Thread: Study: Illegal immigration hurts poor U.S.-born workers

Study: Illegal immigration hurts poor U.S.-born workers

By Arthur Kimball Stanley

The Providence Journal (RI), November 19, 2006
http://www.projo.com/projojobs/content/ ... a6c52.html

The members of the labor force that have been most affected by the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States over the past five years are low-skilled, young native-born workers, according to a recent study issued by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

“It appears that employers are substituting new immigrant workers for young native-born workers,” economists Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington and Ishwar Khatiwada wrote. “The negative impacts tended to be larger for in-school youth compared to out-of-school youth, and for native-born black and Hispanic males compared to their white counterparts.”

Moreover, the authors wrote, the rise in immigrant employment, especially among illegal workers over the past decade, has contributed to a breakdown in the nation’s labor laws and labor standards, undermining the unemployment insurance and Social Security systems and basic worker protections that have evolved over the last century.

This study is one of the latest voices in a debate that stretches back decades, if not more than a century, concerning the effect large scale immigration has on those already here. “There is a set of industries in all this that are big winners,” Harrington said in an interview with The Journal. “Those who lose are poor people, those without much access to education and other recent immigrants. When you bring in large numbers of illegal immigrants, what you do is break down the labor standards and create environments Americans don’t want to work in.”

Market forces lead employers to pay for labor at the lowest possible rate, and if a large number of workers are willing to work below the minimum wage or in environments that violate labor laws that the government is not enforcing, many employers will hire those workers. That means those who want work with government-mandated conditions are left out.

Harrington said labor market statistics bear this out. Between 2000 and last year, the number of native-born men who were employed declined by 1.7 million — even as the number of males in this age group went up — while the number of new male immigrant workers increased by 1.9 million. Of the 4.1 million new immigrant workers who got jobs in the United States between 2000 and last year, an estimated 1.4 million to 2.7 million are illegal immigrants.

Discrepancies in the federal government’s Current Population and Current Employment surveys over the past few years also bear this trend out, Harrington said. The number of people reporting themselves as employed has been growing much faster than the number companies are reporting. Illegal immigration, Harrington said, is creating a growing dark side of the labor market where employers operate outside the market’s legal framework.

“There are a whole set of social problems that emerge from this,” Harrington said. “Early work experience is like schooling in that it has its own innate set of payoffs. When you work when you are young you get higher earnings when you are old. What this sharp reduction in the employment of young people will produce is people being idle and discontent and not prepared for the labor force as they get older.”

Arguments about the sometimes adversarial role immigration has with labor interests have been around for a long time. Samuel Gompers, the founder of the American Federation of Labor, was one of the major advocates of legislation that severely limited immigration to the United States in the early part of the 20th century.

Cesar Chavez, who founded the National Farm Workers Association, sued the federal government in the 1970s for its failure to enforce immigration laws, which allowed the continued influx into the United States of illegal farm workers, who competed for jobs with his union members.

Economists argue, if labor can be turned into a limited-supply commodity, working conditions will improve. If the labor supply is consistently greater than the demand, employers can dictate working conditions.

Harrington and his fellow economists are making their arguments with the same political pressures today. Real wages for the lowest-paid American workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have been stagnant or declining for years, and both houses of Congress have been working on an immigration-reform plan.

It’s unclear what the House and Senate will do with the issue next year, now that the Democrats have won control, but nationally influential periodicals such as Foreign Affairs magazine refuse to let the issue go away.

In this month’s Foreign Affairs cover article titled “Immigration Nation,” journalist Tamar Jacoby presented the counter view to Harrington’s argument, stating that large amounts of immigration are necessary for continued expansion of the American economy.

“It’s not as simple as a supply and demand graph,” Jacoby said in an interview with The Journal. “If you didn’t have those immigrants those jobs wouldn’t exist.”

Immigrants fill the jobs Americans don’t want, allowing businesses to control costs, according to Jacoby’s argument. Cheap labor means cheaper services and products, which improve consumer buying power.

Madeline Zavodny, an associate professor at Agnes Scott College, has contributed to some of the research Jacoby uses in her argument. “What most research shows is that illegal low-skill immigration helps skilled workers,” Zavodny said. “We have a greater variety of goods and services in this country as a result of increased labor supply. If they were not here it would mean higher prices, it would mean smaller houses. … We would consume different goods and services, we would live in a different country.”

There are ways to address low incomes among low-skilled workers that are more direct than limiting the number of skilled people who enter the United States, she said. Social services and work-force-development are examples, according to Zavodny.

Moreover, she said, high numbers of low-skilled immigrants give those at the bottom of the labor pool incentive to improve their skills and move up, as well as opportunity to those from other countries who want to improve their lives.

“If your goal is to deter low-skill immigration you need to crack down on employment, but ultimately it’s a moral issue, not an economic issue,” she said. “We’re the richest country in the history of civilization, and to say who can come in and who can’t is ultimately a moral judgment.”

Interestingly, Harrington also seems to see it as a moral issue.

“Where we have labor supply problems is at the high end, not the low end,” Harrington said. “They are having trouble getting enough nurses, not minimum wage workers. We have this tremendously distressed immigration system that punishes people for trying to come into the country legally and ignores those who come in illegally.… And doing that hurts those in the labor market who are inherently disadvantaged to begin with.”

“It appears that employers are substituting new immigrant workers for young native-born workers.”

It took a study for that? With a huge volume of low wage earners not only does your working conditions worsen but you never see the pay increase that years of experience used to count for. Everytime you start out at a new job it's just like starting from scratch. Minimum wage. Complain and your fired. Get too high on the pay scale and your gone too. I've been living this for a good 25 years and it's new news? These people need to visit the trenches once in awhile and realize there's another group of people out here trying to survive.

Cesar Chavez, who founded the National Farm Workers Association, sued the federal government in the 1970s

This is new news to me. Can anyone find out the details on this and what the outcome was?

W

I get so tired of all the studies by people who are supposedly 'in the know'
Pardon my language, but most of what they come up with is plain and simply BULLSHIT.

If it isnt the bleeding hearts with their blind compassion for these mongrels, its some brainiac that states a lot of statistics that end up saying that we need the influx of un-skilled, un-educated, non english speaking criminals so that our country can survive economically.

These people are not doing jobs Americans wont do, their doing Americans jobs for lower pay that an American wont work for because they can not live on the pay PERIOD.

Today, we are losing millions of jobs to outsourcing and illegals working for cut rates taking whats left.
I have been in the work force for 30 years until March of this year and I can not find a job anywhere....not even a damn warehouse job, and I have 2 college degrees.
I have way too much working against me. I am white, I am 46, and I am educated and I am an American citizen.

From my perspective we as a country are doomed. Our leaders do not care about us at all. I and countless millions have been tossed aside with no regard what so ever for our abilty to live.

The government says education is the answer, or re-training...another crock-o-shit. If the mex dont get you outsourcing will. The bottom line is the government of the United States of America is actively dismantling our country into a 3rd world country.