Latino Immigrants

Latino Immigrants

This paper looks into the transnational activities between the Dominicans and Mexicans national groups who are Latino immigrants. This comparison is derived from the description between here and there of the Pew report. The transnational activities are those activities that the Latino immigrants use to connect to their native countries. Among the ones addressed in this paper are traveling back, telephoning relatives, and sending remittances. The extents to which these individuals engage in these activities differ considerably. This variance is what is being addressed in this paper between the Dominicans and Mexicans.

To begin with, Dominicans maintain more active connections as compared to the Mexicans. This is the difference brought out by their different countries of origin. Larger portion of Dominican Republic immigrants travel back as well as make frequent phone calla more than those immigrants from Mexico. A similarity has been noted in the levels of remittance sending for Dominicans and Mexicans. There are also differences in the country of origin which bring wide variance as a result of more politics as compared to personal relationships. Almost 60% of Dominican Republic immigrants make calls at least weekly while the Mexicans immigrants differ considerably in this aspect. More than one-third of the Mexican immigrants are in frequent contact. They cal Mexico at least once in a week yet more than a quarter if ever say they call rarely. This Mexican pattern extends to the activities of other cross-border. Each of them show significant minority with few or no Mexican ties (Waldinger 4).

Another form of transnational activity is via the use of emails to communicate. Only three percent among the Latino immigrants who do not possess access to a computer at work or at home report having contact with home country friends and relatives via email. Through comparison it is only a third of immigrants who access computers at home or at work report having email contact. In this regard, Dominicans display strong ties to their home country with about twenty seven percent making report that they communicate through emails. Mexicans on the other hand also report a considerable figure of using email to contact relatives and friends back home.

The other aspect of transnational activity for comparison is travel. Travel can vary significantly across the major national origin groups both in frequency as well as prevalence. When we examine the Dominicans, we find that majority that is 90% to be more specific are reported having traveled at least once to their native land.  Around 48% of these Dominicans report having gone back to their original country within two years. By contrast, Mexicans despite their geographical proximity do not travel to their country of origin as compared to the Dominicans whose profile is distinctive. For instance the Waldinger report that 65% of the Mexican immigrants reported having traveled back to their country of origin at least once and this travel include 30% in the past 2 years. Around half of the Mexican immigrants are without authorization thereby making it hard for them to leave as well as re-enter the country (Waldinger 7).

Another aspect of transnational activity is sending of money or remittance to countries of origin. When we examine the Mexican immigrants, we find out they do send money to relatives back home although the Dominicans have a higher percentage of the remittance they send home (Waldinger 9). These two groups differ in the level of activity with one out of five Dominicans saying that have engaged with a certain organization thereby displaying high level of connectedness with their land of origin. Only six percent of the Mexicans by contrast are involved in a similar manner. Hence this is another area which the two groups display similarity (Waldinger 10).

In conclusion, these two groups namely Mexicans and Dominicans show varying differences in their level of connectedness to their countries of origin. These are the transnational activities described above, for example travel, phoning, emails, and remittances among others. There is some similarities found between the two groups, for instance in the aspect of participating in activity. Hence the Pew Report offers detailed information regarding the comparison of the Dominicans and Mexican transnational activities.