Rural Laws: April, 1998 - Number #21

EDD. Report 96A. 1998. Unemployment Insurance Weeks Compensated by Industry. 1997. March 10.

In 1997, California paid $2.4 billion for 16.5 million weeks of UI benefits. About 12 percent of these benefits ($287 million) and 15 percent of the weeks paid (2.5 million) were paid to those laid off in agriculture. Within agriculture, SIC 01 crops and SIC 07 agricultural services each accounted for about one half of the weeks and UI benefits paid.

Within agricultural services, farm labor contractors and crew leaders, SIC 07, accounted for over half of the weeks and UI benefits paid. To put the UI benefits to unemployed FLC workers in perspective, laid-off FLC workers obtained about as many weeks of UI benefits in 1997, 678,000, as were paid to workers laid off by all food-related firms (SIC 20) in California, 690,000.

Data on labor expenditures by county are available at: http://www.dol.gov/dol/asp/public/programs/agworker/naws.htm

Ugalde, Antonio and Gilberto Cardenas. Eds. 1997. Health and Social Services among International Labor Migrants: A Comparative Perspective. Austin. University of Texas Press. Center for Mexican American Studies. http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/

This 11-chapter book includes selected papers presented at a conference in May 1995. There are four papers that deal with immigrant health issues in Belgium, two on Spain, and five on various aspects of immigrant health in the US.

The papers summarize a number of studies that utilized a variety of methods to study immigrant health care. Most authors recommend making more heath care benefits available to immigrants, and providing these health benefits in culturally appropriate ways. The ideal "culturally diverse society would support the idea that immigrants have their own autochthonous [indigenous] health services and be free to select between them and those available to the rest of the population." (pv).

The authors have an unabashedly pro-immigrant point of view. Host countries are criticized for not providing enough health care in culturally appropriate ways to meet the health needs of immigrants. Indeed, many of the papers point out that migrating to rich countries puts migrants at risk of new health risks, from heart disease to cancer.

This book would have been much more interesting if it had dealt with the trade offs involved in migration. Trade offs are the core of economics, and they are so difficult because they are choices between goods, not between a bad and a good. Migrants are making the trade off for the good of increased opportunity abroad rather than the good of remaining in a familiar culture with relatives at home.

When providing services to migrants, there is often a trade off between numbers and benefits--the more migrants, the fewer migrant-specific benefits for cost and other reasons. The authors in this volume argue that there should be no numbers-benefits trade offs in health care. Indeed, they suggest that migrants should have access to more health care than natives, letting migrants choose between native and host society health delivery systems.

There are hard decisions involved in migration, for the migrant as well as for immigration and emigration nations. Denying the existence of trade offs can wind up fueling those who want to restrict immigration. If immigration countries offered the range of health services recommended for incoming migrants, for example, it is very likely that the number of migrants accepted would be reduced.

California offers an example. The state offers prenatal care to poor women; women with incomes below a cut off line received pre-baby care at a cost of about $1,000 each, under the theory that healthy babies are good for parents and for the state. Those just over the income eligibility line are not eligible for benefits. Since 1988, poor and unauthorized women have been eligible for benefits, and in recent years about 70,000 unauthorized women have received prenatal care at an annual cost of $84 million.

With a fixed budget for state-subsidized health care, the trade off is between who gets services. Most health care experts, and most of the authors in this book, would argue that more women should be eligible for services, both those slightly above the income threshold as well as poor unauthorized women, i.e., they refuse to make the trade off. But society is in fact making the trade off for them, in this case, making the unauthorized women eligible for services instead of raising the income threshold. An unwillingness to make trade offs does not mean that trade offs are not made; it simply means that someone else will make them.