Inadmissible evidence: Immigration hurts American workers

Sep 15, 2012
Joe Guzzardi
Here are a few indisputable statistics about immigration and the U.S. job market. Each new legal immigrant receives work authorization. According to the Department of Homeland Security's most recent report, "U.S. Legal Permanent Residents, 2011" a monthly average of 75,000 legal permanent residents "may work permanently anywhere in the U.S."

As for undocumented workers, that's a whole other ball game but with the same deleterious consequences on Americans. Since many foreigners work in the underground economy in hospitality, construction and as domestic help, no one knows either how much the total wages paid out or tax dollars not collected are. The best estimates indicate that the underground economy is billions. Unreported income from those wages costs the federal government millions annually in uncollected taxes. In addition to undocumented workers off the books, according to a Pew Hispanic Center report as many as 7 million are employed in non-farm payroll jobs. Although they may pay taxes, they also displace American workers.

Anemic job growth can't even keep up with population increases which are, ironically, fueled by record setting, congressionally sanctioned immigration levels. During the last 12 months, the percent of the working age foreign-born population increased at three times the rate of the corresponding native-born population.

Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the economy created 96,000 jobs — sharply lower than the anticipated 130,000. But 120,000 jobs disappeared in August. The labor market participation fell to 63.5 percent, the lowest it's been in the 30 years.

According to the BLS' reports from 2009 to 2012, native-born employment has fallen by nearly 1.5 million while the foreign-born segment has increased by 1.4 million. Once again, immigrants' wages are an indisputable fact as acknowledged by New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Paul Krugman and other economists. Wrote Krugman: "Immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That's just supply and demand: We're talking about large increases in the number of low-skill workers relative to other inputs into production, so it's inevitable that this means a fall in wages."

Neither candidate has uttered a single questioning word about over-immigration's effect. Instead, President Obama has authorized work permits for 1.7 million previously unemployable childhood-arrival undocumented workers. And Romney, while refusing to comment on Obama's deferred action policy, favors increasing the numbers of visas for non-immigrant workers as well as automatically attaching green cards to foreign-born students who graduate from American universities with degrees in math and science.

Without reductions to the numbers of immigrants admitted into the U.S., the economy would need to create an average of 282,000 jobs every month for the next five years to get back to pre-recession.
During the next two months, Obama and Romney will wax poetic about their plans for American workers. Remember that the most immediate and effective solution-reducing the number of immigrants by more than the numbers of jobs created-is obvious but too politically incorrect to talk about, much less act on.

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