Title: Four Myths about Older Adults in America's Immigrant Families
Abstract: Elderly newcomers who follow their adult children to the United States are valuable mem- bers of many immigrant households. Little known outside their families and ethnic communities, they never win spelling bees. They do not join criminal gangs. Nobody worries about Americans losing jobs to Korean grandmothers. Arriving too late in life for the Americanizing influences of school and workplace, they remain invisible to the broader society and dependent on kin for support, companionship, and help in navigating U.S. society. Being focused on the economic and cultural incorporation of working-age immigrants and their children, researchers have neglected older newcomers. As shadowy figures on the American landscape, older newcomers succumb to easy stereotyping. Most of the older immigrants in the U.S. are not newcomers, but rather have lived in the country for many years. Having immigrated as children or young adults, they are usually well incorporated into our society. However, one in eight older foreign-born persons now in the U.S. is a newcomer-a late-life immigrant who arrived in the U.S. during the last decade (Treas and Batalova, 2007). Almost 50,000 adults age 65 and older were admitted to permanent residence in the U.S. in 2005. Another 2.3 million older adults come and go as temporary each year. Most of the older people who immigrate permanently are the parents of naturalized U.S. citizens. Middle-aged and older parents make up 7.5 percent of all legal immigrants annually (Treas and Batalova, 2007). U.S. immigration law places a premium on reuniting families, instead of focusing solely on serving the labor needs of the economy. The appropriate balance between family reunification and labor immigration is in fact a point of contention. Higher levels of immigration have led to a growing population of naturalized citizens who are able to sponsor the immigration of parents. There is no immediate economic advantage to bringing an older adult to the U.S. Ever since welfare and immigration reform of the mid 1990s, newcomers have been largely barred from receiving federal benefits (Estes et al., 2006). Family sponsors are legally responsible for the support of newcomers. My research focuses on older newcomers who have relocated, often reluctantiy, over long distances. They have moved at a time in their lives when most older adults are content to do what gerontologists call aging in place- growing old in the communities where they have lived most of their lives. Whatever their places of origin, these immigrants to the U.S. have much in common simply by virtue of age and immigrant experience. They share concerns about the upbringing of their grandchildren, about who will care for them (the elders) when they can no longer care for themselves, and about learning English when you struggle with poor memory or bad dentures. Their common experience refutes many stereotypes. In particular, findings about older newcomers challenge four myths about the lives of the older people in immigrant families. THE OLDER NEWCOMERS The study on which this article is based examined the results of intensive interviews with older, foreign-born adults who were either residing permanentiy in the U.S. or visiting from their residence elsewhere. Advanced sociology students (whom I trained and supervised) recruited and interviewed the older adults. Informants were usually the interviewers' family members, family friends, or friends' family members. Scientific sampling was ruled out by the difficulty of locating transient visitors and securing the reluctant cooperation of non-English speakers protected by family gatekeepers. Interviewers' personal relationships overcame these barriers. Besides speaking the same language as the informants, interviewers were able to interpret interviews in light of their own knowledge of the informant's culture and personal history. The study included fifty-five persons in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. …
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 29
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