ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Illegal Immigration

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Migration1

Forms of Migration1

Voluntary Versus involuntary Migration2

Discussion3

Victims of Illegal Immigration3

Theoretical Explanations5

Mexico and U.S.A immigrants7

Immigration Policies12

Economic impact of migration13

Illegal immigration14

Migration and media discourse "crimes"17

Arizona and Alabama Law against the illegal Immigration17

References21

Illegal Immigration

Introduction

Migration

Human migration involves the movement of a person (a migrant) between two places for a certain period of time. It is often considered a permanent relocation, as compared with temporary spatial mobility, which includes all kinds of movement by people, such as commuting, circulating, visiting, shopping, and temporarily working away from home.

This entry first details the most significant forms of migration according to their differing patterns and geographical scale. Next, migration decision making and the ever-changing dynamic processes of migrant behavior are examined. Last, the entry reviews some major constructs that migration scholars have presented as theoretical explanations of this constantly changing livelihood strategy of human mobility.

Forms of Migration

Internal migration within national political boundaries has always been the largest kind of population redistribution enumerated since demographic statistics have been collected and compared at global scales. Its character is often differentiated by the source and destination regions of such internal flows. Hence, rural-to-rural migration, rural-to-urban migration, urban-to-rural migration, and urban-to-urban migration can each feature in an internal migration system of population transfers and exchanges between these geographic places (Broaddus, 2006).

Shorter-distance changes of residence that do not cross the definable boundary of a place (e.g., a city) are more generally referred to as residential mobility, and within urban realms, it is common to distinguish between interurban migration and intra-urban residential mobility. Further differentiations within this group of internal migration streams and counter streams might be characterized by the growth of megacities, or global cities, in which rapid urbanization occurs within national urban hierarchies. The accelerated growth of these large conurbations in countries of the global South occurs as a consequence of in-migration from rural and urban sources and the accompanying fertility increases of the immigrant populations. Indeed, the 20th century witnessed the rapid urbanization of the world's population, which in 2009 stands at more than 6.7 billion (Philip, 2008).

Voluntary Versus involuntary Migration

Migration can also be differentiated according to the conditions that prompted the decision to move away from the migrant's original place of residence, with a dichotomous categorization distinguishing a move as either voluntary or involuntary, “forced” migration. Voluntary migration is often economically driven, is selective by age and resource endowment, and includes the whole range from unskilled workers to highly skilled workers seeking better opportunities, experiences, and incomes in more distant labor markets than the ones they can access by staying in their original homes (including commuting and temporary work off-farm or in nearby urban centers). Voluntary migration is also a decision made and undertaken collectively by migrants and partners, migrant families, and selected members. On the other hand, the migrant's dependants—infants, young children, female partners—who are “tied movers” can be considered to be migrating involuntarily if not involved in the decision making by the household head or patriarch. In short, the social (and gendered) contexts of family ...