A study conducted by economists at the University of Chicago and Harvard indicates that resumes with more white-sounding names receive far more callbacks. Immigrant workers are 39percent less likely to work in office and administrative support positions and 31percent less likely to work in management, while being 113percent more likely to work in construction. Others feel they must leave because of poverty, political unrest, gang violence, natural disasters or other serious circumstances that exist there. With his new citizenship, Saldago (now Valentine) decided to change his name to fit his new American identity. This is when I found out that my Father had reported my birthday as September 21st to get me into school earlier. Valentine faced similar pressures from relatives and the Hispanic community to retain his birth name. The demographics of name change petitioners today and the reasons that they give suggest a complicated story of race, class and culture. Research examining short-run fluctuations in the number of H-1B visas similarly concludes that immigrants add to aggregate innovation, although estimates of spillovers for innovative activities of native-born workers are smaller or nonexistent (Kerr and Lincoln 2010). Differences in educational outcomes for foreign-born and native-born Americans are accompanied by occupational differences. [3] For example, figure 5 shows that children of immigrants receive all degrees at roughly the rate of children of native parents, though the former have a slightly higher propensity to have either less than a high school degree or an advanced degree. Her friend Amina Adam, who's sitting with her in the kitchen, will turn 60. The story explained how Obamas Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr., chose Barry as a nickname for himself in 1959 in order to fit in. But the younger Barack who had been called Barry since he was a child chose to revert to his given name, Barack, in 1980 as a college student coming to terms with his identity. With New Year's Day just around the corner, you can be sure that people will make a fuss over any New Year's babies born that day. While 80 percent of petitioners in 1946 sought to erase their ethnic names and replace them with more generic American-sounding ones, only 25 percent of petitioners in 2002 did the same. It doesnt determine how I live my life.. Guess what? Legal immigrants to the United States can face two different types of waits. I'm a Product Owner, developer, reader, and occasionally funny. Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress. A July 1st birthday is a terrible birthday, especially for a kid. Gebywe fled Ethiopia and went to Kenya, where she was interviewed to gain refugee status. It seems I misunderstood the conversion from the Islamic calendar as a child. I lay in bed this morning thinking, forty-six years old and nowhere yet, one woman wrote in her diary in 1921. By 2012, however, petitioners with Muslim or Arabic names had stopped changing their names in large numbers. Today, there is a wide variation of the foreign-born population across states, ranging from under 5percent in parts of the Southeast and Midwest to over 20percent in California, Florida, New Jersey, and New York (Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] 2017; authors calculations). A birthday can be anxiety-provoking, in the sense that it provides a milestone by which individuals can compare their status, accomplishments, [and appearance] with other people who are the same age, Chudacoff told me. It turns out the bar for official documentation is low any document from Iran with my date of birth would be good enough. Associate Professor, Michigan State University. As mass migration began growing, immigration laws started changing. And we all had to make up birth dates on the spot to get those documents. Both of those factors were at play for Gadeise Gebywe. Only those in steerage had to undergo inspection at the Ellis Island station. Read: The over-celebration of life events. As it turns out, that date is a popular one among refugees worldwide and in Minnesota, where Cali not only shares his official birthday with many other Somali-Americans, but with many immigrants from places that dont typically have official birth date records, including countries in East Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The discomfort is a very natural one. Hassanen Mohamed, who works for the organization, said some clients of African descent not only have the same birth date, they also have the same name. Wednesday is New Year's Day. This anxiety can come from a fear of the unknown or an expectation of loss loss of identity about religion, language, and culture and the power and privileges associated with that identity. Their petitions were achingly similar to those of Jews in the 1940s, though many of these newer petitioners were more open about the hatred they faced: Prevailing attitudes and prejudices against persons of Arabic descendancy have been adversely affected as a direct result of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, one petitioner wrote. Destructive 'Super Pigs' From Canada Threaten the Northern U.S. Did an Ancient Magnetic Field Reversal Cause Chaos for Life on Earth 42,000 Years Ago? The same is true for Afghans, Sudanese, Ethiopians and Iraqis, according to a 2013 Minnesota Law Review report that noted that more than 200,000 immigrants and refugees in the U.S. have Jan. 1 as their date of birth. I have pictures and memories of a birthday party in Iran but I dont remember any other birthdays before Canada. In other words, institutions and incentives often cause the United States to receive migrants who are advantaged relative to their origin-country counterparts (Abramitzky and Boustan 2017) and less disposed to commit crimes. Life is full of irony. While immigrant name changes have decreased in the last decade, the internal conflict facing incoming immigrants who consider changing their names is one that Valentine believes is now more relevant than ever. In other cases, state departments around the world would assign January 1 to applicants who didn't know their birthdays. WebAs a result of not knowing their own date of birth or not having access to government documents, refugees are often assigned Jan. 1 as a birth date by agencies or But there was also a marked shift in the class of petitioners. None of my teachers, professors, co-workers, or friends could say it correctly. How do you determine who is that individual, does that record apply?" Workers with more education and higher salaries tend to pay more taxes relative to their use of government programs, and that is reflected in the more-positive fiscal impacts of highskilled individuals. For the foreign-born population as a whole, per capita expenditure on cash welfare assistance, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; formerly known as the Food Stamp Program), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are all lower than for native-born individuals, even when restricting the comparison to age- and income-eligible individuals (Nowrasteh and Orr 2018). Many Jewish Americans changed their names in the face of discrimination. For Somalis, there are also historical reasons for the lack of accurate dates of birth. Roughly 21 percent of petitioners in 2002 sought to correct errors on their vital documents, while in 1942, only about 4 percent of petitions had been submitted to change a mistake on an identification document. One useful proxy for innovation is the acquisition of patents. Feyrer, Sacerdote, and Stern (2008) note that in countries where women have outside options but men share little of the child-care responsibilities, fertility has fallen even more. In some cases, though, parents kept personal files and photos of their childrens births. Copyright 2019 NPR. "I didn't understand how to write 'A B C.'" she said. Why migrants are fleeing their homes for the U.S. Natural disasters in Central America, economic devastation, gang wars, political oppression, and a new administration are all driving the sharp rise in U.S.-Mexico border crossings a budding crisis for President Biden. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an I like March 2. In I dont want to be seen as Pedro, or Pablo, or another Hispanic name. I just had to get it translated from Farsi to English. As a refugee, documentation is always a challenge. If you dont celebrate your birthday every year, then its tough to remember it, said Cali, founder and president of a Minneapolis-based Somali-language radio station, KALY 101.7-FM. And we all had to make up birth dates on the spot to get those documents.. Immigration has wide-ranging impacts on society and culture, and its economic effects are no less substantial. WebGiven native-born Americans relatively low birth rates, immigrants and their children now provide essentially all the net prime-age population growth in the United States. Figure 2b shows that recent growth in the number of prime-age children of immigrants has continued at more than 3 percent, supporting overall U.S. population growth. Most estimates in figure 9 show an impact on low-skilled native-born wages of 0percent to 1percent. By contrast, the population growth rate of prime-age children of native parents has fallen from an average of 0.2 percent over the 19952005 period to an average of 0.5 percent over the 200617 period. Moreover, overall economic growth depends to an important extent on a growing labor force (see fact 8). Another barrier to entry in some occupations consists of occupational licensing requirements, which can necessitate that immigrants engage in costly duplication of training and experience (White House 2015). In addition to these supply-side effects, immigrants also generate demand for goods and services that contribute to economic growth. Though it can be funny, January 1 is This should have been my first clue something wasnt right. This marks a sharp increase from 2007, when an estimated 44.5percent were at least 10-year residents. The 500 or so employees at the station had to work quickly during those first waves of immigration, processing each immigrant in a matter of 4 to 7 hours. High-skilled immigration is particularly likely to increase innovation (see fact 10). To complete the immigration papers, a resettlement official from the United Nations gave Mohamed Cali Jan. 1 as his legal birth date. Roughly 800,000 people have used the program and estimates suggest 1.3million were eligible (about 10percent of the undocumented population) (Robertson 2018). Americans celebrated George Washingtons birthday, for instance, but for everyone else, a birthdayif they even knew the datewas just another day. Telling this story, Ive learned that a lot of immigrants either have multiple birthdays or arent sure of their birth year. Amina Adam, left, Gadeise Gebywe and her daughter Darartu Gebywe, top, all share a Jan. 1 birth date. But when the civil war broke out in 1991, many families like Calis lost those documents as they crossed oceans or walked for weeks to find stability in neighboring countries. Looking separately at revenue and outlay implications, most of the variation in immigrant fiscal impact across education levels is due to differences in the amount of taxes paid (Blau and Mackie 2017, 44460). Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. What does that mean? For a while, a similar pattern held in the United States: Birthdays were for rich people or national heroes. In addition, the impact of low-skilled immigrants may be diluted (i.e., shared across the entire national labor market) as native workers and firms respond by rearranging themselves across the rest of the country (Card 1990). In Iranian culture, children get their fathers last name and mothers keep their last name. Cannato, for instance, suggests that people often changed their name in advance of migration. - because they fled fighting or some other kind of disaster in a part of the world where birthdays aren't as big a deal as they are here in the U.S. In particular, immigrants are more likely to possess college and advanced degrees, and more likely to work in STEM fields. In the short run, a large increase or decrease in the number of immigrants would likely cause disruption: an increase could overwhelm available infrastructure or possibly put downward pressure on wages for native-born workers until capital accumulation or technology usage can adjust (Borjas 2013), while a decrease could harm businesses with fixed staffing needs, or lead to underutilization of housing and other similar capital (Saiz 2007; White House 2013). FiveThirtyEight looked at birth data from 1994 to 2014 and ranked January 1 365th of 366 days, ahead of only Christmas Day. Second, the United States is characterized by more wage inequality than many alternative destinations, with higher rewards available for high-skilled than for low-skilled workers. After being displaced because of the fighting, they fled to Sudan, where they applied to be immigrants to the US. From 1960 to 2016 the U.S. total fertility rate fell from 3.65 to 1.80 (World Bank n.d.). Cultural pride is a factor that has limited the number of name changes. "The Jan. 1 birth date is the common birth date we assign," said Marilu Cabrera, a spokeswoman for U.S. Social Security and Medicare become more difficult to fund as the working-age population declines relative to the elderly population. But the pernicious stigma associated with being behind time persists. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. I didnt want to take her last name because I dont look Polish. So on your next birthday, as a gift to yourself, kick back with a nice big bowl of fruit, dont look at the clock, and take the day off from neurotically comparing yourself with everyone else. Womenwhether foreign- or native-bornface large economic, policy, and cultural obstacles to employment (Black, Schanzenbach, and Breitwieser 2017). I would get the ball rolling by changing my last name first and my wife would assume it. Similar situations played out for thousands of other refugees. 2017). The reasons are complicated and part of the Jewish struggle with their WebWhile 35% of the 59 million immigrants in the past 50 years has come from Mexico, South and Central American immigrant populations are now booming in the U.S. Much of this The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. The precision of and attention to time seem to be what link the process of industrialization to the observance of birthdays. WebMPR Photo/Annie Baxter. Its about choosing names that reflect their identity. Others kept archives of radio announcements, which has long been common in the country when a couple gets married or a child is born. Theres also another key difference between today and the early 20th century: limited upward mobility. We describe the patterns of recent immigration (levels, legal status, country of origin, and U.S. state of residence), the characteristics of immigrants (education, occupations, and employment), and the effects of immigration on the economy (economic output, wages, innovation, fiscal resources, and crime). Advertising Notice The estimates do not include public expenditures on categories like public safety, national defense, and interest on the debt, because these expenses do not necessarily increase as the population rises. Kids birthday parties may have been an early hint of how American children were starting to be viewed as less valuable economically (as workers) and more valuable emotionally (as family members). You can see it everywhere. But then, in the early 1990s, the U.S. government extended its refugee resettlement program to displaced Somali families fleeing clan-based warfare and droughts that brought them to crowded Kenyan refugee camps. "The Jan. 1 birth date is the common birth date we assign," said Marilu Cabrera, a spokeswoman for U.S. There is a conversion to go between the two. This was always awkward to explain when kids asked me why my mom didnt have our The entrepreneurial behavior of foreign- and native-born individuals also appears to be similar. But I didnt know the date and month. Since most petitioners were native-born Americans, this wasnt about fitting in. If anything, Ellis Island officials were known to correct mistakes in passenger lists, saysPhilip Sutton, a librarian in the Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, at the New York Public Library, in ablog postdelving into the name change mythology. First and second class passengers received aquick inspection while aboard ship, based on the federal notion that if a person could afford to purchase a first or second class ticket, they were less likely to become a public charge in America due to medical or legal reasons, says the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. The terms of immigrants residency are important for their labor market outcomes, and potentially for the impacts they have on native-born workers. Shes an elementary school teacher and my last name would be a nightmare for kids to say. It was a direct response to racism. Gebwe and several of her family members are immigrants, and they all have Jan. 1 birth dates. The women all have the same birth date: Jan. 1. It depends a lot on the person, their age, if it makes life easier, if they will be perceived as an American, Lin said. WebSome migrants leave their country because they want to work, study or join family, for example. level. Instead, in 2009, the New York City Police Department began conducting surveillance into New Yorks Muslim and Arab communities using Civil Court name change petitions, sending the message that the act of changing your name might make you as much of a suspect as keeping it. "Somali names are quite common. Because of the war back home, people didn't have access to their birth records, and many didn't know their true birthdays. Your email address will not be published. In addition immigrants have a unique opportunity to change their name when naturalized, creating an opportunity to start a new life with a new name. Ellis Island inspectors were not responsible for recording immigrants names. Demographers and economists believe that this decline was driven by a collection of factors, including enhanced access to contraceptive technology, changing norms, and the rising opportunity cost of raising children (Bailey 2010). So when it came time to fill out American paperwork and without access to their birth records - well, turns out many just chose January 1. Business Insider points to immigration data from 2009 that shows 11,000 of the nearly 80,000 refugees to the U.S. that year listed January 1 as their birth date. That's 14%, improbably high even if you don't assume an even distribution of births throughout the year, which you shouldn't, at least for people born in the U.S. For native-born Americans, New Year's Day is actually one of the least popular birthdays. Associated with being behind time persists the same birth date is the common birth date: Jan. 1 were! 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