1. Why Do Migrants Face Obstacles?
Two Major Difficulties:
Permission to enter a new country.
Attitudes of citizens once they’ve entered country.
Immigration Policies – two policies to control foreigners seeking work.
1. Quota System
2. Temporary Migration for work.

2. Immigration Policies
US Quota Laws – Quota Act of 1921 and National Origins Act of 1924.
Designed to assure most immigrants to the US continued to be Europeans.
Hemisphere Quotas to Global Quotas.
Brain Drain – large-scale emigration by talented people.
More education, ¼ of all legal immigrants to the US have attended graduate school.

3. Temporary Migration for Work
Guest Workers – Europe and Middle East.
Foreign-born workers = ½ of labor force in Luxembourg, 1/6 in Switzerland, 1/10 in Austria, Belgium, and Germany.
Useful role in Western Europe – low-status and low-skilled jobs that locals won’t accept.
UK = restrictions of foreigners to obtain permits.
Guest Workers – N.Africa, Middle East, E.Europe, and Asia

4. Time-Contract Workers
19c. – Asian migration to work in mines and plantations.
29+ million ethnic Chinese live permanently in other countries, most in Asia.
Illegal immigration to Asia for work.
Taiwan – thousand, most are Filipinos, Thais, Malaysians.

5. Economic Migrants vs. Refugees
US, Canada, and W.Europe treat the two groups differently.
Economic Migrants – not admitted unless they possess special skills or have a close relative there, and must still compete with applicants.
Refugees – receive special priority in admission.

6. Emigrants Cuba emigrants = political refugees.
1959+, 600,000 to US; 2nd influx after 1980.
Haiti emigrants = 1980 boatlift from Cuba, several thousand Haitians to US due to economic advancement.
US says NO!! Haiti sues. US flops!
We invade Haiti in 1994 to reinstate president.

7. Emigrants Vietnam emigration – 1975; evacuation of Saigon.
2nd surge in 1980s by boat.
Int. agreement – most were judged refugees and transferred other places.
Most, considered economic migrants, placed in detention camps until 1996, camps were closed and people sent back to Vietnam.
Major source of immigrants to US, with pull of economic opportunity and push of political persecution.

8. Cultural Problems Politicians – Immigration = scapegoats
American Attitudes – denial of education, health clinics, day cares, public services.
European Attitudes – guest workers suffer from poor social conditions.
Middle East – possible political unrest within Islamic customs.

9. Why Migrate Within A Country?
Internal = less destructive than international.
Two types – interregional and intraregional.
In US, interregional migration popular in the past due to farming.
Large-scale internal migration = opening of American West.

10. Center of Population
Average location of everyone in the country, the “center of population gravity.”
Move West over last 200 years.
1790 – population center was in Chesapeake Bay, east of Baltimore.
1830 – West Virginia; moved rapidly to just West of Cincinnati in 1880.
Western pioneers passed through interior on their way to California.

11. Center of Population
Most of 19c. Continuous westward advance of settlement stopped at the 98th meridian.
Interior = physical environment not for familiar agriculture.
Maps = Great American Desert

12. Settlement of Great Plains
Center migrated West at much slower pace after 1880.
Large-scale migration to East Coast
Fill in area b/w 98th meridian and California.
– center moved farther west.
1980 – crossed Mississippi River; 2000 – south-central Missouri.

13. Recent Growth of the South
1990s – first time, more migrated out of the West than into the West.
Population center moved southward sharply.
Immigrating into the South – job opportunities and environmental reasons.
Interregional migration has slowed.
Net migration b/w each pair of regions is now close to zero.

14. Migration in Regions
More people move within the same region – intraregional migration.
Less than 5% of world’s people in 1800 lived in urban areas, compared to almost ½ today.
Urbanization begins in 1800s, in Europe and N.America undergoing rapid industrialization.
Migration from rural to urban areas has shot up in LDCs of Africa, Asia, and L.America.

15. Migration in Regions
MDCs = intraregional migration from central cities out to suburbs.
Result of suburbanization, territory occupied by urban areas has rapidly expanded.

16. Migration – Metropolitan to Non
Late 20c. – W.Europe and N.America have new trend.
More people immigrated into rural areas than emigrated out of them.
Net migration from urban to rural = counterurbanization.
Many are retired people.
Has stopped in the US b/c of poor economic conditions.