Testimony Prepared for the House Judiciary Committee
Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law
November 19, 2009
The last four decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants (legal and illegal) arriving. The overall immigrant or foreign-born population has increased from 9.6 million in 1970 (4.8 percent of the population) to 38 million (12.5 percent the population) in 2008. This massive immigration has sparked an intense debate over its costs and benefits. One of the central issues in the immigration debate is its impact on American workers, particularly less-educated Americans who work at the bottom end of the labor force, where immigrants are concentrated.
There is some disagreement among economist about the size of the impact on American workers. However, almost all economists agree that less-educated workers have done very poorly in the labor market over the last four decades as immigration has increased. This testimony examines trends in wages and employment and finds no evidence of a shortage of less-educated workers. Moreover, there is significant research showing that immigration has reduced employment and wages for less-educated natives.
- There is no evidence of a labor shortage at the bottom end of the labor market. If there were, wages, benefits, and employment should all be increasing.
- There has been a long-term decline in wages, even before the current recession:1
- Hourly wages for male non-high school graduates declined 22 percent from 1979 to 2007.
- Hourly wages for male high school graduates declined 10 percent from 1979 to 2007.
- Comparing the third quarters of 2000 and 2007 shows that the share of adult natives (18 to 65) without a high school degree holding a job fell from 54 percent to 48 percent. For those with only a high school education, it fell from 73 percent to 70 percent.2
- The current situation looks even worse. The share of natives (18 to 65) without a high school degree holding a job in the third quarter of 2009 was down to 43 percent. For those (18 to 65) with only a high school education it was down to 65 percent.3
- There is huge supply of potential less-educated workers. In 2007, before the recession, there were more than 22 million native-born Americans (18 to 65) with a high school degree or less not working. In the third quarter of 2009 it was nearly 26 million.4
- There is no evidence that immigrants only do jobs Americans don’t want. Of the 465 occupations defined by the government, only four are majority immigrant. Many jobs often thought to be majority immigrant are in fact majority native. For example:5
- Maids and housekeepers: 55 percent native-born
- Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 58 percent native-born
- Butchers and meat processors: 63 percent native-born
- Grounds maintenance workers: 65 percent native-born
- Construction laborers: 65 percent native-born
- Janitors: 75 percent native-born.
- The nation’s leading immigration economist, George Borjas of Harvard, has done a number of studies in which he found a negative impact from immigration on wages. A 2003 study by Dr. Borjas, for example, estimated that immigration reduced the wages for natives who had not graduated from high school by 7.4 percent.6
- A 2006 paper by Borjas, Grogger, and Hanson found that immigration significantly reduced both the wages and employment of less-educated, native-born African Americans.7
- A 2006 study by Andrew Sum and his colleagues at Northeastern University found that the arrival of new immigrants (legal and illegal) in a state results in a decline in employment among young native-born workers in that state. Their findings indicate that young native-born workers are being displaced in the labor market by the arrival of new immigrants.8
- My own research has examined differences in wages across occupations in which most of the workers have no more than high school education. The findings show that immigration reduced wages for American workers by 10 percent in some occupations.9
One of the important effects of immigration is on the nation’s labor market. The most recent data show that about 15 percent of workers in the United States are immigrants (legal and illegal).10 However, immigration has not increased the supply of workers evenly. They tend to comprise a large share of workers in a few occupations that tend to be done by workers with relatively little formal education such as construction, building cleaning and maintenance, and food preparation and service. These workers most in competition with immigrants tend to be the workers whose wages and employment tend to be lowest.
Four Reasons Immigration Can Impact Wages
Immigrants Might Work for Less. For the most part, the research generally indicates that a few years after arrival, immigrant wages are very similar to those of natives in the same occupation with the same demographic characteristics. This may not be true in all places and at all times, but in general it seems that only newly arrived immigrants undercut native wages. This is probably true of illegal aliens as well. While immigrants as a group, and illegals in particular, do earn less than native-born workers, this is generally due to their much lower levels of education. In other words, immigrants are poorer than natives, but they generally earn wages commensurate with their skills.
Immigrants Are Seen as Better Employees. There is certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence and some systematic evidence that immigrants are seen as better workers by some employers, especially in comparison to native-born African Americans. It is certainly not uncommon to find small business owners who will admit that they prefer Hispanic or Asian immigrants over native-born blacks. This is especially true of Hispanic and Asian employers, who often prefer to hire from within their own communities. We would expect this preference to result in lower wages and higher unemployment for those natives who are seen as less desirable.
A 1995 study of the Harlem labor market by Newman and Lennon provides some systematic evidence that employers prefer immigrants to native-born blacks. Their study found that although immigrants were only 11 percent of the job candidates in their sample, they represented 26.4 percent of those hired. Moreover, 41 percent of the immigrants in the sample were able to find employment within one year, in contrast to only 14 percent of native-born blacks. The authors concluded that immigrants fare better in the low wage labor market because employers see immigrants as more desirable employees than native-born African Americans.11
The Threat of Further Immigration. While no real research has been done on this question, the threat of further immigration may also exert a significant downward pressure on wages. To see how this might work consider the following example: Workers in a meat packing plant that has seen a sudden rise in the number of immigrant workers will very quickly become aware that their employer now has another pool of labor from which it can draw. Thus, even if immigrants remain a relatively small portion of the plant’s total workforce, because of our relatively open immigration policy, the potential of further immigration exists. Therefore, native-born workers curtail their demands for higher wages in response to the threat of more immigration and this in turn holds down wages beyond what might be expected simply by looking at the number of immigrants in an occupation or even the country as a whole.
Immigration Increases the Supply of Labor. By far the most important impact immigration has on the workforce is that it increases the supply of labor. However, immigrants are not distributed evenly across occupations. They are 45 percent of maids and housekeepers, 42 percent of taxi drivers and chauffeurs, and 42 percent of butchers and meat processors. They are also 37 percent of grounds maintenance workers and 35 percent of construction laborers. In contrast, only 10 percent of reporters are immigrants, as are only 6 percent of lawyers and judges and 3 percent of farmers and ranchers.12 As a result, any effect on the wages or job opportunities of natives will likely fall on those employed in less-skilled and lower-paying occupations. Given that they face much more job competition, it should not be surprising that less-educated workers generally have a less favorable view of immigration. In contrast, more-educated and affluent workers who generally have a more favorable view of immigration tend to see immigrants as only “taking jobs Americans don’t want.”
Recent Trends in the U.S. Labor Market.
Wage Trends. Hourly wages for men with less than a high school education grew just 1.9 percent in real terms between 2000 and 2007. This is far less than half a percent a year on average and not the kind of growth we would expect if such workers were scarce. The long-term trend is much worse. Real hourly wages for men without a high school education are 22 percent lower today than in 1979. If we look at male workers with only a high school degree, their real wages have actually declined 0.2 percent since 2000. Since 1979, men with only a high school degree have seen their hourly wages decline 10 percent.13 The share of employers providing health insurance has also declined. No doubt there are employers who pay less-educated workers much more than they used to, but the overall trend in wages and benefits, which has to be the basis of a public policy such as immigration, does not support the argument that there is a shortage of less-educated workers. If there was a shortage, wages should be rising.
Employment Trends. Employment data look as bad or even worse than wage data. This was true even before the current recession, which began toward the end of 2007. In the third quarter of 2007 the share of high school dropouts (18 to 64) holding job had been 48 percent. The remaining 52 percent were either unemployed or were not even looking for work. The figure for 2007 was a significant deterioration from the third quarter of 2000, when 54 percent of native-born dropouts were working. Not surprisingly, things have gotten much worse since 2007. By the third quarter of 2009, the share of natives (18 to 65) who had not completed high school holding a job had dropped all the way down to 43 percent. For adults (18 to 65) with a high school education, but no additional schooling, the share holding a job dropped from 73 percent to 70 percent between the third quarter of 2000 and the third quarter of 2007. By the third quarter of 2009 it was down to 65 percent.14 This is actually the opposite of the trend we would expect if there was a tight labor market and workers were in short supply. But even before the recession, there was a significant deterioration in the share of less-educated natives holding a job. Again, this is strong prima facie that there is no shortage of less-educated workers in the United States.15
The pool of potential less-educated native-born workers is now enormous. By 2007 more than 22 million adult natives (18 to 64) with a high school degree or less were either unemployed or not in the labor force. By 2009 it had grown to nearly 26 million. In the third quarter of 2009 there were also 6.5 million native-born teenagers (16 and 17) not holding a job. To place all these numbers in perspective, an estimated seven to eight million illegal immigrants currently hold a job. Of course, not every person without a job wishes to work. But if only one out of four less-educated adult natives took a job, along with one fifth of the teenagers, it would equal the entire estimated illegal work force.
Attempts to measure the actual labor market effects of recent immigration empirically have often come to contrary and conflicting conclusions. Studies done in the 1980s and early 1990s, which compared cities with different proportions of immigrants, generally found little effect from immigration.16 However, these studies have been widely criticized because they are based on the assumption that the labor market effects of immigration are confined to only those cities where immigrants reside.
Impact of Immigration Is Probably National, Not Local. The interconnected nature of the nation’s economy makes comparisons of this kind very difficult for several reasons. Research by University of Michigan demographer William Frey and others indicates that native-born workers, especially those natives with few years of schooling, tend to migrate out of high-immigrant areas.17 The migration of natives out of high-immigrant areas spreads the labor market effects of immigration from these areas to the rest of the country. There is also evidence that as the level of immigration increases to a city, the in-migration of natives is reduced.
In addition to internal migration patterns, the huge volume of goods and services exchanged between cities across the country creates pressure toward equalization in the price of labor. For example, newly arrived immigrants who take jobs in manufacturing in a high-immigrant city such as Los Angeles come into direct and immediate competition with natives doing the same work in a low-immigrant city like Pittsburgh. The movement of capital seeking to take advantage of any immigrant-induced change in the local price of labor should also play a role in preserving wage equilibrium between cities. In addition to the response of native workers and firms, immigrants themselves tend to migrate to those cities with higher wages and lower unemployment. In short, the mobility of labor, goods, and capital as well as choices made by immigrants may diffuse the effect of immigration, making it very difficult to determine the impact of immigration by comparing cities.
The National Research Council. One way researchers have attempted to deal with the problems associated with cross-city comparisons is to estimate the increase in the supply of labor in one skill category relative to another skill category brought about by immigration in the country as a whole. The wage consequences of immigration are then calculated based on an existing body of literature that has examined the wage effects of changes in the ratio of skilled to unskilled workers. The National Research Council (NRC) relied on this method in its 1997 report entitled “The New Americans.”18 The report was authored by most of the top economists and demographers in the field of immigration. The NRC estimates that immigration has had significant negative effects on the wages of high school dropouts. The NRC concluded that the wages of this group, 11 million of whom are natives, are reduced by roughly 5 percent ($13 billion a year) as a consequence of immigration. Not a small effect. Dropouts make up a large share of the working poor. At that time, nearly one out of three native workers living in poverty lacked a high school education. The wage losses suffered by high school dropouts because of immigration are roughly equal to the combined federal expenditures on subsidized school lunches, low‑income energy assistance, and the Women Infants and Children program.
My Research on Wages. My own research suggests that the effect of immigration may be even greater than the estimates in the NRC report.19 I compared differences across occupations nationally and found that the concentration of immigrants in an occupation does adversely affect the wages of natives in the same occupation. My results show that immigrants have a significant negative effect on the wages of natives employed in occupations that require relatively few years of schooling, accounting for about one-fifth of the labor force. In these occupations, a 1 percent increase in the immigrant composition reduces the wages of natives by 0.8 percent. Since these occupations are now on average 19 percent immigrant, my findings suggest that immigration may reduce the wages of workers in these occupations by more than 10 percent. It should also be added that native-born blacks and Hispanics are much more likely than whites to be employed in the adversely impacted occupations.
Other Research on Wages. Harvard professor George Borjas, who is regarded as the nation’s leading immigration economist, found in a study published in 2003 by the Quarterly Journal of Economics that between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700, or roughly 4 percent.20 Among natives without a high school education, who roughly correspond to the poorest tenth of the workforce, the estimated impact was even larger, reducing their wages by 7.4 percent. The 10 million native-born workers without a high school degree face the most competition from immigrants, as do the eight million younger natives with only a high school education and 12 million younger college graduates. The negative effect on native-born black and Hispanic workers is significantly larger than on whites because a much larger share of minorities are in direct competition with immigrants.
While most of those adversely affected are less educated workers, Borjas’s research indicates that the impact of immigration is throughout the labor market. The results for more skilled workers are particularly important because few of the immigrants in this section of the economy are illegal aliens, yet the effect is the same — lower wages for natives. This research strongly indicates that the primary reason immigration lowers wages is not that immigrants are willing to work for less, rather lower wages are simply the result of immigration increasing the supply of labor.
Impact on Employment. While more research has been focused on the wage effects of immigration, some work has also found an impact on employment. A 2006 study by Borjas, et al., found that a 10 percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group lowered the employment rate of black men by 3.5 percentage points and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by almost a full percentage point.21 Andrew Sum and his colleagues at Northeastern University have also published several reports showing that all or almost all job growth from 2000 to 2004 went to immigrants. In a paper published for the Center for Immigration Studies, Sum and his colleagues found that the arrival of new immigrants (legal and illegal) in a state results in a decline in employment among young native-born workers in that state. Their findings indicate that young native-born workers are being displaced in the labor market by the arrival of new immigrants.22 A 1995 study by Augustine J. Kposowa found that a 1 percent increase in the immigrant composition of a metropolitan area increased unemployment among minorities by 0.13 percent.23 She concludes, “Non‑whites appear to lose jobs to immigrants and their earnings are depressed by immigrants.” A 1997 report published by the Rand Corporation, entitled “Immigration in a Changing Economy: California’s Experience,” authored by Kevin McCarthy and Georges Vernez (1997), estimated that in California between 128,200 and 194,000 people were unemployed or withdrawn from the workforce because of immigration. Almost all of these individuals either are high school dropouts or have only a high school degree. Additionally, most are either women or minorities.
Benefits of Immigration
Workers not in Competition with Immigrants. If immigration reduces wages for less-educated workers, these wages do not vanish into thin air. Employers now have more money either to pay higher wages to more educated workers or to retain as higher profits, creating a higher return on capital. The NRC study mentioned above estimated that immigration reduced the wages of workers with less than a high school degree by about 5 percent. These workers roughly correspond to the poorest 10 percent of the workforce. But this reduction caused gains for the other 90 percent of workers equal to one or two tenths of 1 percent of their wages. The impact on educated workers is so small because workers at the bottom end of the labor market earn such low wages that even a significant decline in their wages only generates very modest gains for everyone else.
For reasons explained in greater detail in the NRC report, the aggregate size of the wage gains for more educated workers should be larger than the aggregate losses suffered by Americans at the bottom of the labor market, thereby generating a net gain for natives overall. The NRC’s findings mean that the wages of workers without a high school degree are $13 billion lower because of immigration, while the wages of other natives are roughly $19 billion higher, for a net gain of $6 billion. Of course, as a share of their income, the losses to less-educated natives are much larger than the gains to other workers. And as share of the total economy the gain is extremely small. The two Harvard economists who did the NRC’s labor market analysis argued that the benefit to natives, relative to the nation’s $8 trillion economy at that time, was “minuscule.”24 However, it should also be noted that while the effect on natives overall may be minuscule, the immigrants themselves benefit substantially by coming here.
Impact on an Aging Society
Some observers think that without large-scale immigration, there will not be enough people of working age to support the economy or pay for government. It is certainly true that immigration has increased the number of workers in the United States. It is also true that immigrants tend to arrive relatively young, and that they tend to have more children than native‑born Americans. Demographers, the people who study human populations, have done a good deal of research on the actual impact of immigration on the age structure. There is widespread agreement that immigration has very little impact on the aging of American society. Immigrants age just like everyone else; moreover, the differences with natives are not large enough to significantly alter the nation’s age structure. This simple fact can be seen clearly in the 2000 census, which showed that the average age of an immigrants was 39, compared to 35 for natives.25
Another way to think about the impact of immigration on the aging of American society is to look at the working-age population. In 2000, 66.2 percent of the population was of working age (15 to 64), but when all post‑1980 immigrants are not counted, plus all of their U.S.‑born children, the working-age share would have been 65.9 percent in 2000. Immigration also does not explain the relatively high U.S. fertility rate. In 2000, the U.S. fertility rate was 2.1 children per woman, compared to 1.4 for Europe, but if all immigrants are excluded the rate would still have been 2.0.26 Looking to the future, Census Bureau projections indicate that if net immigration averaged 100,000 to 200,000 annually, the working-age share would be 58.7 percent in 2060, while with net immigration of roughly 900,000 to one million, it would be 59.5 percent. As the Bureau stated in a 2000 publication, immigration is a “highly inefficient” means for increasing the working-age share of the population in the long-run.27 Census projections are buttressed by Social Security Administration (SAA) estimates showing that over the next 75 years, net legal immigration of 800,000 a year versus 350,000 would create a benefit equal to only 0.77 percent of the program’s projected expenditures.
Of course, it must be emphasized that immigration does not make the country older. In fact, the impact is slightly positive. But, one can advocate less immigration secure in the knowledge that it will not cause the population to age more age rapidly. There is no doubt that the aging of the nation’s population will create very real challenges. But the level of immigration is almost entirely irrelevant to this problem. America will simply have to look elsewhere to met these challenges.
Knowing that less-educated natives are made worse off by immigration does not tell us what, if anything, we should do about it. The extent to which we take action to deal with the wage and employment effects of immigration depends on how concerned we are about the wages of less-educated natives. A number of scholars have argued that the inability of less-educated workers to find work and earn a living wage contributes significantly to such social problems as welfare dependency, family breakup, and crime. One need not accept all the arguments made in this regard to acknowledge that a significant reduction in employment opportunities for the poorest Americans is a cause for real concern.
Help Workers, but Leave Immigration Policy Unchanged. If we wish to do something about the effects of immigration, there are two possible sets of policy options that could be pursued. The first set would involve leaving immigration policy in place and doing more to ameliorate the harmful effects of immigration on natives in lower-skilled occupations Since the research indicates that the negative impact from immigration falls on those employed at the bottom of the labor market, an increase in the minimum wage may be helpful in offsetting some of the wage effects of immigration, though doing so may exacerbate the unemployment effect. Most economists think that the minimum wage tends to increase unemployment. Increasing the minimum wage and keeping unskilled immigration high may make the unemployment problem even worse.
Another program that might be helpful in assisting those harmed by immigrant competition is the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which provides cash to workers who pay no federal income tax. There is little doubt that the cash payments from the credit increase the income of low-wage workers. However, in addition to the high cost to taxpayers, the credit may also hold down wages because it acts as a subsidy to low-wage employers. That is, employers have less incentive to increase wages because workers are now being paid in part by the federal government. Cutting low and unskilled immigration, on the other hand, has no such downside for less-skilled workers, nor is it costly to taxpayers. Moreover, the credit only increases earnings for those with jobs, it does not address increased unemployment among the less-skilled that comes with immigration. Finally, it is not clear how much increasing the minimum wage or the EITC would be helpful in dealing with the decline in labor-force participation among less-educated natives discussed above.
Reducing Unskilled Legal Immigration. The second set of policy options that might be enacted to deal with this problem would involve changing immigration policy with the intent of reducing job competition for natives and immigrants already here. If we were to reduce the immigration of less-educated immigrants we might want to change the selection criteria to ensure that immigrants entering the country will not compete directly with the poorest and most vulnerable workers. At present, only about 12 percent of legal immigrants are admitted based on their skills or education. Since two-thirds of permanent residency visas are issued based on family relationships, reducing the flow of less-educated legal immigrants would involve reducing the number of visas based on family relationships. This might include eliminating the preferences now in the law for the siblings and adult children (over 21) of U.S. citizens and the adult children of legal permanent residents. These changes would not only reduce the immigration of less-educated legal immigrants immediately, they would also limit the chain migration of less-educated immigrants that occurs as the spouses of those admitted in the sibling and adult child categories petition to bring in their relatives. The H-2B program, which allows workers into the country for seasonal non-agricultural work would also need to be eliminated.
Reducing Unskilled Illegal Immigration. In addition to reducing the flow of less-educated legal immigrants, a greater allocation of resources could be devoted to controlling illegal immigration, especially in the interior of the country. About half of the immigrants working in such occupations as construction, building cleaning and maintenance, and food processing and preparation are estimated to be illegal aliens according to my own analysis and research done by the Pew Hispanic Center. A strategy of attrition through enforcement offers the best hope of reducing illegal immigration. The goal of such a policy would be to make illegals go home or self deport. The former INS estimated that more than quarter of million illegal went home on their own, were deported, or died each year.28 A recent study by the Center for Immigration finds very strong evidence that illegal population has fallen from the first part of 2007 to the first part of 2009. Part of the reason for this decline was a substantial increase in illegal immigrants leaving the country.29
The centerpiece to interior enforcement would be to enforce the law barring illegals from holding jobs by using national databases that already exist to ensure that each new hire is legally entitled to work here. The E-verify program with is currently voluntary for employers could be used in this regard. The IRS must also stop accepting Social Security numbers that it knows are bogus. We also need to make a much greater effort to deny illegal aliens things like driver’s licenses, bank accounts, loans, in‑state college tuition, etc. Local law enforcement can play an additional role through the 287(g) program. When an illegal is encountered in the normal course of police work, the immigration service should pick that person up and deport him. More agents and fencing are clearly needed at the border as well.
As discussed above, the overall impact of immigration is almost certainly very small. It probably makes more sense for policymakers to focus on the winners and losers from immigration. The big losers are natives working in lower-wage job jobs that require relatively little schooling. Of course, technological change and increased trade also have reduced the labor market opportunities for less-educated worker in the United States. But immigration is different because it is a discretionary policy that can be altered. On the other hand, immigrants themselves are the big winners. Owners of capital and skilled workers also make gains, though they as made clear in this report gains are tiny relative to their income.
In the end, arguments for or against immigration are as much political and moral as they are economic. The latest research indicates that we can reduce immigration secure in the knowledge that it will not harm the economy. Doing so makes sense if we are very concerned about low-wage and less-educated workers in the United States. On the other hand, if one places a high priority on helping unskilled workers in other countries, then allowing in a large number of such workers should continue. Of course, only an infinitesimal proportion of the world’s poor could ever come to this country even under the most open immigration policy one might imagine. Those who support the current high level of unskilled legal and illegal immigration should at least do so with an understanding that those American workers harmed by the policies they favor are already the poorest and most vulnerable.
1 Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz , “The State of Working America 2008/2009,” Economic Policy Institute, Table 3.16, p. 166.
2 Author’s analysis of public use file of Current Population Survey for the third quarters of 2000 and 2007. Figures are for those working and are seasonally unadjusted.
3 Author’s analysis of public-use file of Current Population Survey for the third quarter of 2009. Figures are for those working and are seasonally unadjusted.
4 Author’s analysis of public-use file of Current Population Survey for the third quarters of 2007 and 2009. Figures are for those unemployed or not in the labor force are seasonally unadjusted.
6 For a technical version of Dr. Borjas’ research see: “The Labor Demand Curve is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2003, pp. 1335-1374, at: http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~GBorjas/Papers/QJE2003.pdf ; for a less technical version, see www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2004/back504.html.
7 George J. Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, Gordon H. Hanson, “Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment and Incarceration to Labor Market Shocks,” Working Paper #12518, National Bureau of Economic Research, www.nber.org/papers/w12518.
8 Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington, and Ishwar Khatiwada , The Impact of New Immigrants on Young Native‑Born Workers, 2000‑2005, Center for Immigration Studies, 2006, www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2006/back806.html.
9 Steven Camarota, “The Effect of Immigrants on the Earnings of Low-Skilled Native Workers: Evidence from the June 1991 Current Population Survey,” Social Science Quarterly, Vol. 78, 1997.
10 Author’s analysis of public-use file of Current Population Survey from the third quarter of 2009. Figures are for those in the labor force.
11 Katherine Newman, and Chauncy Lennon, “Finding Work in the Inner City: How Hard Is It Now? How Hard Will It Be for AFDC Recipients?” Russell Sage Foundation, Working Paper #76, 1995.
13 All figures come from The State of Working America 2008/2009, by Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heidi Shierholz, Economic Policy Institute, Table 3.16, p. 166.
14 All figures for those employed are based on the author’s calculation of employment and labor force participation from the public use files of the Current Population Survey in the third quarter of 2000, 2007, and 2009.
15 All figures for those employed are based on the author’s calculation of employment and labor force participation from the public use files of the Current Population Survey in the third quarter of 2000, 2007, and 2009.
16 Joseph G Altonji and David Card, “The Effects of Immigration on the Labor Market Outcomes of Less‑skilled Natives” in John M. Abowd and Richard B. Freeman eds., Immigration, Trade and Labor, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. George Borjas, “The Impact of Immigrants on the Earnings of the Native‑Born,” 1984. W.M. Briggs and M. Tienda, eds., Immigration: Issues and Policies, Salt Lake City: Olympus. George Borjas, “The Substitutability of Black, Hispanic, and White Labor. Economic Inquiry, vol. 21, 1983.
17 The argument that immigration reduces the in-migration of less-educated natives and increases their out-migration is most associated with the work of William Frey. See William H. Frey, “Immigration and Internal Migration ‘Flight’ from U.S. Metropolitan Areas: Toward a New Demographic Balkanization,” Urban Studies, 32 (4-5), pages 733-757, 1995; and William H. Frey, Immigration and Domestic Migration in U.S. Metro Areas: 2000 and 1990 Census Findings by Education and Race, Research Report 05-572, Population Studies Center, 2005.
18 Barry Edmonston and James Smith, eds., The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, Washington DC: National Academy Press, 1997.
19 Steven Camarota, “The Effect of Immigrants on the Earnings of Low-skilled Native Workers: Evidence from the June 1991 Current Population Survey,” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 78. See also Steven Camarota, ”The Wages of Immigration: The Effect on the Low‑Skilled Labor Market,” Center for Immigration Studies, 1998.
20 For a technical version of Dr. Borjas’ research, see http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~GBorjas/Papers/QJE2003.pdf; for a less technical version, see www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2004/back504.html.
21 George J. Borjas, Jeffrey Grogger, Gordon H. Hanson, “Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment and Incarceration to Labor Market Shocks,” Working Paper #12518, National Bureau of Economic Research, www.nber.org/papers/w12518.
22 Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington, and Ishwar Khatiwada, “The Impact of New Immigrants on Young Native‑Born Workers, 2000‑2005,” Center for Immigration Studies, 2006, www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2006/back806.html.
23 Augustine J. Kposowa,. “The Impact of Immigration on Unemployment and Earnings Among Racial Minorities in the United States,” Racial and Ethnic Studies, vol. 18, 1995.
24 George Borjas and Richard Freeman’s New York Times opinion piece can be found at http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~GBorjas/Papers/NYT121097.htm.
25 These figures and the ones on aging that follow can be found in a 2005 report by the Center for Immigration Studies entitled, “Immigration in an Aging Society: Workers, Birth Rates, and Social Security,” at www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2005/back505.html.
26 See previous Note.
27 See page 21 of the Census Bureau’s “Methodology and Assumptions for the Population Projections of the United States: 1999 to 2100,” at www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0038.pdf.
28 “Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: 1990 to 2000,” Table C, Office of Policy and Planning U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/Ill_Report_12....