises in developed countries, employers have a growing economic incentive to encourage extralegal immigration for employment in sectors where domestic labor is scarce or is unwilling to work at prevailing wage levels. This has become a contentious issue. In countries with strong labor rights traditions, the perception that undocumented migrants drive down wages has mobilized unions and union supporters against government leniency. Whether, for the economy as a whole, unauthorized migrants' economic contribution outweighs the costs of the social services they receive remains unsettled.

Measurement

In all regions of the world statistics on unauthorized migration are apt to be incomplete and unreliable. Methods of assessing the size of the unauthorized population vary by country and there are often variant estimates for a single country. The most common measurement procedure is to compare census data with information on visas issued. In the United States, the census-reported foreign-born population is classified either as legal immigrant or temporary non-immigrant based on such a comparison. The census foreign-born numbers in excess of the official visa-based count are the residual foreign-born population. A portion of this residual population is assumed to be refugees and asylum seekers awaiting adjustment to permanent or protected status; the remainder is considered to be unauthorized. The accuracy of such estimates is dependent on the degree of completeness with which the census enumerates the foreign born population. Countries also rely on records of the numbers of apprehensions and deportations of illegal migrants kept by law enforcement to estimate the flow of undocumented migration.

Numbers and Trends

During the 1990s the volume of unauthorized international migrant flows increased greatly (For instance, it has been estimated that net illegal immigration to the United States in the late 1990s was half a million per year) Unauthorized migration still shows a surplus of males (just over 50%), but much less so than in the past. With large numbers of women in developed countries working outside of the home, opportunities for employment in domestic work and childcare have attracted women from developing countries, swelling both legal and unauthorized migrant numbers. Most unauthorized migrants are young, between 18 and 35 years of age. Most are from developing countries, although the IOM reports that visa overstayers from developed countries comprise a significant portion of illegal migrants in several countries, e.g., Australia and New Zealand (IOM, 2001). Selected estimates, by country, on the number of unauthorized migrants are shown in Table 1.

In each world region particular countries have become "magnets" for illegal movements of people.

Africa. Post-Apartheid South Africa emerged as a prime destination for migrants seeking work in the mining and agriculture sectors–not only from other parts of Southern Africa, but continent-wide. Because South Africa has retained restrictive immigration policies from the Apartheid period, most African migrants enter the country informally. In 1997, according to the IOM (2001, p. 136), over 3.5 million unauthorized migrant workers and about 750,000 visa overstayers were resident in South Africa. Unauthorized migrants are granted no protection under South African law, are targets of widespread violence fueled by high unemployment rates, and remain subject to immediate expulsion on apprehension.

Asia. Unauthorized migration has centered on Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia. Since 1990, these countries have imposed strict controls, backed by heavy fines, on employment of undocumented labor. In Malaysia, where most undocumented migrants are Indonesians, employed in factories, on plantations, and as domestic workers, sanctions are imposed on both workers and their employers–enforced more strongly during periods of economic downturn.

Western Europe. An IOM report indicates that in the late 1990s it is believed that over 500,000 migrants from Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East were being smuggled into the European Union annually (IOM, 2001). The stock of undocumented migrants in Europe was estimated at 3 million. Historically, a large majority of migrants from both developing and developed countries seeking to work or settle in Europe chose the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland as their final destination. In the early 1990s these countries adopted strict immigration laws; in consequence, migration flows shifted to the south–with Turkey favored as a transit route to the

TABLE 1

EU, and Italy, Spain, and Portugal favored as destinations.

Historically, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy were countries of mass emigration; they were unprepared to manage a massive influx of migrants. The increasing visibility of immigrants in these Southern European countries spurred public debate regarding how to deal with uncontrolled, unauthorized migration. Italy's 1990 Martelli Law and a 1998 presidential decree in Greece (see Amnesty below) were attempts to regulate immigration, including illegal immigration, at the national level. Both laws granted undocumented migrants, who had obtained formal sector jobs, the right to legal employment and residence. This shift in migration priorities created tensions within the EU, since the northern member states have systems in place that make it far more difficult for a non-EU citizen to stay illegally.

North America. In 2000 there were estimated to be about 8 million unauthorized migrants in the United States. The overwhelming volume of undocumented migration in the Western Hemisphere is directed to the United States, with Mexico the most frequent sender (according to the Census Bureau, 54% of undocumented migrants in the United States in 1999 were from Mexico).

Amnesty

In some countries unauthorized migrants who were long residents and employed have been allowed to obtain legal status. Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), the United States granted legal permanent resident status to 2.7 million undocumented qualified migrants who had entered the United States prior to 1982 (prior to 1986 for agricultural workers). Greece implemented a similar program in 1998, issuing a presidential decree that allowed illegal workers who had entered the country prior to 1998 to become legal residents. And South Africa, between 1996 and 2000, regularized the status of over 350,000 long-standing undocumented contract workers, undocumented Southern African Development Community (SADC) citizens residing in South Africa, and Mozambican refugees.

See also: Asylum, Right of; Immigration Policies; Labor Migration, International.

bibliography

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internet resource.

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Adria N. Armbrister