The Negative Impact Of Illegal Immigration On Job Opportunities
American Thinker:
The ignored elephant in the immigration debate is the negative impact of illegal immigration on job opportunities for unskilled, uneducated, native-born U.S. workers — particularly young African-Americans, but also native-born Hispanics. In their Hollywood debate, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton refused to admit immigration “hits poor and minorities hardest” as the cliché goes.
While some proponents of a liberal immigration policy admit to anecdotal evidence of the elephant’s existence, they typically discount a causal relationship between employed illegal immigrants and unemployed citizens.
Granted, it’s hard to document employers hiring illegal immigrants over legal applicants; after all, it’s against the law. But it’s not necessary to film it happening to know that it is. Statistics tell the story.
First, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, from December 2006 - December 2007 unemployment among Hispanics (legal workers assumed since why would illegals participate in a census?) rose from 5.0 to 6.3%. The number for unemployed African-Americans increased from 7.9 to 9.0%.
Second, the U.S. government may be vastly underestimating the number of illegal laborers in the work force. In January 2005, Bear Sterns Asset Management, Inc. released a report entitled “The Underground Labor Force Is Rising To The Surface,” that states,
“The number of illegal immigrants in the United States may be as high as 20 million people, more than double the official 9 million people estimated by the Census Bureau.
Undocumented immigrants are gaining a larger share of the job market, and hold approximately 12 to 15 million jobs in the United States - 8% of the employed.
Third, native born Hispanics are not faring as well in the job market as foreign-born Latinos. A report from the Pew Hispanic Center entitled “Latino Labor Report 2006: Strong Gains in Employment,” dated September 27, 2006, statistically separates foreign-born Latinos and native-born Hispanics.
“Foreign-born Latinos continued to dominate the Hispanic labor force. About eight out of every 10 new jobs landed by Latinos in 2005-2006 went to foreign-born Latinos.
The unemployment rate for foreign-born Latinos was 3.9% in the second quarter of 2006, a decrease from 4.6% a year earlier. Among native-born Hispanics, the unemployment rate in the second quarter of 2006 was 6.2%, down from 7.2% in the second quarter of 2005.
The wide array of statistics available from government and private sector sources leads to this conclusion: Unemployment disproportionately hits unskilled, uneducated blacks and native-born Hispanics. Why? It is simple, business economics: (1) In the unskilled labor market, legal workers offer no greater productivity than comparable illegal ones; (2) legal hiring requires employers to conform to U.S. law; and (3) citizen new hires often expect benefits. In short, more illegal workers cost employers less.
The flood of undocumented workers into the U.S. labor market is a grand national social-engineering project undertaken with the tacit approval of both major political parties. It’s happening without counting the short- or long-term costs to the U.S. labor market and general economy.
The luminaries inside the Beltway seem oblivious to the collateral damage that our open southern border exacts on young black and Hispanic high school dropouts. For example, in March 2007, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Charles Schumer (D.-NY), held hearings on “Addressing the Problem of African-American Male Unemployment.” Both Senators Clinton and Obama submitted written statements in their absence. In Schumer’s opening remarks he said,
“The growing crisis of joblessness for young African American men…is profound, persistent and perplexing…In 1999, 65% of black male high school dropouts in their 20’s were jobless - in other words, not looking or unable to find work - and by 2004, the share had grown to 72%. 72% jobless! This compares to 29% of white and 19% Hispanic dropouts.” [emphasis added]
What is most perplexing is the absence of any reference to a major contributing factor to the “Problem of African-American Male Unemployment.” None of the 23 references to “workers” in the official transcript refers to illegal workers. The word “immigration” appears in neither Clinton’s nor Obama’s written statement. Nor, according to the transcript, was the word spoken during the hearings. The elephant was invisible.
Had Frederick Douglass been able to testify, he might have repeated what he said before the A. A. S. Society in New York, May 1853, during the great wave of immigration before the Civil War:
“Every hour sees the black man elbowed out of employment by some newly arrived emigrant, whose hunger and whose color are thought to give him a better title to the place.”
The elephant has been in the room for years, growing larger. Steven Camarota, author of “Dropping Out: Immigrant Entry and Native Exit From the Labor Market, 2000-2005,” released by the Center for Immigration Studies, writes:
…between March 2000 and March 2005 only 9 percent of the net increase in jobs for adults (18 to 64) went to natives. This is striking because natives accounted for 61 percent of the net increase in the overall size of the 18 to 64 year old population.
As for the less-educated, between March of 2000 and 2005 the number of adult immigrants (legal and illegal) with only a high school degree or less in the labor force increased by 1.6 million.
At the same time, unemployment among less-educated adult natives increased by nearly one million, and the number of natives who left the labor force altogether increased by 1.5 million. Persons not in the labor force are neither working nor looking for work. As poor, unskilled, uneducated illegal immigrants, largely from Mexico, enter the U.S. labor force, their native-born counterparts exit.
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Even down to the neighborhood kid cutting your lawn. Gone because he was underbid by an illegal. When I turned 14 I started caddying at the Merion Golf Club, lived real close. I could only carry one bag, but that was $7 when $7 was $7. (62-63) All that kind of stuff is gone. Have to get the wall built and get rid of the 14th Amendment. It was written to benefit the children of freed slaves. They should have gotten rid of it one-hundred years ago. Head for the border, pop out a kid and then you’re the mother of a US citizen and the US will set them up so they can play house at US taxpayers expense. There may be a race war in the US and it woin’t be white vs anyone. It will be black vs brown.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:53 amNo nation on earth can survive if it can’t defend it’s borders! All you have to do is look into history’s past and see what happen to great nations and empires when their government and their citizen get corrupted and refuse to defend their borders . Those who do not learn from history past mistakes will die from those mistakes!
February 4th, 2008 at 6:13 amWow, this is just horrible. I can’t believe that so many still don’t see the problems with illegal immigration. It’s also endangering our national security. I think the first step though, is to get rid of the benefits to immigrants. Unfortunately, some in Congress want to increase them, even going as far as providing subsidized college education to illegal immigrants. This will give them another reason to break into our county. I found a petition which is trying to end this, also, as we gain more signatures, money is donated to the Border Patrol to help them in their cause.
February 4th, 2008 at 6:25 amhttp://www.petitionearth.com/viewpetition.php?id=63
We must stand united in a cause of such importance.
Read Thomas Sowell’s book, “Basic Economics”, as he clearly illustrates the politicians main focus is often securing voting blocks, which ensure his reelection. For many politicians, both republican and dem, refusing to secure the border is all about reelection. Either with getting more Mexicans to vote for you or to get big business donors and in many cases getting both. Both ends are working against the middle and the middle is us, hard working American citizens who don’t want to see our home trashed.
My first jobs were in agriculture (1982) and it used to be primarily whites, now its all mexican.
Not only do the illegals take away jobs from low skilled Americans they severaly depress wages and depress innovation due to an artificial depression in the cost of labor. There is no need to innovate if you have a steady stream of uneducated people willing to do anything for almost nothing. We all, through our tax dollars, are supporting and subsidizing so many industries by picking up the social services tab(health care, education, food stamps, welfare) the illegal doesn’t have to provide for themselves.
As I said in another post illegals don’t reinvest the money they earn back into the economy, they export it home.
In the long run I think illegal immigration will prove to be just as important as having to deal with AQ. It has already so severely damaged rural health care in California that all of us suffer and pay the cost.
February 4th, 2008 at 7:24 amDeport them all. They are totally useless. Most of them have
no ambition whatsoever. they are content with making two dollars a day. sure it seems like a good idea having someone work for such a small amount until you look around and see nothing but useless bums standing out in front of the 711 just waiting for someone to stop by and offer them a dollar.
I look at them and think man all they ever do is just wander the earth looking to meek out a worthless life. they wandered over here from Asia, wandered all around the western hemisphere and now they are wandering up here to the US. just drop them all back off in mexico they can have that craphole.
February 4th, 2008 at 11:49 amNow I am a 25 year old African-American female living in the metro-Atlanta area, I see the devastation of immigration every single day! Our people built this country with blood, sweat and tears and still are looked upon by many as second-class citizens. The Mexican immigrants have come in and taken away good jobs. I see a young pregnant Mexican female every single day. They get free medical care, food stamps and welfare. I am a struggling college student and some nights my roommates and I starve because we have no food or money, and the clincher is I was refused foodstamps when I applied. I also work fulltime and pay taxes!! All I want is the government to help us pay for food so that we can live and study and graduate and become productive American citizens, like we were raised to be by our society. It brings me to tears to see how the American dream is so f*ck$d up! Sometimes I wonder if I get knocked-up and start to speak with an accent I’ll be provided with the basic necessities needed to help me survive in this world. Something has got to be done. I am one of the most loving people you will ever know, I love and embrace different cultures, but I see myself growing more and more resentful of foreigners. The Palestinians and Indians who run ALL of the gas stations, the Asians who have capitalized by bootlegging hard-working peoples ideas and selling this low quality crap for the price of the real thing. IT IS NOT RIGHT!!! It is so not fair! All of the hardworking college grads who can’t get a job to save their lives simply because they require a REAL salary. What are we supposed to do? Our government does not care, they have the best of everything, so why should they care about the little man and his family who just happen to be the backbone of this so-called Land of the Free and Brave?
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 am
Now I am a 25 year old African-American female living in the metro-Atlanta area, I see the devastation of immigration every single day! Our people built this country with blood, sweat and tears and still are looked upon by many as second-class citizens. The Mexican immigrants have come in and taken away good jobs. I see a young pregnant Mexican female every single day. They get free medical care, food stamps and welfare. I am a struggling college student and some nights my roommates and I starve because we have no food or money, and the clincher is I was refused foodstamps when I applied. I also work fulltime and pay taxes!! All I want is the government to help us pay for food so that we can live and study and graduate and become productive American citizens, like we were raised to be by our society. It brings me to tears to see how the American dream is so f*ck$d up! Sometimes I wonder if I get knocked-up and start to speak with an accent I’ll be provided with the basic necessities needed to help me survive in this world. Something has got to be done. I am one of the most loving people you will ever know, I love and embrace different cultures, but I see myself growing more and more resentful of foreigners. The Palestinians and Indians who run ALL of the gas stations, the Asians who have capitalized by bootlegging hard-working peoples ideas and selling this low quality crap for the price of the real thing. IT IS NOT RIGHT!!! It is so not fair! All of the hardworking college grads who can’t get a job to save their lives simply because they require a REAL salary. What are we supposed to do? Our government does not care, they have the best of everything, so why should they care about the little man and his family who just happen to be the backbone of this so-called Land of the Free and Brave?
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:27 amThanks for this truth. Wish everyone would read it.
March 8th, 2008 at 1:53 pm