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Study: Immigrants not hurting U.S. jobs
WASHINGTON - Big increases in immigration since 1990 have not hurt employment prospects for American workers, says a study released Thursday.

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The report comes as Congress and much of the nation are debating immigration policy, a big issue in this fall's midterm congressional elections.

The Pew Hispanic Center found no evidence that increases in immigration led to higher unemployment among Americans, said Rakesh Kochhar, who authored the study.

Kochhar said other factors, such as economic growth, played a larger role than immigration in setting the job market for Americans.

The study, however, did not look at whether wages were affected by immigration. Advocates for tighter immigration policies argue that immigrant workers depress wages for American workers, especially those with few skills and little education.

Immigration supporters argue that foreign workers often take jobs that Americans don't want and won't take.

The Pew Hispanic Center is a nonpartisan research organization that does not advocate policy positions. The center studied census data on the increase in immigrants from 1990 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2004, for each state. It matched those figures with state employment rates, unemployment rates and participation in the labor force among native-born Americans.

The U.S. had 28 million immigrants — legal and illegal — age 16 and older in 2000, an increase of 61 percent from 1990. By 2004, there were 32 million.

Among the study's findings:

_Twenty-two states had immigration levels above the national average from 1990 to 2000. Among them, 14 had employment rates for native-born workers above the national average in 2000, and eight had employment rates below the national average.

_Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia had immigration levels below the national average from 1990 to 2000. Among them, 16 had above average employment rates for native-born workers in 2000, and 13 had below average employment rates.

_Twenty-four states had immigration levels above the national average from 2000 to 2004. Among them, 13 states had employment rates for native-born Americans above the national average in 2004, and 11 had employment rates below the national average.

_Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia had immigration levels below the national average from 2000 to 2004. Among them, 12 had employment rates for native-born Americans above the national average, and 15 had employment rates below the national average.

Immigrants tend to be younger and have less education than American workers. The study, however, found "no apparent relationship between the growth of foreign workers with less education and the employment outcome of native workers with the same low level of education."

However, Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, said his research shows that many young workers with little education are hurt by competition from immigrants.

"Employment for less educated natives has declined, and their wages have declined," said Camarota, who advocates stricter immigration policies. "There is no shortage of less educated workers in the United States."

I don't really see it that way. I see it more as:

-If one immigrant working is hired at Company X in the US
-This is one less job a US citizen has an opportunity to utilize

Additionally:

-Corporations are greedy. If they can hire:
. -One Immigrant for $X.XX wage
. -One US Citizen for higher $Y.YY wage

Who do you think they're going to higher? The lower wage, of course. I can't think of a company that wouldn't. Hell...I would hire the cheaper help.

I get more upset at the leniency towards illegal immigrants more than legal, though. It pisses me off when this is pertaining to people that have no right here and haven't gone through the proper channels to comes to the US.

You don't see it which way? The way the study does? Where's your data? And don't feed me anything about your dad getting fired from the GM factory so my TÃo Juan could make jeeps in his garage. That ***** is just tired.

Except that's not really what happens. Immigrant labor tends to take ont of two forms. Either "cheap" labor, or "specialized" labor. In both cases, we're filling labor that can't be filled locally (for one reason or another).

People hire an immigrant worker to pick their crops because they'll do it for less then a citizen. Heck. In many cases, you can't get local labor to do some of those jobs for *any* amount of money (how many examples of this have we seen?).

I know for a fact that my company hires tons of immigrants. Why? Becuase there literally are not enough qualified IC design engineers in the US to fill the need for the jobs. Mask Layout is particularly impacted. In this case, it's not at all about labor costs, but labor availability. It costs *more* to hire some guy from India or China, get him through the immigration process, pay for his move, put him in a temporary home until he can obtain one on his own, and put him to work. Vastly more money involved involved in fact.

In neither case are we "taking jobs from hard working Americans". That has never really been the issue.



First flaw is you're assuming all immigrant labor is unskilled. Second flaw is that you're assuming even unskilled labor somehow "takes a job" away from someone else. But that's wrong as well. If the company hires the immigrant because he's cheaper, what do you think they do with the money they saved? Put it in a big vault and roll around in it like Scrooge McDuck? Why oh why do people insist on believing the corporations work like privately owned businesses?

If they save money by hiring "cheap" immigrant labor, that money goes right back into, oh I don't know, paying more to the rest of their employees? Or reducing the cost of their products? Or spending more on research for new products? Or *gasp* maybe for every X immigrants they hire to take out the trash in their building, they can hire an additional college graduate in an entry level position with career opportunities. Yeah. What a shocker. That might actually be a good thing, right?



I can agree with you here. Unfortunately, this study made no differentiation between legal and illegal immigrants, so we can't really judge it on that basis. It does call into question the starting premise though (that "immigration" was a big election year issue). It's really about illegal immigration, not just immigration itself that is the "big issue".

Here's my vast simplification of this issue:

Labor is available, just not at the price many employers want to pay. Its insane to say it won't be done at any price - any of us would pick strawberries for US$1000/hour (our resident village idiot says this is not the case - this is the assylum after all, treat it as local color and move on). If they hire illegal, immegrant labor they risk fines (fines which, if you elect the right president, will drop percipitiously).

Generally, if a person or corporation doesn't want to pay the rate the market offers, breaking federal law is not an excusable recorse - no matter how much it helps the economy by reducing the cost of doing business. Pirating all our software would lower the cost of virtually every business in the nation (and we have competitors who do this - we could say it is necessary to keep up with them). But of course it would be insane to destroy the software industry. However, when it came do destroying the good paying, manual labor job market by saturating it with very hard working, desperate immegrants from all over the world, we're more likely to turn a blind eye. So this is curious, right? Why save one job and not another?

Let us say that everyone within the US borders is simply offered citizenship. Now the real hardworking immegrants can go get any job. They don't have to work in the fields. It may take some time, but they will move up and out of these jobs (into better jobs) and 13 (fill in your number here) million more will be needed.

It is going to be a perminant problem - and if the boarder is open, we're essentially betting we can grow those 13 million jobs in time for the initial illegal immegrants to move into them. The alternative is that these people move up taking jobs from the (probably less hard working) people occupying them now, and now we have 13 million* unemployed - and this is the nightmare scenerio for the political left. (*Note: it's not 13 it's 13 minus the number of jobs created - now in reality we should be counting the jobs specifically created by the influx of illegal immegrants only - which may be vast, but is probably pretty difficult to measure).

If we can close the boarder entirely (if this is even possible) in one generation there is no replacement of hard working cheap labor (children become citizens) and wages have to increase to the point where someone will do the job - now this may be beyond the point of profitability of the industry and whole segments of our economy go away - and wage pressure is passed on in many forms throughout the whole economy - and this would be the nightmare scenerio for the political right.

There is always someone more desperate, willing to work for less, somewhere on Earth. (It's a pretty big place). And there are a lot of ways to get here, even excluding the legal ones. There are three ways to slow illegal immegration. (1) One is to tighten up the boarder. The next (2) is to drop wages so it isn't so nice to live here. At the moment we are trying (2) and it isn't working too well, and some are advocating for (1) which probably won't have much luck, either - although wages may be higher for those who do come (which has some benefits) and we'll be paying the interest on the debt we incur to build the fences for a long time to come.

The thrid way (3) is to have good, national ID documents (the last amnesty, I think it was under Clinton, had really bad ones which is part of our current problem) and fine the heck out of anyone who hires illegal immegrants (which in recent years we've decided not to do). First, we don't want to fine all our businesses - it's just ugly. Second, its so easy to hire someone else to hire the actual labor that you'll never get the real culprets. It becomes a big shell game, and we don't want Big Government looking under all our shells (maybe they'll find all those tax shelters).

And this is why we've given up on having a good, high wage manual labor force - we are not willing to do what it will take.

But the huge benefit we get is the people. The US gets the most ambitious people from all over. It is really easy to start a business here. It really is easy to get the education you need in your field. And it really is easy to get here legally (if you have lots of money or certain specialized skills) or illegally if you don't.

The accompanying social problems are severe: we have socilized health care for the poor and so we're all paying for the health care of these field workers and we're spending a fair ammount and their care is just abysmal. The conditions are really bad - many field workers don't even have a bed to sleep in. And we have a labor force without rights - if they don't get paid they have no recourse. Worst of all many die in the deserts coming here. It really isn't much of a stretch to say none of our hands are clean. It is a really grim business - and at least tacitly the majority approve.

Some kind of guest work program gets away from a great many of these problems - they should not have to risk death to get here, they have legal rights (like to be paid), the conditions should improve (although probably not much at least they aren't hiding from the law) and they will have the same access to the health care system as any other uninsured US citizen - which is a topic for another day.

But where do we draw the line? Agricultural labor only? Okay - but why does this one industry get this special benefit? Wal Mart wants them to clean their stores. MacDonald's would love to be able to pay subminimum wage. Do we let them? And at what point has it gone beyond guest worker to anyone who wants to come? How are we going to background check them all? Document them all? This is going to be expensive, too, and if we ask the participating industries (who directly benefit) to actually pay for it they are going to claim inability to pay.

Not simple!

For more than a year I was in charge of hiring for the CAD department at the corporation I worked for. An AutoCAD position normally requires at least a six month certification training and, to expect any decent money, at the minimum a year or more of experience. Starting pay with no experience is generally around $8-10 hr and with experience as much as $15hr. So it's not a minimum wage job by any means but neither is it a particularly hard skilled job. I'm not ashamed to say I assumed the Hispanics that applied for the job I was hiring for would not work out. I assumed they wouldn't work as well, wouldn't fit in to the company atmosphere and I wouldn't get along with them as well.

Of those of the caucasian persuasion I hired, one was a tweaker (there is nothing like watching a tweaker try to keep the mouse still while drawing a straight line on a computer screen), one "hurt" his back less than two weeks after starting and none of them could take less than a 30 minute break or an hour and half lunch. Above all ******** about anything and everything was common and a nearly automatic pay raise was assumed (I let one guy go because he assumed he was irreplaceable, he found out how replaceable he was).

Of the hispanics and one middle easterner I hired all of them took their job more than seriously. All of them acted as if they enjoyed their job and not one of them ever came to me with drama. In every case I was happy to come to them with raises, raises often suggested by the company president after my repeated praising of their work.

Now the job itself could skew my opinion. Most of the white boys who worked for me were either injured at their previous physical labor job and were retrained (and the retraining was payed for through workers comp or some such angency) or they were twenty something and their mommys and daddys paid for the training. All of the evil immigrants where a few years older much more in the professional mind set.

Despite that I'm not saying immigrants are stealing American jobs, from my experience I am saying they are showing they deserve the jobs.

Yipee for jobs. How 'bout Schools, and the taxes that go to pay for them? How 'bout Hospitals and the blah blah strings that are attatched to that? And if no-one is hurt, and by definition, everyone benifits {1:57:08}, why not throw open the doors? Oh that's right, it's that "free-trade" word again ...

Thank you though for putting on your George Washington wig while pronoucing the word 'xenophope'. It was truly inspiring to the youth of today. Those Warrior Princess X/Z (damn, sorry about that) -ena ratings were I felt too were not quite on the up and up. ;;

P.S. So when did Manifest Destiny 'officialy' end and the democratic invasion strikes back 'officially' begin? Would you care to volunteer for the fair and balanced other side of the story by marching down the main boulevard of Mexico City with your american flag and sign of demandments? Where are't though our right for change in Meyh-ico? Maybe we should vote on a strict population of US.A. + Mexico basis whether or not Meyh-ico is the 51st tax-paying 'sovereign' State?

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of the violins.

I call BS. There is something called unions in the Electrical and Plumbing field which would never, EVER let that happen.

At the risk of being melo-dramatic -
Every person in American has a chance at college now too. If you work hard enough, study, take your vitamins, blah blah. There is also something called "financial aid." I know about it, it has the next 25 years of my life.

Yeah, back when all those non-immigrants built the railroads! And constructed the skyscrapers! And worked the assembly lines to make the cars that the non-immigrants were making roads for while wearing those clothes sewn in non-immigrant sweatshops! Then they'd settle down for a hearty lunch of beef from the non-immigrant slaughterhouses.

Those were the days!