Title:	Contemporary Issues of Migration and Theology
Authors:	Elaine Padilla and Peter C. Phan
Keywords:	Church work with immigrants
Issue Date:	2013
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Description:	Breaking news! On May 17, 2012, the US Census Bureau reported that minority babies outnumbered white newborns in 2011 for the first time in US history. The percentage of nonwhite newborns rose to 50.4 percent of children younger than a year old from April 2010 to July 2011, while non-Hispanic whites fell to 49.6 percent. The figures highlight the rapid growth in the Hispanic and Asian populations, both of which have surged by more than 40 percent since 2000. Hispanics were 16.7 percent of the population in July 2011 and Asians were 4.8 percent. This surge and change in the race and ethnicity of the immigrant population were made possible by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (the Hart-Celler Act), which abolished the national origins quota system. Since the 1920s, American immigration policy excluded Asians and Africans and preferred northern and western Europeans over southern and eastern ones. The Hart-Celler Act replaced it with a preference system that focused on immigrants’ skills and family relationships with citizens or US residents. The surge in migration is of course not only restricted to the United States but is also a global phenomenon. Migration has been an ever-present worldwide fact of life, but currently demographers are talking of it as a new global phenomenon. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs reported that there were an estimated 214 million migrants worldwide in 2008 (3.1 percent of the world population). Together the migrants would constitute the fifth largest country in the world. Migration is a highly complex phenomenon, with significant economic, sociopolitical, cultural, and religious repercussions for the migrants, their native countries, and the host societies. It has recently been the “hot” subject of research in different disciplines, primarily sociology, anthropology, politics, and economics.On the political side, the United States is currently embroiled in an acrimonious debate about immigration; its immigration policies have been declared “broken” by both the Democratic and Republican parties during the presidential elections season, but their standard bearers are more driven by vote-getting than problem-solving. As we write this introduction, the US Supreme Court on June 25, 2012, rejected some key provisions of the tough anti-illegal-immigration law of Arizona but accepted the provision that allows the state and local police to question individuals about their immigration status. Whether and how a comprehensive immigration reform will be forthcoming, irrespective of which party will win the presidential elections, is still much in doubt.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/51337
ISBN:	978-1-137-03149-5
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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