Every day around the world, people decide to leave their homes and families, sometimes permanently, for a better life in another place. These people are called migrants, and every country has to deal with them. It is difficult to understand their motivation. Sometimes they leave their home because of war, hunger or poverty, but other times people flee because of discrimination on the basis of gender, religion, race or sexual orientation, environmental factors or natural disasters. In most cases these people have a well founded fear of persecution or death if they return to their home.
Many of these migrants are children, women and men who need to escape from violence, poverty, discrimination or the consequences of natural or man-made disasters. The rest are people who want to improve their lives and those of their family by emigrating for economic or cultural reasons. Immigration is a complex process. It involves a number of different steps that start with the motivation to leave one’s home country. It can be categorized as either push or pull factors, according to whether the new country is offering better opportunities than the old one, or if the person is being encouraged to migrate by the government of the new country.
In the modern sense of the word, migration is a process of moving to another country in order to find employment or to settle there permanently. It is a form of international movement and is an essential part of globalization. It is a phenomenon that has been occurring throughout human history and has occurred at various times in our nation’s history, including the 1800s when millions of European immigrants came to the United States. In recent times, the most notable movements of immigrants have come from China and from Latin America.
The country that welcomes immigrants and integrates them into the society benefits in several ways, including a boost to its economy. Immigrants bring a wealth of skills, talents and ideas to the workplace that are valued by employers. They can also enhance the cultural richness of a country, contributing to its diversity and enriching the national identity of its citizens.
Besides economic contributions, immigrant settlement can provide labour for nation-building projects, such as construction of roads, canals and railroads (Easterlin 1968). Immigrants were especially important during the industrialization period because of their ability to work hard in dangerous jobs in manufacturing, steel, mining and other industries.
Today, upwards of a million people move to the United States each year. Almost half of them are Asian and almost a third of the total population is Hispanic. The highest proportion of immigrants lives in California and New York. In addition to high tech sectors and universities, immigrants are also filling key niches in agriculture, food processing and some types of manufacturing. However, some immigrants who are eligible for citizenship choose not to pursue it because of language and other barriers. Many of them also do not have the financial resources to invest in their applications.