subscribe to this pageCall#: Van Pelt Library HD8081.A5 P365 2005
Border patrol agents upstate are increasingly arresting New York City undocumented immigrants aboard Amtrak trains and Greyhound buses, raising questions that the government sometimes resorts to racial profiling, immigration advocates and attorneys said.
The arrests have been an authorized practice for decades but seem to have hit a fevered pitch recently, according to advocates.
The patrols have sparked protests in the city as well as upstate, most recently last weekend in Syracuse, where a group said that agents have even targeted U.S. citizens who look "foreign". Immigration attorneys say witnesses have said that agents sometimes question only people of color.
"We are a nation of law, but is their enforcement money better spent going after criminals and youth gangs?" asked the Rev. Brian Jordan, of the Franciscan Immigration Center in Manhattan, who has counseled one Irish and 12 Mexican and Central American undocumented immigrants who were taken off Greyhound buses and Amtrak trains in the past year.
Word of the patrols has broken out in some immigrant communities, and people who have overstayed visas or who never had one are staying off trains.
"Certainly it sent shockwaves through the Irish community," said a Manhattan Irish pub owner, whose bartender was recently deported after Border Patrol agents found him on a bus without identification. "You're not safe anywhere."
Malthus Lives in Anti-Immigrant Ads
Migration A turning tide? Jun 26th 2008 | NOGALES From The Economist print edition Many of the past decade’s migrants to Europe and America are beginning to go home again
...For years a flow of migrants has waxed when the American economy is in rude health, waning only slightly during recessions; it flows north in the spring when agricultural and construction jobs need filling and goes south for Christmas. Where illicit traffic has been heaviest, the migrants’ many footfalls have worn narrow, winding paths into the rocks. But now a big change is visible: the flow of migrants from Latin America to the United States appears to be slumping.
For the third successive year, America’s Border Patrol reports a sharp drop in arrests on and near the frontier. In 2006 the figure dropped 8% to around 1m. Last year it dropped by a full fifth. The six months to March showed a year-on-year drop of 17%. In short (and by the imperfect measure of border arrests) the migrant flow today is roughly half the torrent seen in 2000, when 1.64m arrests were made.
Such figures miss those who cross successfully and recount those detained several times, but they show a clear trend. So does evidence from remittances. Mexico’s central bank reports that, after years of eye-popping growth, the amount of cash sent home by migrants inside America is falling. Last year such flows were worth $24 billion—more valuable than tourism. But in the first quarter of this year the year-on-year figure was down 2.9%, according to a new report by Goldman Sachs.
...
Two factors, each as ugly as the other, probably explain the double downturn in flows of people and money: hostility to migrants, especially illegal ones, and America’s deepening economic gloom. The impact of the former is plain: state-level laws that make it illegal to employ migrants without documents, ever more aggressive raids on businesses that hire such workers, and better technology to share information that will lead to catching them.
...
Hostility and fences would matter less if the economic draw remained strong. Instead America’s economy appears to be in the dumps, even if it avoids a recession. Jobs figures in May showed unemployment had risen to 5.5%. The slump in housing and construction—where many migrants, especially newer arrivals, work—has been especially painful. The Pew Hispanic Centre published a study in June showing a 7.5% jobless rate among immigrants, rising to 8.4% among Mexicans and to 9.3% for those who came to the country after 2000. Over 220,000 migrants lost construction jobs last year. And those in work are earning less: wages of Latino construction workers tumbled in 2007.
Community Transport in Sydney: A Response to Inequity and Disadvantage in Public Transport
Abstract
TRAVEL BEHAVIOR AND MIGRANT CULTURES: THE VIETNAMESE IN AUSTRALIA
Authors: NGUYEN T-H.; KING B.; TURNER L.
Source: Tourism Culture & Communication, Volume 4, Number 2, 2003 , pp. 95-107(13)
Publisher: Cognizant Communication Corporation
Abstract: This article examines the influence of cultural factors on the travel behavior of Vietnamese migrants (Viet kieu) resident in Australia, with particular reference to return visits to Vietnam. A conceptual framework of cultural influence on migrant travel behavior is proposed to explain the relationships between migrant adapted culture and travel behavior. The findings suggest that the Viet kieu maintain certain traditional Vietnamese cultural values and Confucian ideals, while actively adopting behavioral characteristics from mainstream culture during their gradual integration into the adopted society. Significant differences in cultural and travel behavioral characteristics are evident between the Viet kieu, their relatives in Vietnam, and mainstream Australians. Such differences appear to have some connection with the individualism of the West and the collectivism of the East. Issues of identity, rootlessness, belonging, and the relationship between past and present are associated with the decision to travel and subsequent experience of travel to the homeland. The article concludes by discussing implications for future studies.
Cite as:Rowley G, Wilson S, 1975, "The analysis of housing and travel preferences: a gaming approach" Environment and Planning A 7(2) 171 - 177
The analysis of housing and travel preferences: a gaming approach
G Rowley, Susan Wilson
Received 20 November 1974
Abstract. This paper represents a report on the study of housing and travel preferences both of coloured immigrants and of native British within the city of Sheffield, England. The investigation uses gaming procedures to facilitate the recording of raw data which reflects the preference patterns of the respondents. Certain hypotheses are proposed and the statistical analysis of the gaming procedures is developed. Simple chi2 goodness-of-fit tests are used to assess the allocation of preferences over the various elements for the two populations considered. The general approach can be quite readily extended to more complex situations. With hindsight, improvements to the initial game format are suggested.
Fear and strange arithmetics: when powerful states confront powerless immigrants
It is surprising to see the high price in terms of ethical and economic costs that powerful ‘liberal democracies' seem willing to pay in order to control extremely powerless people who only want a chance to work. Immigrants and refugees have to be understood as a historical vanguard that signals major ‘unsettlements' in both sending and receiving countries.
Migration policy: from control to governance
A universal harm: making criminals of migrants
Census Atlas of the United States
* Census 2000 Reports
We are pleased to present the complete content, in PDF format, of the recently published Census Atlas of the United States, the first comprehensive atlas of population and housing produced by the Census Bureau since the 1920s. The Census Atlas is a large-format publication about 300 pages long and containing almost 800 maps. Data from decennial censuses prior to 2000 support nearly 150 maps and figures, providing context and an historical perspective for many of the topics presented. A variety of topics are covered in the Census Atlas, ranging from language and ancestry characteristics to housing patterns and the geographic distribution of the population. A majority of the maps in the Census Atlas present data at the county level, but data also are sometimes mapped by state, census tract (for largest cities and metropolitan areas), and for selected American Indian reservations. The book is modern, colorful, and includes a variety of map styles and data symbolization techniques.
Seeing The Numbers: NYC
We continue our series with Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the U.S. Census, on the new Census Atlas of the United States. This week, we look at some of the NYC-specific maps:
Also, Andrew Beveridge, Professor of Sociology for Social Explorer and chair of the Sociology department at Queens College, helps us flesh out what those maps tell us about New York.
Seeing The Numbers: Origins and Diversity
Each Thursday in June, we are taking a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends. Today we look at the changing face of America and an interesting definition of "ancestry."
Seeing The Numbers Each Thursday in June, we take a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends.
Judge Approves Deal to Settle Suit Over Wage Violations
New Jersey
Turbans Make Targets, Some Sikhs Find
The Price of Delivery (The Brian Lehrer Show: Friday, 06 June 2008
Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker , co-directors of Take Out , talk about their film which chronicles a day in the life of an illegal immigrant struggling to pay off his smuggling debt.
Seeing The Numbers
Each Thursday in June, we take a look inside the new Census Atlas of the United States, the first of its kind in almost 100 years. Marc Perry, Chief of the Population Distribution Branch at the Census, helps guide us through some of the maps and trends.
Immigrants Turn to Farm Work Amid Building Bust
Growers Regain A Source of Labor; Wage Gap Narrows
By MIRIAM JORDAN
June 13, 2008; Page A4
The building bust is turning out to be an unexpected boon for another industry, agriculture, as many Hispanic immigrants who lost construction jobs return to the fields in search of work.
In recent years, the ranks of farm workers had been thinned by a crackdown on illegal immigration coupled with the lure of better-paying construction jobs. That left farmers scrambling to find workers to harvest labor-intensive crops. Now, growers and labor contractors from Florida to California are reporting that former carpenters, dry wallers and painters are returning.
"We had seen the labor supply dwindling year after year," said Richard Quandt, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. This year, "we are surprised to have a lot of workers." The area grows strawberries, greens, broccoli, grapes and other vegetables and fruits.
June 13, 2008
The Working Poor in Mexico No Rest for the Working Poor
By Laura Carlsen
Globalization continues to break down its own myths, especially in developing countries.
In Mexico, the promise of more jobs withered shortly after NAFTA went into effect, when it became clear that displacement outpaced job generation. Now, its twin promise—that globalization would create better jobs and improve standards of living—has finally committed public suicide as well.
Ford and General Motors change their operations in Mexico. Ford announced a major investment in Mexico of over $2 billion this week. Alongside the self-congratulatory remarks of industry representatives and government officials, was an interesting tidbit of information. According to an AP report, at the Ford plant to be expanded in Cuautitlan—on the outskirts of Mexico City where the cost of living has been going up sharply—workers' wages would be cut in half from their current level of $4.50 an hour. Mexican union leaders stated that this was necessary to compete with China.
The same week, General Motors announced a $1.3 billion investment in its Coahuila, Mexico plant and the creation some 875 jobs (note the low job-to-investment ratio). It also announced the eventual closure of plants in Janesville, Wisconsin and Morraine, Ohio. The Mexican press noted that the company first hinted at the closure of its plant in Toluca, which elicited an immediate promise from the union leadership to accept wage reductions. It soon after announced it will remain open but cut back on operations and lay off some of the workers. Although the new contract terms were unavailable at the time of this writing, the trend is written on the wall.
Working Paper
Immigrants and Suburbs: Growth and Distribution in Greater Philadelphia, 1970-2000: A Tract-Level Analysis
The late twentieth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the historic pattern of immigrant settlement within the United States. Since the nineteenth century, most European immigrants - with the important exception of farmers - had settled first in a small number of gateway cities where many rearticleed while a sizeable number fanned out to smaller cities along the coasts or to cities and large towns in the interior. After World War II, with the opening of suburbs huge numbers of these first generation European immigrants and their children, fresh with new prosperity, moved out of central cities. Following the 1965 lifting of nationality-based quotas, immigrants entered the United States in numbers that matched the great immigrant wave of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries... READ COMPLETE PAPER
From Undocumented Camionetas (Mini-Vans) To Federally Regulated Motor Carriers: Hispanic Transportation In Dallas, Texas, and Beyond
Robert V. Kemper
Julie Adkins
Marco Flores
and
José Leonardo Santos
URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 36(4), 2007
ABSTRACT: Only recently have anthropologists and other social
scientists begun to study the emerging Hispanic-oriented trans-
portation industry in the United States. During the past 20 years,
camionetas (15-passenger mini-vans) have largely been replaced
by luxurious buses, and family o,rms have been forced to compete
in an increasingly transnational marketplace with large American
and Mexican corporations. In this article, we examine the Hispanic
transportation system in the Dallas, Texas region, which serves as
a major hub for travelers to and from central Mexico and destina-
tions throughout the United States. More than 50 o,rms compete
for customers in this rapidly changing marketplace. To date, these
o,rms have gone through a process of "incorporation" driven by
local, state, and federal regulators. As the industry continues to be
more regulated and more competitive, we predict that the number
of o,rms will decline as "consolidation" is forced on the entrepre-
neurs whose innovations were responsible for the creating
Hispanic transportation system in Dallas and beyond.
Massey, Douglas. 1985. "Ethnic Residential Segregation: A Theoretical Synthesis and Empirical Review." Sociology and Social Research 69:315-50.
Abstract:
"This review examines research on ethnic residential segregation in the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Europe, and Israel. It evaluates a theory based on principles of classic human ecology, social area analysis, and factorial ecology. The theory contains six core hypotheses conditioned on four structural characteristics, and was developed to take account of recent research findings. Empirical results from the six countries support the theory. The similarity of segregation patterns suggests the operation of common processes of ethnic concentration and dispersal, which are well-summarized by the ecological model." (EXCERPT)
video of Indian Guest Workers from New Orleans who marched to DC
Special Report
The New Faces of America
Suketu Mehta
05.07.07
Immigrant networks are recasting the U.S. in unforeseen ways.
In 1871 Walt Whitman foresaw the way human beings would relate to each other in our era. As he put it in "Passage to India," a poem in the ever expanding Leaves of Grass, "Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first? The earth to be spann'd, connected by network."
Whitman's lines evoke for me how an immigrant can come to a big, expensive city like New York or San Francisco without papers, without money, without housing and make a new life. Or how other immigrants come in at the top of the scale and find jobs whose salaries start at several times the median income. The answer lies in the network: They go to their tribes, their villages in the city. Whether it is an association of software engineers, an alumni association or a church group, immigrants live and die, work and marry, pray and play within the network.
"Citizenship, Borders, and Human Needs"
The culminating event of the 2007-2008 DCC Faculty Series is the first annual DCC Conference, to be held May 9th, 2008, in the Bodek Lounge of Penn's Houston Hall, 3417 Spruce Street.
May 9, 2008 Annual Conference Schedule:
By JULIA PRESTON
More than three million Latin American immigrants in the U.S. have stopped sending remittances, a survey said.
archives 2005 » jan. 5th
IMMIGRATION
Borderline Realities
When Mexican men and women living in South Philadelphia become crime victims, they're often too afraid to tell the police.
by Kate Kilpatrick
One day in his first year in the U.S., Rubén, now 26, left his apartment at 15th and Bainbridge, where he lived with seven other men, to go to work. With the other men at work too, the house was empty all day.
When Rubén returned that evening everything was missing--the TV, VCR, PlayStation, telephone, stereo, CDs (most of them Mexican), air conditioner, bed covers and clothes. Their collective hidden savings--totaling $11,000--were gone. None of the men spoke much English, or knew where to turn for help. One of the men told his boss, a restaurant owner, who said that because they were illegal, there was nothing he could do. No one contacted the police.
This story's far from unusual. Those in South Philadelphia's Mexican community say they're the victims of countless crimes--muggings, bike thefts, robberies, armed assaults, rapes--that never get reported.
...
Rubén's friend Jaime, 26, sums up a common experience: "You can drive, but you can't [legally]," he says. "So most Mexicanos go for a bike. In the restaurant business you get off at 12 or 1. If you're a dishwasher, you probably get off at 2. If you live at Seventh and Tasker, or Fifth or Fourth and Morris or Dickinson, mostly that part is bad. We can't afford to pay expensive rent to live on Fitzwater or Bainbridge. So most of the Mexicanos in South Philly live in dangerous places. I know a lot of my friends were assaulted by guys trying to get their bikes. We can't get a bank account, so we keep the money in our pocket. I don't know how they know that. We keep all our money until we send it home. So a lot of people get robbed."
The nation's largest private prison company has partnered with the federal government to detain close to
1 million undocumented people in the past 5 years until they are deported. In the process, Corrections Corporation of America has made record profits. Critics suggest the CCA cuts corners on its detention contracts in order to increase its revenue at expense of humane conditions. Thanks to political connections and lobby spending, it dominates the industry of immigrant detention. CCA now has close to 10,000 new beds under development in anticipation of continued demand.
..
With the dollar falling and the economy in Brazil booming, Brazilian immigrants in the United States are returning home by the thousands. Dan Grech reports.
Up to 10,000 Brazilian immigrants in Boston -- many of them here illegally -- are expected to follow Benicio home this year. Brazilian strongholds in New Jersey and South Florida are seeing a similar exodus.
Many immigrants say they are leaving because they feel lonely and afraid as local sentiment has turned against illegal immigrants and, for the first time in decades, these Brazilians have a viable alternative back home: a robust economy with plenty of jobs.
A World of Opportunity: Understanding & Tapping the Economic Potential of Immigrant Entrepreneurs,
This new report by the Center documents that immigrant entrepreneurs have emerged as a key engine of economic growth for cities from New York to Los Angeles--and, with the right support, could provide an even bigger boost to these cities in the years ahead
Immigrant Entrepreneurs Shape a New Economy
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Manuel A. Miranda was 8 when his family immigrated to New York from Bogotá. His parents, who had been
lawyers, turned to selling home-cooked food from the trunk of their car. Manuel pitched in after school, grinding
corn by hand for traditional Colombian flatbreads called arepas.
Today Mr. Miranda, 32, runs a family business with 16 employees, producing 10 million arepas a year in the
Maspeth section of Queens. But the burst of Colombian immigration to the city has slowed; arepas customers are
spreading through the suburbs, and competition for them is fierce. Now, he says, his eye is on a vast, untapped
market: the rest of the country.
In the long run, like bagels, "you're going to have arepas in every store," predicted Mr. Miranda, whose
innovations include a "toaster-friendly" version (square instead of round), and an experimental Web site that
offers online sales nationwide. "But I don't have the connections. I don't know the people who can advise how to
take us to the next level."
Immigrants and transport barriers to employment: The case of Southeast Asian welfare recipients in California
Evelyn Blumenberg
Transport Policy
Volume 15, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 33-42
Abstract
Increasing international migration has prompted public officials to develop policies to better integrate foreign-born residents. While scholars have shown the positive relationship between access to transport and economic outcomes among low-income adults, very little is known about this relationship with respect to immigrants. This study examines transport and employment rates among low-income adults focusing specifically on Southeast Asian refugees. The findings show the importance of automobiles across all racial and ethnic groups. Southeast Asians, however, report the greatest difficulty with their travel largely because they face auto-related problems including the age and unreliability of their vehicles. These findings suggest the need for both universal and group-specific policies for addressing the transport needs of the poor.
Posted on: Wednesday, 23 May 2007, 15:00 CDT
By DAVID A. MICHAELS, STAFF WRITER
A minibus company that began as an informal service catering to immigrants in Passaic County now carries more commuters between Paterson and New York than NJ Transit.
While critics have scoffed at the worn-out appearance of some minibuses, riders praise the Spanish Transportation company for its inexpensive and frequent service.
Even state transportation officials acknowledged that Spanish Transportation has evolved into an essential commuter service for a growing region that demands more mass transit than the state can supply.
"Our elected officials have realized the services we provide to the cities are a necessity," said Norberto Curitomai, the founder and president of Spanish Transportation. "We provide a quality public transportation, at lower rates that is maybe not provided by New Jersey Transit."
...
Curitomai's drivers make express trips in about 45 minutes compared with an hour or more on NJ Transit's long, winding circuits. His buses carry an estimated 30,000 daily passenger trips, Curitomai said.
Yet his success hasn't hurt NJ Transit's Paterson business. The state agency's revenue grew 18 percent between 2002 and 2006.
Source: The Bergen Record
Immigration's New Frontiers
Experiences from the Emerging Gateway States
Greg Anrig, Jr., Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation, Century Foundation Press, 11/30/2006
Location: Van Pelt Library
Call Number: JV6483 .I564 2006
February 13, 2005
URBAN STUDIES
Many Lives, Many Wheels
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
BICYCLES are everywhere in this eight-story building: bicycles leaning in the hallways, bicycles parked in the stairwells, bicycles nestled two deep in the single-room dwellings shared by three or four men.
The sprawling landmark building, at 31st and Broadway, is nestled in the middle of Manhattan's wholesale district. Its central, though unglamorous, location appeals to its most notable tenant population: Chinese deliverymen. An alternative to farther-flung quarters in Chinatown or Flushing, this outpost is only 10 minutes by bicycle to restaurants in Murray Hill, 20 minutes to those on the Upper West Side, 20 minutes to the Upper East Side.
Every morning around 10, the bicycles make an exodus as dozens of Chinese immigrants step out of the building and glide down 31st Street, their spinning wheels gently clicking.
At night, the process reverses. The men return, their bicycles casting long shadows under orange-tinged streetlights. Until last year, dozens of bicycles were chained along the scaffolding at night. Then the building was sold. The new management insisted that no bikes be left outside. So now the bicycles, seats covered with white plastic bags and frames fortified with duct tape, are taken into the cramped rooms.
For these quiet and nearly invisible deliverymen with few English skills, a bicycle is a lifeline. They often buy their bikes from black-market vendors who come by the restaurants. The prices are as low as $30 for creaky old models and as high as $80 for models with better maneuverability.
There is a tacit understanding that these bicycles are mostly stolen. The deliverymen shrug this off. After all, they are very often the victims that the bikes are stolen from.
Many of the men, having paid $30,000 to $65,000 to be smuggled into the United States, have not seen their children for years. Some, with orange-spiked hair and an enthusiasm for video games, are barely children themselves.
Home, which for most is Fujian Province in southern China, is reduced to photographs tucked into wallets, phone calls after work for as low as 2 cents a minute, and a firm determination that one day they will go back.
Most earn $1,000 to $1,500 a month, mostly from tips. "We can't do anything else because we don't speak English," said Chen, 37, who lives with three other men in a 10-foot-by-12-foot room. Two of his roommates are deliverymen: Lin, 55, who hasn't seen his family for 12 years, and baby-faced Little Chen, 22, who just arrived in New York.
In a corner of the room, behind the door, sat two bicycles, and just outside, a third one.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Arizona Law Takes a Toll on Nonresident Students
By JESSE McKINLEY
PHOENIX - When Marco Carrillo, a naturalized American and a high school valedictorian, went to meet with his college counselor, her major worry about his future had little to do with his SAT scores or essay or extracurricular activities.
It had to do with his citizenship.
"The very first question she asked me was whether I was a legal resident here," said Mr. Carrillo, 20, now an electrical engineering student at Arizona State University in Tempe. "And I said, ‘Yeah, I am.' And she said, ‘Oh good, that makes things easier.' "
Such questions have become commonplace in Arizona, where voters passed a 2006 referendum, Proposition 300, that forbids college students who cannot prove they are legal residents from receiving state financial assistance.
One of several recent immigration statutes passed by Arizona voters and legislators frustrated by federal inaction, the law also prohibits in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. Administrators at several campuses fear that the provision has priced some out of their classes, particularly at the state's popular community colleges.
The Immigration Debate: Then vs. Now - An old struggle to adapt to a new countrys ways
How do you say cheesesteak with in Spanish?
Joseph Vento, the owner of Geno's Steaks, doesn't know. And he doesn't care. Just read the laminated signs, festooned with American eagles, at his South Philadelphia cheesesteak emporium: This is America. When Ordering, Speak English.
Vento's political statement - from a man whose Italian-born grandparents spoke only broken English - captures the anger and discontent felt by many Americans about illegal immigrants.
With a battle looming between the House and Senate on legalizing some immigration violators, the public backlash is framed by two complaints:
...
January 20, 2008
Urban Tactics
Little Cambodia, Growing Still Littler
By DAVID SHAFTEL
...
Data from the 2000 census shows that the city’s Cambodian population decreased by 31 percent from 1990 to 2000. According to a census analysis by the Hmong Studies Internet Resource Center, the decline occurred as nearly all the country’s other Cambodian communities were expanding.
At the high-water mark of 1990, census figures show, 2,565 Cambodians lived in the city, primarily in the Fordham, University Heights and Bronx Park East sections of the Bronx. Most were refugees who were resettled in New York after fleeing the repressive Khmer Rouge regime, which fell in 1979 and claimed nearly two million lives. According to an analysis of 2005 numbers prepared by the Census Bureau, barely 1,000 Cambodians then remained in the city.
At Nail Salons, Beauty Treatments Can Have a Distinctly Unglamorous Side
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Happy Lee can hardly believe that the nail salon across the street from hers charges just $7 for a manicure.
"I don't know how they can make it," said Ms. Lee, the owner of Happy Beauty Salon in Carle Place, Long Island, which employs nine manicurists.
Ms. Lee said her industry had been thrown into turmoil by a wave of new salons that have taken away business and driven down prices - from high-end nail emporiums on the Upper East Side to low-cost shops in suburban strip malls. Competition is so intense, she said, that her salon still charges $8 for manicures Monday through Wednesday, the same price it charged when it opened in 1984.
"When we opened, it was easy to make it, but now it's very hard," she said.
Nationwide, the number of salons has doubled over the past decade, according to Nails Magazine, an industry publication, lifting the number of salons to 3,800 in New York State and to 2,600 in New Jersey.
As the number of nail salons has surged, Chinese immigrants have poured into the industry in New York and New Jersey, which has long been dominated by Korean immigrants, like Ms. Lee. These Chinese manicurists often work for low wages, helping salon owners hold down their expenses and prices.
These low prices are a boon to the many women and more and more men who have weekly manicures not just to look good, but also to feel good.
"Nail salons have expanded because there's a lot more attention to fine grooming," said Cyndy Drummey, the editor of Nails Magazine. "It's a low-cost, good-feeling thing that's accessible to everybody."
But the demand has taken a toll on many salon workers, advocates for the workers said. Owners often force employees to work 60 hours a week while failing to pay overtime or allow lunch breaks. And lower manicure prices mean lower tips for workers who spend their days cutting cuticles and painting on polish.
Beyond wage problems, many manicurists say their job requires using harmful chemicals that often cause allergic reactions, breathing problems and rashes. In one extreme case, a manicurist in New Jersey was set on fire after chemical fumes in her shop burst into flames.
For $1.75 an hour, they put up with abusive employers, muggers, rain, snow, potholes, car accidents, six-day weeks, and lousy tips. Not anymore.
By Jennifer Gonnerman
On Broadway on the Upper West Side, the ballet of the deliverymen has begun. Armed with pizza boxes and plastic bags, men on bicycles zip by, one after another, dodging taxis and Town Cars, SUVs and the M104. Every night, it’s the same clashing of horns and bike bells, the same frenzy of pedaling and panting and sweating. Between West 59th and West 115th Streets, the number of places that offer food delivery now totals close to 275.
The deliverymen run the gamut from boys to older men, from fit to flabby, but there are a few things they share in common: They are virtually all immigrants—many from China—and most of them speak little or no English. Among the neighborhood’s most experienced deliverymen is a 25-year-old Chinese immigrant named Justin. For the last seven years, he has been speeding around the streets of Manhattan delivering food for five different restaurants. Now he works six days a week at Ollie’s Noodle Shop & Grille on the corner of Broadway and 84th Street.
...In New York’s expanding service economy, deliverymen occupy a position near the bottom—earning less than doormen, security guards, nannies, maids, tailors, taxi drivers, and trash collectors and working in far more treacherous conditions. They work long hours and cover huge territories, often in inclement weather, dodging perils like potholes, taxi doors, and tow trucks (one of which killed a deliveryman last year)—all the while hoping they don’t get robbed along the way. And they do this for pay that is often less than the minimum wage.
But that may be about to change. Since last fall, some 70 Chinese deliverymen—including Justin and his co-workers at Ollie’s—have filed lawsuits against five Manhattan restaurants. Never before have so many restaurant deliverymen joined together to battle their bosses. It’s the Year of the Chinese Deliverymen—the year they decided to revolt.
Snapshot: Global Migration
Nearly 190 million people, about 3 percent of the world's population, lived outside their country of birth in 2005. A look at the flow of people around the globe.
Chinese Restaurant Workers in U.S. Face Hurdles
by Margot Adler
Morning Edition, May 8, 2007 · There are about 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the United States - more than the number of McDonald's and Taco Bells combined. Many of the workers in the kitchen are recent arrivals from China - some legal, some not - and many took on significant debts to get to the United States.
by CINDY CHANG
April 4, 2005
New York Times
The Chinese restaurants on Eldridge Street just below Canal do a brisk lunchtime business with their fish-ball soup, duck noodles and dumplings laced with leeks. But the commodity exchanged most in this part of Chinatown is labor. Employment agencies line the narrow block, and even the one shoe store doubles as a jobs center.
Lacking English signs to mark them, the Eldridge Street agencies are impenetrable to non-Chinese speakers. Yet they supply Chinese restaurants throughout the Eastern United States with a limitless stream of cheap labor. An immigrant can walk into an agency on Eldridge Street one day, and board a bus bound for a job in Ohio or Minnesota the next.
"One of the things that's probably true is that the Chinese restaurant in your community or your suburb - there's a chance that person working there got their job in Chinatown," said Robert Weber, director of the Rebuild Chinatown Initiative, an economic development project. Since the Chinatown economy slowed after Sept. 11, many more of the listings have been for out-of-state jobs.
by Robert Mills
October 8, 2004
N/A
Brief History of Chinatown Bus
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
Published: October 2, 2005
AT the beginning of every week, a steady stream of Chinese restaurant workers files into the nest of Chinatown employment agencies clustered under the Manhattan Bridge: young men with spiky hair barely out of their teens, smooth-skinned girls who still giggle about their crushes and stocky older men who left their families behind in China years ago.
The workers walk in and out, in and out, checking each of the dozens of dusty single-room agencies. They focus on the white boards and walls of Post-it notes that list the hundreds, if not thousands, of job openings available across the country each week: kitchen helpers, chefs, waitresses, telephone answerers, deliverymen who can drive, deliverymen who don't need to drive.
Among the job seekers one Monday late last month was Xue Qingxi, a 38-year-old immigrant with large, friendly eyes and a bright green T-shirt who arrived in New York City the day before, towing his belongings in two small black rolling suitcases. Feeling it was time for a change, he had just left his job as a cook in a Chinese restaurant in North Carolina. Where, exactly, in North Carolina, he wasn't sure. ''It's all rural,'' he said dismissively. After renting a bed for the night for $15, he was wandering in and out of the employment agencies the next afternoon, looking for his next job. ''I want to leave tonight,'' he said.
By SAKI KNAFO
FREEMAN WONG starts his day just after midnight, when he heads over to the New Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx to pack his truck with whatever's fresh and attractively priced: skate, salmon, sole, shark, swordfish. Then it's off to his family's store, Aqua Best on Grand Street in Chinatown, where for the rest of the day he checks his fish to make sure their scales feel firm and their eyes shine, one of countless tasks required by the complex regulations that govern the selling of seafood.
So when he spots people selling fish outside his door without even a bag of ice in sight, he feels more than the usual resentment toward competitors.
"People are catching fish from unclean waters and selling it cheap," Mr. Wong said the other day at a busy coffeehouse next door to his bright, spacious shop. "It wreaks havoc on us."
Walk through the neighborhood's gritty southeast corner at the end of the workday and you'll see them: tanned, strong-armed men - for they are mostly men - selling striped bass or bluefish right on the street, their gleaming catches laid out on flattened cardboard boxes like so many pirated DVDs.
Sometimes, instead of fish, they set out plastic bins filled with slick fists of conch meat, or wood-slat buckets teeming with periwinkles.
Occasionally a horseshoe crab, turned on its back, helplessly flails at passers-by from the pavement.
While it's against the law to sell raw seafood on the sidewalk, for the obvious reasons involving health and sanitation, these vendors do a steady business by charging 20 or 30 percent less than Chinatown's low-priced fish markets.
In the Coachella Valley, hundreds of trailer parks house desperately poor Latino workers amid burning trash, mud, contaminated water.
By David Kelly, Times Staff Writer
March 26, 2007
THERMAL, CALIF. - Like most of their neighbors in the sprawling, ramshackle Oasis Mobile Home Park, the Aguilars have no heat, no hot water. On cold nights, the family of eight stays warm by bundling up in layers of sweaters and sleeps packed together in two tiny rooms.
Bathing is a luxury that requires using valuable propane to boil gallons of water. So the farmworker clan spends a lot of time dirty.
Chapter 4: The Immigrant
The Smugglers' Due
By ALEX KOTLOWITZ
The criminal odyssey of Chinatown’s Sister Ping.
by PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE
Geno's hit with bias complaints
The Commission on Human Relations said it would insist on removal of a "Speak English" sign at the cheesesteak shop.
By Mitch Lipka
Inquirer Staff Writer
One of South Philadelphia's biggest names in cheesesteaks is in a bit of a legal pickle for a lunch-line political statement against immigrants who don't speak English. The city's Commission on Human Relations yesterday filed a discrimination complaint against Geno's Steaks over signs that read: "This is AMERICA ... WHEN ORDERING SPEAK ENGLISH." Owner Joey Vento has become a mini-celebrity over the issue and has steadfastly refused to pull down the signs despite the growing legal brouhaha. His son, Geno, said his father would not comment on the matter to The Inquirer. ....