美國墨西哥裔移民發展之研究

• Main Authors: Hsu, Po-Yu, 徐勃毓
• Other Authors: Antonio C. Hsiang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/54129582365882992210

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 拉丁美洲研究所 === 92 === After the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded the extensive territory to America and began the immigrant history to the North. Due to demand-pull from America and the supply-push from Mexico, a flood of Mexicans cross, legal or illegally, the long Mexican-American border to look for better life, more work opportunities, or reunion with their families. Even though there are many arrests and repatriations on the border every day, which cannot reduce their aspirations for the North. Since 2000, Latino has become the America’s biggest ethnic minority. Mexican origin accounts for 60 percent of Latino. Because of the huge numbers and the problems derived from immigrants, the American government and society could not ignore their importance. Consequently, the immigrant-related issues have become the focus of relations between two nations. In the thesis, I investigated the development of Mexican immigrants in America from three aspects. First, in the political aspect, the focus of Mexican organizations has shifted from Mexican-Americans alone to the Latino as a whole. Mexican and Latinos’ endeavors achieved some breakthroughs on the issue of immigrants since the 1980’s, but there is a still lot of room to expand. With the increasing population, if Latinos could unite, increase the numbers of elected officials and the political participation, they will have more prominent representation on the U.S. Congress in the future. Second, because of the lower education, most of the Mexican immigrants have engaged in low-skilled work, and the low wage led them to rely on the social welfare. Consequently, the group became the burden of the health insurance system. In addition, the low-skilled Mexican workers are also considered to take away the jobs from the native workers and to reduce the average wage. Nevertheless, my study shows that Mexican workers do not have significant effects on the employment and wage of native workers. On the contrary, they have greater impacts on the same low-skilled immigrant workers. Finally, because of history, contiguous geography, and lower socio-economic situation, Mexican immigrants still fall behind the white society and are not easy to assimilate into it. I concluded with two suggestions to improve their status. 1. Facilitating assimilation through promoting the education; 2. Enhancing political influence through increasing neutralization. To achieve these two goals, besides of Mexican immigrants’ strive, American society should accept multiple culture and language and prevent the racial discrimination.