…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Recent estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) indicate that the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has remained unchanged at roughly 11 million since 2009.  This comes after a two-year decline of approximately one million that corresponded closely to the most recent recession, which ran from December 2007 to June 2009.  Despite that decline, the new data make clear that the current population of unauthorized immigrants is very much part of the social and economic fabric of the country.  Three-fifths of unauthorized immigrants have been in the United States for more than a decade.  Unauthorized immigrants comprise more than one-quarter of the foreign-born population and roughly 1-in-20 workers.  Approximately 4.5 million native-born U.S.-citizen children have at least one unauthorized parent…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Immigrants are not the cause of unemployment in the United States.  Empirical research has demonstrated repeatedly that there is no correlation between immigration and unemployment.  In fact, immigrants—including the unauthorized—create jobs through their purchasing power and their entrepreneurship, buying goods and services from U.S. businesses and creating their own businesses, both of which sustain U.S. jobs.  The presence of new immigrant workers and consumers in an area also spurs the expansion of businesses, which creates new jobs.  In addition, immigrants and native-born workers are usually not competing in the same job markets because they tend to have different levels of education, work in different occupations, specialize in different tasks, and live in different places.  Because they complement each other in the labor market rather than compete, immigrants increase the productivity—and the wages—of native-born workers…

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…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Some observers have suggested that immigrants are to blame for the high unemployment rates and low wages experienced by so many minority workers in the United States.  However, the best available evidence suggests that immigration is not the cause of dismal employment prospects for American minorities.  For instance, cities experiencing the highest levels of immigration tend to have relatively low or average unemployment rates for African Americans.  This should come as no surprise; immigrants go where jobs are more plentiful.  The grim job market which confronts many minority workers is the product of numerous economic and social factors: the decline of factory employment, the deindustrialization of inner cities, racial discrimination, etc.  Immigration plays a very small role.  However, that role is generally positive…

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