Profile of area’s immigrants: Growing in diversity, distress
Houston is national model in report on how U.S. policies affect residents
As the Houston area’s foreign-born population continues to grow, diversify and participate in the regional economy, the area is becoming a national bellwether on how recent immigration policies are negatively impacting immigrant communities, according to a new report.
Entitled “A profile of Houston’s diverse immigrant population in a rapidly changing policy landscape,” the report was released Thursday by the Migration Policy Institute, an immigration think tank in Washington. It was commissioned by the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collaborative, a coalition of organizations providing legal services to lowincome immigrants.
“Houston is like a model case in the country to look at how national immigration policy changes are af-
fecting immigrant and the cities (nationwide), because it has such a large population of foreign-born, it’s close to the border and has a new state law facilitating that the (local) police work with ICE,” said MPI researcher and study co-author Randy Capps, referring to federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement.
“These aren’t good times for immigrants in Houston — many families who have been living here for decades with American kids are being affected,” notes Raed Gonzalez, of the Gonzalez Olivieri immigration firm. “When you have immigrants who are citizens coming to ask you if they are at risk of deportation, you understand how much the policies are affecting these communities in distress.”
The report provides a detailed look into the population and socioeconomic characteristics of immigrants in Houston Metro Area, home to 1.6 million of immigrants ranging from high-skilled professionals to working-class families and international students.
Mexican migration down
The report analyzed the foreign-born populations of Harris County and the extended metro area of 11 surrounding counties comprised of Fort Bend, Montgomery, Brazoria, Galveston, Liberty, Waller, Matagorda, Wharton, Austin, Chambers and Colorado. It found that three quarters of this population is located in Harris County, but is rapidly growing in the outlying counties.
Among the most significant trends identified in the study is that Mexican migration is decreasing, at the same time that Cubans, Venezuelans and Nigerians comprise the fastest growing immigrant populations, said Capps.
Although Mexico remains as the top country of origin among foreign-born immigrants with a population of 612,000 — or 30 percent of the total — their growth is falling significantly. Their influx into the region increased 2 percent from 2010 and 2017, but fell drastically by 4 percent in the last year since 2016, the report concludes. By contrast, Cubans and Venezuelans, many of which are asylum seekers, are the fastest growing groups, more than tripling their size in the seven first years of this decade. Immigrants from Cuba swelled from a population of about 11,000 in 2010 to 36,000 in 2017, while Venezuelans in the region grew from 10,000 to 33,000 during the same time.
Africans immigrants came next with a growth rate of 80 percent in that period, with Nigerians in the top spot.
Central Americans immigrants from the Northern Triangle that includes El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala represent 15 percent of the foreign-born population, a combined total of 240,000 individuals in 2017. Salvadorans continue to comprise the largest group from this region, but they have grown only 22 percent since 2010 while Hondurans multiplied fastest at a rate 59 percent, followed by Guatemalans with a 42 percent increase, the study found.
Asians still represent a quarter of the total foreign-born with 410,000 inhabitants in the area, but with a lesser increase of 29 percent since 2010, The leading senders of immigrants from Asia are India, Vietnam and China.
Contrary to popular belief, only 30 percent of the foreign-born immigrants are not authorized to be here, the study found. In the Houston region through 2016, 33 percent are naturalized citizens, while 32 percent have legal permanent residency and the remainder are here legally on nonimmigrant visas.
Economic force
Data from the report, however, indicates that deficiencies in formal education doesn’t prevent skilled workers from filling Houston’s labor demands. The foreignborn men, and in particular those with unauthorized status, have the highest labor-force participation rate of any adult 16 years old and over living in the region at 88 percent. In comparison, the percentage is a lower 72 percent among U.S. born men working in the metro area.
A third of the metro area workers are foreign-born and 10 percent of the active labor force are unauthorized immigrants. Almost half of all workers in the construction industry are unauthorized immigrants or non-citizens with legal status.
They also constitute more than 30 percent of all workers in Houston in the industries such as ad- ministrative, support and waste management; accommodation and food services, agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting; and other nonpublic administration services.
Several analyses have estimated the economic output of Houston’s immigrant population near or more than $100 billion.
A majority of 56 percent among foreign-born immigrants in the metro area lives in owned homes, paying property taxes that contribute to public services such as education, as does 41 percent of undocumented residents.
In spite of the contributions that foreign-born immigrants have provided to make Houston a diverse and prosperous city, many of them are facing an uncertain future due to new immigration policies that could ultimately hamper the success of the region.
Houston economy continues to excel, generating more new jobs than any other metro area in the country except New York and Dallas in 2017-18.
However, this continued labor demand can be jeopardized, considering that there is a large number of immigrants whose legal status is in limbo while harsher immigration policies are resulting in more deportations.
of them is Maria Guadalupe Juarez.
Juarez is now one of the thousands of immigrants protected by DACA, an Obama administration program that has allowed her to work and avoid deportation.
Uncertainty ‘too much’
Juarez, who works in the car insurance industry, said she is “anguished by the thought of being deported” if she loses DACA. With approximately 36,000 beneficiaries in Houston, DACA was suspended by President Donald Trump and is facing a court battle with uncertain outcomes.
“This uncertainty about the future is too much; I am worried for my kids,” said the now single mother of three American born children who are 7, 2 and 10 months old.
Additionally, more than 20,000 immigrants from Latin America, Africa and Asia who are set to lose their legal status as the Trump administration canceled a Temporary Protected Status that sheltered them from deportation and provided work permits. The protections begin to expire this month.
The government also narrowed the chances for asylum seekers, potentially affecting 27,000 cases pending with the Houston asylum office or in the area immigration courts.
In addition, changes in immigration policy could affect about 80,000 people currently with legal status and asylum seekers in Houston, not counting similar numbers of their U.S.-born children.
While more people are potentially affected by these policies, a new “show-me-your-papers” Texas law known as SB-4 enacted last year forces local law enforcement agents to comply with immigration requests and made it easier to identify unauthorized immigrants.
Immigrant arrests in Houston increased 5 percent during the last two fiscal years, but local advocates believe that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement has ramped up detention activities more recently.