Jewish Russian Immigrants in the US and around the world. Health Needs.

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Jewish Russian Immigrants in the US and around
the world. Health Needs.

• Part 1 Immigration history
• Olga Greg and the Supercourse team
• University of Pittsburgh

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Some definitions

• Immigrant - a person who migrates to another
  country, usually for permanent residence.
• Migrant - a person that moves from one region,
  place, or country to another.
• Refugee - a person who flees to a foreign country
  or power to escape danger or persecution
  somebody seeking safe place.

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Causes for Jewish Migration similarities to
other migration waves

• Economic
• Demographic
• Political
• Religious freedom

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Learning objectives

• This lecture will explore the psychological and
  social factors affecting Jewish immigrants use of
  health services, and address implications for
  social workers and health care professionals,
  concluding that the educational process needs to
  be directed to immigrants when they are first
  introduced to US health and social institutions

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American Immigration History

• Four immigration periods important for this
  lecture
• the colonial period (During the 17th century,
  approximately 175,000 Englishmen migrated to
  Colonial America, about 400,000crossed the
  Atlantic during the 17th and 18th centuries)
• the mid-19th century (Northern Europe)
• the start of the 20th century (From 1836 to 1914,
  over 30 million Europeans migrated to the US,
  mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe)
• post-1965 (Latin America and Asia).

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Peak of Immigration

• The peak year of European immigration was in
  1907, when 1,285,349 persons entered the
  country. By 1910, 13.5 million immigrants were
  living in the United States. In 1921, the
  Congress passed the Emergency Quota, followed by
  the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1924 Act was
  aimed at further restricting the Southern and
  Eastern Europeans, especially Jews, Italians, and
  Slavs, who had begun to enter the country in
  large numbers beginning in the 1890s.

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Russian Immigrant Family 1918
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Jacob Mithelstadt and his family from Russia at
Ellis Island in 1905
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Ashkenazic Jews

• Ashkenazic Jews are the Jews of France, Germany,
  and Eastern Europe and their descendants.
• The adjective "Ashkenazic" is derived from the
  Hebrew word "Ashkenaz," which is used to refer to
  Germany.
• Most American Jews today are Ashkenazim,
  descended from Jews who emigrated from Germany
  and Eastern Europe from the mid 1800s to the
  early 1900s.
• The Yiddish language, which many people think of
  as the international language of Judaism, is
  really the language of Ashkenazic Jews.

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Sephardic Jews

• Sephardic Jews are the Jews of Spain, Portugal,
  North Africa and the Middle East and their
  descendants.
• The adjective "Sephardic" is derived from the
  Hebrew word "Sepharad," which refers to Spain.
• Most of the early Jewish settlers of North
  America were Sephardic.
• Sephardic Jews have their own international
  language Ladino, which was based on Spanish and
  Hebrew in the same way that Yiddish was based on
  German and Hebrew.

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Modern Immigration

• After ethnic quotas on immigration were removed
  in 1965 the number of actual (first-generation)
  immigrants living in the United States eventually
  quadrupled, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38
  million in 2007. Over one million persons were
  naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008. The
  leading countries of origin of immigrants to the
  United States were Mexico, India, the
  Philippines, and China.5 Nearly 14 million
  immigrants entered the United States from 2000 to
  2010. Family reunification accounts for
  approximately two-thirds of legal immigration to
  the US every year.

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• Immigrants who have been in the United States for
  20 years are much more likely to
• live in poverty
• lack health insurance
• access the welfare system more often than
  native-born Americans.
• The large share of immigrants arriving as adults
  with relatively little education partly explains
  this phenomenon.

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Modern Immigration general numbers

• The number of immigrants (legal and illegal) in
  the country hit a new record of 40 million in
  2010, a 28 percent increase over the total in
  2000.
• Of top sending countries, the largest percentage
  increase in the last decade was for those from
  Honduras (85 percent), India (74 percent),
  Guatemala (73 percent), Peru (54 percent), El
  Salvador (49 percent), Ecuador (48 percent), and
  China (43 percent).

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Labor Force

• In March of 2011, the share of working-age (18 to
  65) immigrants holding a job was the same as
  natives 68 percent. Immigrant men have higher
  rates of work than native-born men, while
  immigrant women have lower rates.
• While immigrants tend to be concentrated in
  certain jobs, natives comprise the majority of
  workers in virtually every occupational category.
  For example, natives comprise 52 percent of
  maids, 73 percent of janitors, 66 percent of
  construction laborers, and 65 percent of butchers
  and meat processors.
• More than one-quarter of physicians and surgeons
  (27 percent) were foreign born, as were more than
  one out of every five (22 percent) persons
  working in health care support jobs as nursing,
  psychiatric, and home health aides.

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Poverty

• In 2010, 23 percent of immigrants and their
  U.S.-born children (under 18) lived in poverty,
  compared to 13.5 percent of natives and their
  children. Immigrants and their children accounted
  for one-fourth of all persons in poverty.
• The children of immigrants account for one-third
  of all children in poverty.
• Among the top sending countries, poverty is
  highest for immigrants and their young children
  from Mexico (35 percent), Honduras (34 percent),
  and Guatemala (31 percent) and lowest for those
  from Germany (7 percent), India (6 percent), and
  the Philippines (6 percent).

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Entrepreneurship

• Immigrants and natives have very similar rates of
  entrepreneurship 11.7 percent of natives and
  11.5 percent of immigrants are self-employed.
• Among the top sending countries, self-employment
  is highest for immigrants from Korea (26
  percent), Canada (24 percent), and the United
  Kingdom (17 percent). It is lowest for those from
  Haiti (6 percent), Honduras (5 percent), and
  Jamaica (3 percent).

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Education

• Of adult immigrants (25 to 65), 28 percent have
  not completed high school, compared to 7 percent
  of natives.
• The share of immigrants (25 to 65) with at least
  a bachelors degree is somewhat lower than that
  of natives 29 vs. 33 percent.
• The large share of immigrants with relatively
  little education is one of the primary reasons
  for their lower socioeconomic status, not their
  legal status or an unwillingness to work.
• At the same time immigration added significantly
  to the number of less-educated workers, the share
  of young, less-educated natives holding a job
  declined significantly. The decline began well
  before the current economic downturn.

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Jewish Immigration from Russia1850-1910
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Survival Advantage among Jewish People in the US
over Russia.

• Several published studies pointed out survival
  advantage of Jewish people in the US over Russia.
  Some of the potential reasons for survival
  advantage include higher education, lower level
  of alcohol abuse, and adherence to Jewish Dietary
  Laws (Kashrut)

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Ellis Island Health Exams

• While admission decisions were made by the
  Immigration Service, the law required medical
  inspection of immigrants by the United States
  Public Health Service (PHS). When a PHS medical
  officer formally diagnosed an immigrant with a
  disease or defect, throwing his or her
  admissibility into question, that individual was
  considered "medically certified." The law
  required the PHS to issue a medical certificate
  to those who suffered from a "loathsome or a
  dangerous contagious disease. Exclusion of
  those diagnosed with infectious diseases such as
  tuberculosis, venereal disease, trachoma, and
  favus was mandatory.

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Awaiting examination, Ellis Island
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Definition of "Jews" from the Former Soviet Union
(FSU)

• 1. whose religion is Jewish, OR
• 2. who has no religion and has at least one
  Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing, OR
• 3. who has a non-monotheistic religion, and has
  at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing

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Russian Jews Before and After Czars

• Under the Czars, Jews had been mostly restricted
  to the so-called Pale of Settlement in the far
  west, and along China border.
• The Jewish autonomous region experienced modest
  growth and development through the mid 1930s. Its
  nearly 18,000 Jews then constituted 16 of the
  total population. The regions current government
  boasts that Jewish settlers were enticed to
  migrate from Argentina, Lithuania, France,
  Latvia, Germany, Belgium, the USA, Poland and
  even from Palestine. Yiddish schools, publishing
  firms, and other institutions were established.
• The Jewish Autonomous Region itself survived both
  the demise of Stalin and the end of the Soviet
  Union. Today it is one of Russias 83 federal
  subjects, and its only autonomous oblast. The
  Jewish population, however, is no longer
  significant, numbering between 2,000 and 4,000

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Jewish Immigration History

• The history of the Jews in the United States has
  been part of the American national fabric since
  colonial times.
• Until the 1830s the Jewish community of
  Charleston, South Carolina was the most numerous
  in North America. With the large scale
  immigration of Jews from diaspora communities in
  Germany in the 19th century, they established
  themselves in many small towns and cities.
• A much larger immigration of Eastern Ashkenazi
  Jews, 18801914, brought a large, poor,
  traditional element to New York City Refugees
  arrived from diaspora communities in Europe after
  World War II, and many arrived from the Soviet
  Union after 1970.
• In 1989, the U.S. Congress passed the Lautenberg
  Amendment classifying Soviet Jews and certain
  other religious communities as persecuted groups,
  automatically qualifying them for refugee status.
   Over the next decade, a huge wave of new
  Russian-Jewish immigrants headed to American
  shores

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• Soviet hostility toward Jews followed by the
  collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to
  millions of Soviet Jews leaving to seek refuge
  elsewhere.  Over a million of them settled in
  Israel, hundreds of thousands emigrated to
  European countriesprimarily Germanyand others
  landed in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  

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Population

• In the 1940s Jews comprised 3.7 of the national
  population.
• Today the population is about 5 millionunder 2
  of the national total in the US.
• The largest population centers in 2011 are the
  states of
• New York - 1,635,020
• California 1,219,740
• Florida 638,635
• New Jersey 504,450
• Illinois 297,935
• Pennsylvania 294,925 and
• Massachusetts 277,980

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Summary report of the Jewish population in the
United States
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• Russian speakers make up 10 of the American
  Jewish community, but no one is entirely sure how
  many Russian-speaking Jewish people there are in
  the United States. Estimates for this number
  fluctuated from as high as 750,000 people to
  fewer than 500,000
• By any account, the number of Russian-speaking
  Jews in the United States now probably exceeds
  those of Russia and Ukraine combined, states
  Kliger, a sociologist who is director of Russian
  community affairs at AJC. New York today is
  populated by more Russian Jews than any other
  place in the world.
• About 50 of the Former Soviet Union immigrants
  live in New York City there are large
  communities in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco,
  Los Angeles.

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• The Department of Justice does not keep data on
  the religious affiliation of immigrants. The
  Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society settled most Jews
  who came directly from the FSU. Mark Hetfield,
  HIAS senior vice president for policy and
  programs, said that since 1970, the agency
  resettled 410,000 people, mostly Jews.
• There is a question of how many of those
  Russian speakers should be counted as Jewish,
  particularly when many non-Jewish immigrants came
  as members of families that include Jews.
• The numbers are particularly important for the
  Russian-speaking community because it is such a
  large demographic group estimates range from
  about 6 to 12 of American Jewry and because
  it has needs that are distinct from the wider
  American Jewish community.

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Migration
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Russian Jews

• More likely to be members of a Jewish community
  than of a synagogue
• Have stronger bond to Israel that an average
  American Jew
• Have relatives in Israel
• Only 70 are real Jews according to Israels
  Law of Return
• Other 30 are non-Jews who belong to Jewish
  household or more distantly related
• Most do not speak Hebrew

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Social structure

• Compared with other major immigrant populations,
  Russians are generally older 83 are age 50 or
  older
• About 35 have a college degree
• Russians hold professional positions as
  physicians, engineers, and teachers.
• Many encounter difficulties pursuing careers in
  the U.S. due to certification or licensing
  requirements.

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• The most recent arrivals to the U.S. tend to be
  less educated than earlier immigrants. They are
  often employed in manufacturing, trade, and
  service industries, and many have launched
  successful businesses.
• Native Russian language is usually spoken at
  home. Only the oldest generation of Russian Jews
  can still understand and speak Hebrew, however
  they do not use it to communicate with there
  family or friends.