…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…

Read the rest…

…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…

Read the rest…

…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…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Recent estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center indicate that the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has declined by roughly one million since 2007—bringing the total size of the unauthorized population to approximately 11.1 million.  Coming after the release of similar estimates by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in January, these figures have provoked considerable speculation as to how much of the decline is attributable to the current recession, and how much is the result of heightened immigration enforcement.  DHS, for instance, was quick to take credit for the drop, citing the money and manpower that have been poured into immigration enforcement by the Obama administration.  However, immigration researchers were just as quick to point out that unauthorized immigration has always responded to the state of the U.S. economy, and that the downward trend captured by both Pew and DHS matches up closely with the beginning of the recession in December 2007…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

An oft-repeated claim in the debate over Arizona’s harsh anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, is that tough immigration-enforcement measures are needed to prevent violent crime from engulfing the state.  In particular, supporters of SB 1070 often cite kidnappings in the state’s capital, Phoenix, as a reason to crack down on unauthorized immigrants.  Arizona politicians such as U.S. Senator John McCain and State Senator Russell Pearce, for instance, have justified their calls for more immigration enforcement by claiming that Phoenix is the “the number two kidnapping capital of the world” after Mexico City.  Not only is this claim false, but it ignores two inconvenient facts.  First of all, the victims of most kidnappings in Phoenix are unauthorized immigrants.  Second, crime rates in Arizona have been falling for years.  Cracking down on the unauthorized immigrants upon whom so many kidnappers prey is a classic case of blaming the victim.  Moreover, this blame-the-victim posture diverts attention from the fact that the broken U.S. immigration system has created a lucrative market for kidnappers…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) underscores not only the diversity of the foreign-born labor force in the United States, but also the myriad roles that immigrant workers play in the U.S. economy.  The report, which analyzes data from the Current Population Survey, finds that 15.5 percent of the U.S. labor force was foreign-born in 2009, up slightly from 14.5 percent in 2004.  Moreover, immigrant workers and their native-born counterparts differ significantly in terms of occupation and education, as well as where in the country they live.  As other, more detailed analyses have confirmed, this suggests that immigrants and natives are filling different niches in the U.S. labor market and are therefore not in direct competition with each other for most jobs…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

Supporters of Arizona’s harsh new immigration law claim that it is, in part, a crime-fighting measure.  For instance, the bill’s author, Republican State Senator Russell Pearce of Mesa, confidently predicts that the law—which requires police to investigate the immigration status of anyone who appears to be unauthorized—will result in “less crime” and “safer neighborhoods.”  However, Sen. Pearce overlooks two salient points: crime rates have already been falling in Arizona for years despite the presence of unauthorized immigrants, and a century’s worth of research has demonstrated that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or be behind bars than the native-born.  While much has been made about kidnappings in Arizona, law-enforcement officials indicate that most of these involve drug smugglers and human smugglers, as well as smuggled immigrants themselves—not the general population of the state.  Combating crime related to human smuggling requires more trust between immigrants and the police, not less.  Yet the undermining of trust between police and the community is precisely what Arizona’s new law accomplishes.  In the final analysis, immigration policy is not an effective means of addressing crime because the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

The Secure Border Initiative (SBI), launched by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2005, is a cautionary tale of the dangers inherent in seeking a technological quick fix to the problem of unauthorized immigration.  SBI calls not only for fencing the U.S.-Mexico border in the literal sense, but constructing a “virtual fence” as well.  Since physical fencing can be climbed over, broken through, or dug under, it is complemented in SBI by a system of cameras and sensors—known as “SBInet”—that will, in theory, alert the Border Patrol whenever an unauthorized border crossing occurs.  However, SBI has not gone according to plan. Hundreds of miles in new fencing and vehicle barriers have been erected at the border at a cost of $2.4 billion, but there is no evidence this is enhancing border security or deterring unauthorized immigrants.  And SBInet has been plagued by persistent technical problems, shoddy testing, and missed deadlines since the Boeing Corporation received over $1 billion worth of DHS contracts to develop it…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

With the U.S. unemployment rate hovering at 10%, some have questioned whether or not now is really the right time for comprehensive immigration reform that includes the creation of a pathway to legal status for unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States.  Underlying this uncertainty is the fear that native-born Americans will lose out on scarce jobs if currently unauthorized immigrants acquire legal status—despite the obvious fact that unauthorized immigrants are already here and in the labor force.  However, the best available evidence suggests that neither legal nor unauthorized immigration is the cause of high unemployment, and that the higher wages and purchasing power which formerly unauthorized immigrants would enjoy were they to receive legal status would sustain new jobs…

Read the rest…

…for the Immigration Policy Center…

As the public debate over healthcare reform continues to rage, mention is seldom made of the vital role that immigrants play in the healthcare workforce of the United States.  If immigrants are mentioned at all, it is usually in the context of heated discussions about whether or not unauthorized immigrants will, or should, be included in any of the healthcare bills now circulating in Congress.  Lost in this debate is the simple demographic fact that immigrants are a critical component of the healthcare workforce at both the high-skilled and less-skilled ends of the occupational spectrum.  Most notably, immigrants comprise more than one-quarter of all Physicians and Surgeons in the United States, and roughly one-fifth of all Nursing, Psychiatric, and Home Health Aides…

Read the rest…