(no subject)
6. The time-squared term was not significantly different from zero in the models estimating women's hourly and annual earnings growth, and therefore was removed from these models.
7. For the sake of brevity and presentation, coefficients associated with other factors in the models are not presented. In general, they tend to conform to familiar patterns of results. For example, older age groups tend to have higher initial hourly earnings, but slower rates of growth, while university education is associated with both higher initial hourly earnings and faster growth. Complete results of all models are available from the author.
8. When logwage is estimated, the coefficient associated with a particular group is a good approximation of the average percentage difference in wage between that group and the reference group.
9. Since rates of earnings growth rarely differ significantly between groups, they are not presented, but are available from the author.
10. Having children had little or no effect on hourly earnings, but a large negative effect on hours worked (and therefore annual earnings).
11. The relatively large coefficient associated with visible minority earnings growth (.060) suggests that some members of this group may catch up somewhat in subsequent years. However, the heterogeneity within the group was sufficient to prevent the result from achieving statistical significance.
References
• Aydemir, Abdurrahman, Wen-Ho Chen and Miles Corak. 2005. Intergenerational Earnings Mobility Among the Children of Canadian Immigrants (PDF). Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE - No. 267. Ottawa. Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, no. 267, 44 p. (accessed September 20, 2007).
• Aydemir, Abdurrahman and Mikal Skuterud. 2004. Explaining the Deteriorating Entry Earnings of Canada's Immigrant Cohorts: 1966-2000 (PDF). Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE - No. 225. Ottawa. Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, no. 225, 31 p. (accessed September 20, 2007).
• Beck, J. Helen, Jeffrey G. Reitz and Nan Weiner. 2002. "Addressing Systemic Racial Discrimination in Employment: The Health Canada Case and Implications of Legislative Change." Canadian Public Policy. Vol. 28, no. 3. p. 373-394.
• Boyd, Monica. 2002. "Educational Attainments of Immigrant Offspring: Success or Segmented Assimilation?" International Migration Review. Vol. 36, no. 4, p. 1037-1060.
• Boyd, Monica and Elizabeth Grieco. 1998. "Triumphant Transitions: Socioeconomic Achievements of the Second Generation in Canada." International Migration Review. Vol. 32, no. 4, p. 853-876.
• Frenette, Marc and René‚ Morissette. 2003. Will They Ever Converge? Earnings of Immigrant and Canadian-born Workers over the Last Two Decades (PDF). Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE - No. 215. Ottawa. Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, no. 215, 20 p. (accessed September 20, 2007).
• Hansen, Jörgen and Miroslav Kučera. 2004. The Educational Attainment of Second Generation Immigrants in Canada: Evidence from SLID. Unpublished manuscript, Concordia University, Montreal.
• Hum, Derek and Wayne Simpson. 2004. The Legacy of Immigration: The Labour Market Performance of the Second Generation. Prairie Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration Working Paper Series, no. WP06-04. 8 p.
• Maani, Sholeh A. 1994. "Are Young First and Second Generation Immigrants at a Disadvantage in the Australian Labor Market?" International Migration Review. Vol. 28, no. 4, p. 865-882.
• Nielsen, Helena Skyt, Michael Rosholm, Nina Smith and Leif Husted. 2001. Intergenerational Transmissions and the School-to-Work Transition of 2nd Generation Immigrants. IZA Discussion Paper Series, no. 296 (Bonn, Germany).
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 2007. Education at a Glance 2007: OECD Indicators. Paris. OECD. 456 p.
• Österberg, Torun. 2000. Economic Perspectives on Immigrants and Intergenerational Transmissions. Ekonomiska Studier 102, Göteborg University, Sweden.
• Picot, Garnett and Feng Hou. 2003. The Rise in Low-income Rates Among Immigrants in Canada (PDF). Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE - No. 198. Ottawa. Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, no. 198, 58 p. accessed September 20, 2007).
• Picot, Garnett, Feng Hou and Simon Coulombe. 2007. Chronic Low Income and Low-income Dynamics Among Recent Immigrants (PDF). Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11FOO19MIE - No. 294. Ottawa. Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, no. 294, 48 p. (accessed September 20, 2007).
• Reitz, Jeffrey G. and Rupa Banerjee. 2007. "Belonging? Diversity, Recognition and Shared Citizenship in Canada." Racial Inequality, Social Cohesion and Policy Issues in Canada. Keith Banting, Thomas J. Courchene and F. Leslie Seidle (eds.). Montreal. Institute for Research in Public Policy. 57 p.
• Van Ours, Jan and Justus Veenman. 2002. From Parent to Child; Early Labor Market Experiences of Second-Generation Immigrants in the Netherlands. IZA Discussion Paper Series, no. 649 (Bonn, Germany).
• Van Ours, Jan and Justus Veenman. 2003. "The Educational Attainment of Second-Generation Immigrants in the Netherlands." Journal of Population Economics. No. 16, p. 739 -753.
• Zhou, Min. 1997. "Growing Up American: The Challenge Confronting Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants." Annual Review of Sociology. No. 23, p. 63-95.
Author
Boris Palameta is with the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC). He can be reached at 613-237-2945 or at perspectives@statcan.ca.
http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/75-001-XIE/2007110/articles/10372-en.htm
http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/11F0019MIE/11F0019MIE2007294.pdf
http://www.cis.org/
Tucson Region
Work visas for high-skilled professionals can be a hassle
Proponents say workers key to economy, but critics say it increases our dependence on foreign labor.
Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.13.2008
Getting into the United States legally isn't easy - not even for sought-after, high-skilled professionals.
Before coming to the University of Arizona, assistant professor Cecilia Rios-Aguilar came from Mexico on a student visa in 2001 and earned a master's degree and Ph.D. at the University of Rochester in New York. She has an H1B visa, which allows high-skilled professionals with degrees to work in the country for six years.
Even though she is bilingual and has fairly extensive experience navigating the U.S. immigration system, she still feels tense and vulnerable every time she visits a U.S. consulate to renew her visa.
"There is this mystery that you just don't know what is happening," says Rios-Aguilar, who recently had to wait two weeks for a visa in Mexico City. "The lack of information is what is really hard for me to deal with."
From getting the first visa to renewing it midway through the six-year period to deciding what to do when it expires, professionals here on H1B visas can never fully relax, visa holders and immigration attorneys say.
Annual caps limit work visas
The U.S. government caps new H1B visas at 65,000 a year, and the entire quota for 2007 was filled on the first two filing days, April 2-3, when 123,480 cap-subject petitions poured in. Even more applications are expected this year.
Another 20,000 "masters" visas are available each year for foreigners with master's degrees earned in the United States, but those evaporated within a month of the filing date. Some organizations, such as four-year universities, are exempt from caps.
In 2006, 109,614 new H1B s and 161,367 continuance H1B were issued, numbers from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services show. The totals reflect both visas subject to the annual cap and those that aren't, such as masters or exempt visas. Those numbers are slightly higher than 2005 but less than the 287,000 issued in 2004.
The visa allows for dual intent, which means it can be parlayed into a green card if an employer sponsors the applicant. But there is a 140,000 yearly cap on employment-based immigrant visas and a per-country cap of 25,620 for non-immediate family members of U.S. citizens.
That means some H1B visa holders converting to legal permanent residency face at least a three-year wait. The U.S. State Department's March visa bulletin shows officials are handling applications filed on Jan. 1, 2005, for the category many fall under. The wait is more than a year longer for people from countries with heavy levels of immigration such as Mexico, India, China and the Philippines. Spouses and children are allowed in with the H1B visa holder but aren't supposed to work until they get green cards.
Many U.S. companies and immigration attorneys argue the quotas should be relaxed to meet the labor demands of the U.S. economy. But those who favor limiting immigration see granting temporary and permanent visas to foreign workers as a mistake. It perpetuates the country's dependency on foreign labor, says Steve Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based organization that advocates for slowing immigration.
"If you want skilled workers, you should be able to produce them domestically in a country of 300 million people with the finest university system in the world and public expenditures on K-12 education of nearly half a trillion dollars a year," Camarota says. "My concern with employment-based green cards or temporary (visas) is that it allows American education to atrophy."
Such thinking misses the point, says Tarik Sultan, a Tucson immigration attorney who specializes in employment visas.
"These companies would like nothing more than to hire Americans if they were available for these jobs in sufficient numbers," Sultan says. "These companies do not like wasting countless man hours and paying lawyers like me thousands and thousands of dollars to get workers. That is the fallacy of the anti-immigrant, restrictionist argument."
Extended trip home
Rios-Aguilar, an assistant professor in the UA's Center for the Study of Higher Education, faced an April deadline for switching her student visa to an H1B visa. She could have made the appointment in Nogales but since her family lives in Mexico City, she decided to take a week off and make an appointment at the U.S. Embassy there.
She flew home to Mexico City on Feb. 1 and made an appointment at the embassy for Feb. 5. She booked a return flight for Feb. 9.
She had been told to expect the process would take a couple of days - it took 15.
She didn't know why it was taking so long until a friend who works at the embassy told her that the delay was due to a new regulation that went into effect in 2008.
Without the visa, she could not return to the U.S.
She had to stay in Mexico until February 20, pay an additional $360 for three flight changes and miss an extra week and a half of work at the UA .
"We are privileged people in the sense that we have colleagues, we have a support system that provides us some information," she says. "But, what happens to all those people who are trying to do this legally who don't have the same support system and the same level of education that I have?"
● Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com.
By the numbers: H1B visas
6: maximum years a person can be in the United States on an H1B visa
109,614: New H1B petitions approved in 2006
161,367: H1B petitions approved for continuance in 2006
Top 10 by country - New H1B visas issued in 2006
1) India: 59,612
2) China (mainland born): 9,859
3) Canada: 3,587
4) Korea: 3,313
5) Philippines: 2,829
6) Japan: 1,829
7) United Kingdom: 1,712
8) Taiwan: 1,602
9) Pakistan: 1,263
10) Germany: 1,186
11) Mexico: 1,169
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
By the numbers: parlaying work visas into permanent residency
140,00: annual limit (plus unused family-sponsored preferences from previous year) for green cards issued to employment-based applicants
159,081: green cards issued worldwide in 2006 to applicants in the employment-based preference category
8,864: green cards issued in 2006 to Mexicans in the employment-based preference category
25,620: per-country annual limit
Source: U.S. State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/228691
House GOP wants immigration vote
By: Patrick O'Connor
March 12, 2008 07:11 AM EST
Freshman Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina gave his Democratic colleagues some political cover last fall by introducing legislation to crack down on illegal immigration. Now Republicans are trying to use his bill as a bludgeon.
GOP lawmakers in the House started gathering signatures Tuesday on a petition that would force Democrats to schedule a vote on Shuler’s measure to increase enforcement along the borders and block undocumented workers from jobs in the U.S.
The move gives Republicans a chance to show off their immigration bona fides in an election year while putting pressure on Democrats from more conservative districts to rebuff their own leaders in support of the bill. It also complicates fragile negotiations between House Democrats over the substance of a modest immigration overhaul being considered by members of the majority, and could reopen some political wounds for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Rep. Thelma Drake (R-Va.), backed by her leaders, filed the discharge petition calling for a vote on the Shuler bill, which would add 8,000 border guards to the federal payroll, expedite the deportation of illegal immigrants and expand an existing database for employers to check the eligibility of a potential worker.
To force that vote, Drake and her colleagues must corral 218 signatures, which means they would need near-unanimous support from within their own party plus a substantial bloc of Democratic votes. Shuler quickly signaled his support for the procedural push, despite the pressure it puts on some of his colleagues.
“I would have preferred that the SAVE Act came to the floor through regular order, but it deserves to be debated and voted upon on the House floor,” Shuler said in a statement.
Freshman Rep. Brad Ellsworth, a fellow Democrat who represents a conservative district in southern Indiana, also signed on to the discharge petition Tuesday, and others were open to backing it.
“I want to see this bill on the floor,” said freshman Rep. Jason Altmire, a Pennsylvania Democrat who has co-sponsored the bill and will consider signing the petition if his colleagues can’t reach an agreement on an immigration overhaul. “I’m hopeful this will force a resolution.”
In total, 49 Democrats have signed on to Shuler’s bill. Republicans began circulating quotes in support of the legislation Tuesday from some of those co-sponsors. GOP lawmakers and aides have privately expressed doubts that they can rally enough support from within their ranks to force a vote.
Meanwhile, a group of House Democrats have been huddling for weeks over a modest immigration overhaul that would extend a visa program for low-skilled temporary workers. A coalition of business owners, such as restaurant owners in Massachusetts and resort owners in Michigan, is pushing Congress to quickly approve the extension so these employers will have enough seasonal labor to make it through the summer.
But competing interests are weighing down the core legislation.
On one side, the enforcement-only crowd, which supports the Shuler bill, is holding out for tougher border protection and oversight of the workplace. On the other side, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are angling for more comprehensive reforms that would include some protections for undocumented workers already in this country.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who is trying to broker a truce between the competing interests, has concerns that the knee-jerk rejection of a comprehensive overhaul has complicated the process for members of the majority.
“We can win on the merits of our argument, but it’s hard to win on the politics in a very political year,” Stupak said of reaching a compromise. “We’re trying to find that balance.”
Stupak and a handful of Democratic colleagues held a series of meetings Tuesday, beginning at 8 a.m., to hammer out a compromise that all sides would accept. The group includes Shuler, Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Reps. Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts, Luis V. Gutierrez of Illinois and Xavier Becerra of California.
That group also has reached out to Republicans, but the GOP roiled the process Tuesday by launching the discharge petition.
The Shuler bill was viewed as a political tool when Shuler introduced it last year. Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray of California quickly signed on as a co-sponsor and began recruiting his GOP colleagues to do the same.
But the legislation presents lawmakers with sizable hurdles. For example, the bill calls for the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to share employee data, creating a major new workload - as well as civil liberty concerns - for three agencies that have already been stretched thin under the requirements of their charters.
The Republican discharge petition does force House Democrats to confront the issue in earnest for the first time since coming to power. A Senate immigration package fell apart last spring, sparing the House majority from having to address the complicated politics involved.
But the issue also serves as a stark reminder that House Republicans differ with their presidential candidate on the issue of immigration. GOP leaders were moving forward with the petition last week but postponed that decision until they could confer with surrogates for McCain.
© 2007 Capitol News Company, LLC
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A038B065-3048-5C12-00601E82865ABDD4
As Immigration Grows,
Working-Age Natives Leave Labor Market
Panel Discussion Transcript
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
National Press Club
Washington, D.C.
Read the report
Moderator:
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies
Panelists:
Steven Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies
Jared Bernstein, Director, The Living Standards Program, The Economic Policy Institute
Paul Harrington, Associate Director, The Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University
MARK KRIKORIAN: Good morning. My name is Mark Krikorian. I’m executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank here in town that examines impact of immigration on the United States. All of our work is online - the report we’re releasing today, as well as everything else - at CIS.org.
“Jobs Americans won’t do” is one of the most important myths of the immigration issue. It shapes the thinking of policymakers, media, and the public on the immigration issue and creates the sense that mass immigration is inevitable, is necessary. The discussions of this usually have as a kind of moral subtext one of two things - either Americans are too good to do blue-collar work and therefore people have to be imported from abroad to do it, or Americans are too decadent and lazy to do the work that needs to get done in a modern society and therefore people have to be imported from abroad to do it.
The report we’re releasing today challenges this idea that there is such a thing as work that Americans won’t do. And I’m not going to summarize it for you - Steve Camarota, the author, will go into it - but I think this is one of the important issues that simply isn’t dealt with. It’s just taken for granted that it’s true when it’s not. And as Will Rogers said, it’s not so much what people don’t know that’s a problem; it’s what they do know that just isn’t true that’s the real source of problems. So we’re releasing today a report on this subject. You all have copies from outside. Take more if you want them. And it’s online in its entirety already at CIS.org.
The speakers will be first the author and then two respondents. Steve Camarota, the author, is director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies - one of the top people in the country on the economic and demographic and other impacts of immigration on the United States. The two respondents will be Jared Bernstein from the Economic Policy Institute, where he is director of the Living Standards Program - he has been there since 1992 - former economist at the Labor Department and author of a variety of publications, co-author of “The State of Working America,” an annual publication that comes out from his organization; and the other respondent we’re happy to have from Boston is Paul Harrington, associate director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. He’s taught economics for 25 years, and his center examines many of these kinds of similar questions: the youth unemployment, the immigrant labor force in New England, et cetera.
So what we’re going to do is Steve is going to give a presentation summarizing some of the findings in his report, we’ll have responses from the two commentators, and then we’ll take your questions and have some discussion.
Steve?
STEVEN CAMAROTA: Thank you, Mark.
As Mark indicated, one of the central aspects of the ongoing debate over immigration is the economy and the labor market. It’s at the very heart of what’s being discussed right now today, in fact in the Senate. The Senate in general, whether [senators such as] McCain or Kennedy or Arlen Specter, wants to legalize illegal aliens here, increase legal permanent immigration, and create a large new guestworker program. The senators have generally decided, or accepted, the view of the business community that America is desperately short of less-educated workers to fill low-wage jobs that require relatively little education. This of course is very germane in illegal immigration in particular because most estimates agree that about 80 percent of illegal aliens have no more than a high school degree in terms of their education. That is, they have no education beyond high school - 80 percent.
The question is - and what this report that we’re releasing today tries to answer -is, is this view correct? Are we really desperately short of what we might call less-educated workers? Now, to answer this question we used what’s called the Current Population Survey, which is gathered on a monthly basis by the Census Bureau. We used the March file because it over-samples minorities and is usually considered the best file for looking at the foreign-born. And, very briefly, we define the foreign-born as people who were not U.S. citizens at birth. So these are people born in other countries that have come here. People born in, say, Puerto Rico are considered natives or native-born, and so are people born abroad of American parents.
Now, we focus our analysis on people who are 18 to 64 years of age. This is the most important group. They make up the vast majority of workers. They make up the majority of productive workers. They provide most of the household income in American families. So how they do in the labor market, the 18-to-64-year-olds, is obviously one of the most important things.
Now, we examined various ways in which they’re attached to the labor market - how they’re doing. We looked at the share who are holding a job. We also looked at the share who are unemployed. And we also looked at the share that has left the labor market, or is not in the labor market. People not in the labor market are neither working nor are they looking for work, and we focus, again, on the 18-to-64-year-olds.
Well, I would say that we have basically four key or four main findings, and I’ll run through them very briefly. Based on the data that the government collects, we find that there is a huge number of natives with relatively little education in the United States. There are 65 million native-born Americans who have no more than a high school education in the United States in 2005. Nearly 4 million of these 18-to-64-year-olds with no more than a high school education are unemployed. In addition, there are 19 million additional workers - additional individuals 18 to 64 who are not even in the labor market. That is, they’re not working nor are they even looking for work, so the idea that there is just nobody there doesn’t really make any sense. There does seem to be a huge number of natives with relatively little education - and again, that really isn’t in dispute.
Now, the second key finding is also not really in dispute either: The share of less-educated workers has not done well in the labor market in the last five years. Unemployment among workers with no more than a high school degree has increased by 1 million between 2000 and 2005. The share not in the labor force at all - again, not working, not looking for work - is up 1.5 million. But perhaps of greatest concern, the percentages of adult natives 18 to 64 who are in the labor force have been declining.
Looking first at those who haven’t completed high school - the high school dropouts - we find that the share who held a job between 2000 and 2005 declined from 59 percent to 56 percent. And of natives who are adults 18 to 64 who have a high school degree but no additional schooling, the share holding a job declined from 78 percent to 75 percent. And this trend continued through this whole five-year period. There has not been an upturn. In fact, one of the most troubling things is that even through January 2006, the share of dropouts and the share of natives with only a high school education who are not in the workforce - or, that is, who are in the workforce - hasn’t recovered at all despite a general upturn in the economy. Something is going on. Again, this is not in dispute.
Natives with relatively little education - their unemployment is up and their workforce participation is down. And it has not improved, for the most part, even through January of 2006. Now, I think these basic two points should not be - we shouldn’t want to debate them. There are lots of unskilled natives or less-educated natives and they’ve not done well in the last five years.
Now, the third finding I think is also important, and I think most economists agree with this point: The idea that there are jobs that natives don’t do is simply wrong. Or maybe put a different way, the idea that the economy is divided between occupations and job categories that only immigrants do and jobs that only natives do is simply not correct. If we look at Table 5 in the report, for example, we look at the five occupational categories in the United States that have the most immigrants. Well, what we find is these occupations that have the most immigrants still have 22 million native-born Americans - in occupations with very large immigrant shares. If we just focus on less-educated natives - that is, those with no more than a high school degree - we can see in Table 6 that there were 14 - or more than 14 million - in these heavy immigrant occupations.
Now, if the idea was that natives and immigrants did completely different kinds of jobs and they never really competed, we would expect to find virtually no natives in those occupational categories, but in fact we find 14 million less-educated natives in occupations with the most immigrants, and we also find another 1.7 million natives who are unemployed in those same occupations. Now, we also, in Table 10, look at illegals in these top occupations as well, but the main point to take there is, again, there are still millions of less-educated natives in these same occupations who seem to be in direct competition with less-educated illegal immigrants.
Now, you can think about the economy as divided into more broad occupational categories like construction, or you can try to look at great detail at very specific occupations, and one of the things we do in this report is we try to look at all 473 occupations used by the Department of Labor and Department of Commerce the way they divide the total economy and look at what share of each of those occupations is foreign-born, is immigrant. Now, the data that we’re looking at there would be both legal and illegal. I should make that clear. Illegals do show up in most of the government surveys. Most researchers, including myself, people at the Pew Hispanic Center, Urban Institute, think that about 90 percent of the illegals do show up in government surveys of this kind.
When we do highly detailed analysis - and you can see that in the last table of the report, Table D. It turns out that there is virtually no majority immigrant occupations in America. Again, if immigrants do jobs that natives don’t, if the economy really is divided in that way, we should find occupations that are 80, 90 percent immigrant with virtually no natives in them. Those jobs don’t exist.
Some occupations do have a large share of immigrants, but still, there are only 35 of the 473 detailed occupations in which one-third of the workers are immigrants, and these occupations account for less than 7 percent of the U.S. workforce, and I should add that there are over 5 million natives employed in even these most heavy detailed immigrant occupations.
Our analysis shows that when you look at the most detailed occupations, about one-half of native-born dropouts and about one-third of natives with only a high school degree and no additional schooling are in occupations that are about 15 percent immigrant. So that does mean that not every unskilled natives faces a lot of job competition from immigrants, but what it does mean is that a very large share of adult natives 18 to 64 who have relatively little education do face very significant job competition - or, put simply, most of the construction laborers, cab drivers, nannies, maids, housekeepers in America are native.
A lot of times you still, though, even despite this data, will have people say things like, well, immigrants, really they only do jobs that natives don’t want, but most of the people who say that are more educated Americans and more affluent Americans. And what they really mean when they say immigrants only do jobs that natives don’t want is that they do jobs that I don’t want as a more educated and affluent American.
Now, the fourth finding is one of the most difficult to get our handles on. We try to look at the evidence for whether immigration explains this decline. As I said, no one disputes that less-educated natives have done very poorly in the last five years. Again, the debate in the Senate, you would never know that from listening to it on immigration. The possible harm done to natives never comes up in the Senate. It did come up in the House debate. Oddly enough it was the Republicans who brought it up mostly last year, but this year in the Senate the Democrats and Republicans never talk about less-educated natives and the harm immigration may do to them, even though the evidence is overwhelming that that group of workers has done very poorly.
Now, what did we find? Well, we did find that states that saw the biggest growth in their immigrant workforce generally did see the biggest declines in less-educated employment. Just to give you an example, in states that had statistically significant increases in the number of immigrant workers, the share of natives who are less educated holding a job declined by five percentage points. That compares to the overall decline nationally of about 3 percentage points. So what that tells us is that we do have some evidence that less-educated natives tended to leave the labor market more in high-immigrant states.
We also find that in occupations - when we look at occupational categories - that occupations that have the most recent immigrants, in general they’re also occupations where native unemployment tends to be the highest. We also looked at it by age group, divided it by education. Again, in those age groups in general where you saw the biggest growth in immigrants as a share, you saw the biggest declines among natives - not in every case. But in general, when we look at those sectors of the economy or those parts of the country that had the biggest influx of immigrants, we generally find that natives did the worst in those areas.
Now, why might that be? Why would immigration affect natives? Well, as I’ve said, they seem to do exactly the same kind of work. Less-educated natives and less-educated immigrants do often the same work, so they will be competing for jobs, so that’s an important point to make. It could be because the immigrants come in and might be willing to work for less. That possibility exists - there is some evidence for that - so that they crowd out the natives, they get a leg up on the natives. Employers see that; they like that. But the evidence that immigrants work for less is not that strong. Immigrants make a lot less than natives, to be sure. But they mainly make a lot less because they’re a lot less educated on average. Unskilled immigrants or immigrants with relatively little education who are recent arrivals don’t make much money, actually regardless of legal status, but it’s their educational attainment and set of job skills that are the main impediment in the labor market, not that they’re foreign-born, not their illegal status.
7. For the sake of brevity and presentation, coefficients associated with other factors in the models are not presented. In general, they tend to conform to familiar patterns of results. For example, older age groups tend to have higher initial hourly earnings, but slower rates of growth, while university education is associated with both higher initial hourly earnings and faster growth. Complete results of all models are available from the author.
8. When logwage is estimated, the coefficient associated with a particular group is a good approximation of the average percentage difference in wage between that group and the reference group.
9. Since rates of earnings growth rarely differ significantly between groups, they are not presented, but are available from the author.
10. Having children had little or no effect on hourly earnings, but a large negative effect on hours worked (and therefore annual earnings).
11. The relatively large coefficient associated with visible minority earnings growth (.060) suggests that some members of this group may catch up somewhat in subsequent years. However, the heterogeneity within the group was sufficient to prevent the result from achieving statistical significance.
References
• Aydemir, Abdurrahman, Wen-Ho Chen and Miles Corak. 2005. Intergenerational Earnings Mobility Among the Children of Canadian Immigrants (PDF). Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE - No. 267. Ottawa. Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, no. 267, 44 p. (accessed September 20, 2007).
• Aydemir, Abdurrahman and Mikal Skuterud. 2004. Explaining the Deteriorating Entry Earnings of Canada's Immigrant Cohorts: 1966-2000 (PDF). Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE - No. 225. Ottawa. Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, no. 225, 31 p. (accessed September 20, 2007).
• Beck, J. Helen, Jeffrey G. Reitz and Nan Weiner. 2002. "Addressing Systemic Racial Discrimination in Employment: The Health Canada Case and Implications of Legislative Change." Canadian Public Policy. Vol. 28, no. 3. p. 373-394.
• Boyd, Monica. 2002. "Educational Attainments of Immigrant Offspring: Success or Segmented Assimilation?" International Migration Review. Vol. 36, no. 4, p. 1037-1060.
• Boyd, Monica and Elizabeth Grieco. 1998. "Triumphant Transitions: Socioeconomic Achievements of the Second Generation in Canada." International Migration Review. Vol. 32, no. 4, p. 853-876.
• Frenette, Marc and René‚ Morissette. 2003. Will They Ever Converge? Earnings of Immigrant and Canadian-born Workers over the Last Two Decades (PDF). Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11F0019MIE - No. 215. Ottawa. Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series, no. 215, 20 p. (accessed September 20, 2007).
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• Hum, Derek and Wayne Simpson. 2004. The Legacy of Immigration: The Labour Market Performance of the Second Generation. Prairie Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Integration Working Paper Series, no. WP06-04. 8 p.
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• Reitz, Jeffrey G. and Rupa Banerjee. 2007. "Belonging? Diversity, Recognition and Shared Citizenship in Canada." Racial Inequality, Social Cohesion and Policy Issues in Canada. Keith Banting, Thomas J. Courchene and F. Leslie Seidle (eds.). Montreal. Institute for Research in Public Policy. 57 p.
• Van Ours, Jan and Justus Veenman. 2002. From Parent to Child; Early Labor Market Experiences of Second-Generation Immigrants in the Netherlands. IZA Discussion Paper Series, no. 649 (Bonn, Germany).
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Author
Boris Palameta is with the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC). He can be reached at 613-237-2945 or at perspectives@statcan.ca.
http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/75-001-XIE/2007110/articles/10372-en.htm
http://www.statcan.ca/english/research/11F0019MIE/11F0019MIE2007294.pdf
http://www.cis.org/
Tucson Region
Work visas for high-skilled professionals can be a hassle
Proponents say workers key to economy, but critics say it increases our dependence on foreign labor.
Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 03.13.2008
Getting into the United States legally isn't easy - not even for sought-after, high-skilled professionals.
Before coming to the University of Arizona, assistant professor Cecilia Rios-Aguilar came from Mexico on a student visa in 2001 and earned a master's degree and Ph.D. at the University of Rochester in New York. She has an H1B visa, which allows high-skilled professionals with degrees to work in the country for six years.
Even though she is bilingual and has fairly extensive experience navigating the U.S. immigration system, she still feels tense and vulnerable every time she visits a U.S. consulate to renew her visa.
"There is this mystery that you just don't know what is happening," says Rios-Aguilar, who recently had to wait two weeks for a visa in Mexico City. "The lack of information is what is really hard for me to deal with."
From getting the first visa to renewing it midway through the six-year period to deciding what to do when it expires, professionals here on H1B visas can never fully relax, visa holders and immigration attorneys say.
Annual caps limit work visas
The U.S. government caps new H1B visas at 65,000 a year, and the entire quota for 2007 was filled on the first two filing days, April 2-3, when 123,480 cap-subject petitions poured in. Even more applications are expected this year.
Another 20,000 "masters" visas are available each year for foreigners with master's degrees earned in the United States, but those evaporated within a month of the filing date. Some organizations, such as four-year universities, are exempt from caps.
In 2006, 109,614 new H1B s and 161,367 continuance H1B were issued, numbers from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services show. The totals reflect both visas subject to the annual cap and those that aren't, such as masters or exempt visas. Those numbers are slightly higher than 2005 but less than the 287,000 issued in 2004.
The visa allows for dual intent, which means it can be parlayed into a green card if an employer sponsors the applicant. But there is a 140,000 yearly cap on employment-based immigrant visas and a per-country cap of 25,620 for non-immediate family members of U.S. citizens.
That means some H1B visa holders converting to legal permanent residency face at least a three-year wait. The U.S. State Department's March visa bulletin shows officials are handling applications filed on Jan. 1, 2005, for the category many fall under. The wait is more than a year longer for people from countries with heavy levels of immigration such as Mexico, India, China and the Philippines. Spouses and children are allowed in with the H1B visa holder but aren't supposed to work until they get green cards.
Many U.S. companies and immigration attorneys argue the quotas should be relaxed to meet the labor demands of the U.S. economy. But those who favor limiting immigration see granting temporary and permanent visas to foreign workers as a mistake. It perpetuates the country's dependency on foreign labor, says Steve Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based organization that advocates for slowing immigration.
"If you want skilled workers, you should be able to produce them domestically in a country of 300 million people with the finest university system in the world and public expenditures on K-12 education of nearly half a trillion dollars a year," Camarota says. "My concern with employment-based green cards or temporary (visas) is that it allows American education to atrophy."
Such thinking misses the point, says Tarik Sultan, a Tucson immigration attorney who specializes in employment visas.
"These companies would like nothing more than to hire Americans if they were available for these jobs in sufficient numbers," Sultan says. "These companies do not like wasting countless man hours and paying lawyers like me thousands and thousands of dollars to get workers. That is the fallacy of the anti-immigrant, restrictionist argument."
Extended trip home
Rios-Aguilar, an assistant professor in the UA's Center for the Study of Higher Education, faced an April deadline for switching her student visa to an H1B visa. She could have made the appointment in Nogales but since her family lives in Mexico City, she decided to take a week off and make an appointment at the U.S. Embassy there.
She flew home to Mexico City on Feb. 1 and made an appointment at the embassy for Feb. 5. She booked a return flight for Feb. 9.
She had been told to expect the process would take a couple of days - it took 15.
She didn't know why it was taking so long until a friend who works at the embassy told her that the delay was due to a new regulation that went into effect in 2008.
Without the visa, she could not return to the U.S.
She had to stay in Mexico until February 20, pay an additional $360 for three flight changes and miss an extra week and a half of work at the UA .
"We are privileged people in the sense that we have colleagues, we have a support system that provides us some information," she says. "But, what happens to all those people who are trying to do this legally who don't have the same support system and the same level of education that I have?"
● Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com.
By the numbers: H1B visas
6: maximum years a person can be in the United States on an H1B visa
109,614: New H1B petitions approved in 2006
161,367: H1B petitions approved for continuance in 2006
Top 10 by country - New H1B visas issued in 2006
1) India: 59,612
2) China (mainland born): 9,859
3) Canada: 3,587
4) Korea: 3,313
5) Philippines: 2,829
6) Japan: 1,829
7) United Kingdom: 1,712
8) Taiwan: 1,602
9) Pakistan: 1,263
10) Germany: 1,186
11) Mexico: 1,169
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
By the numbers: parlaying work visas into permanent residency
140,00: annual limit (plus unused family-sponsored preferences from previous year) for green cards issued to employment-based applicants
159,081: green cards issued worldwide in 2006 to applicants in the employment-based preference category
8,864: green cards issued in 2006 to Mexicans in the employment-based preference category
25,620: per-country annual limit
Source: U.S. State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/228691
House GOP wants immigration vote
By: Patrick O'Connor
March 12, 2008 07:11 AM EST
Freshman Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina gave his Democratic colleagues some political cover last fall by introducing legislation to crack down on illegal immigration. Now Republicans are trying to use his bill as a bludgeon.
GOP lawmakers in the House started gathering signatures Tuesday on a petition that would force Democrats to schedule a vote on Shuler’s measure to increase enforcement along the borders and block undocumented workers from jobs in the U.S.
The move gives Republicans a chance to show off their immigration bona fides in an election year while putting pressure on Democrats from more conservative districts to rebuff their own leaders in support of the bill. It also complicates fragile negotiations between House Democrats over the substance of a modest immigration overhaul being considered by members of the majority, and could reopen some political wounds for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Rep. Thelma Drake (R-Va.), backed by her leaders, filed the discharge petition calling for a vote on the Shuler bill, which would add 8,000 border guards to the federal payroll, expedite the deportation of illegal immigrants and expand an existing database for employers to check the eligibility of a potential worker.
To force that vote, Drake and her colleagues must corral 218 signatures, which means they would need near-unanimous support from within their own party plus a substantial bloc of Democratic votes. Shuler quickly signaled his support for the procedural push, despite the pressure it puts on some of his colleagues.
“I would have preferred that the SAVE Act came to the floor through regular order, but it deserves to be debated and voted upon on the House floor,” Shuler said in a statement.
Freshman Rep. Brad Ellsworth, a fellow Democrat who represents a conservative district in southern Indiana, also signed on to the discharge petition Tuesday, and others were open to backing it.
“I want to see this bill on the floor,” said freshman Rep. Jason Altmire, a Pennsylvania Democrat who has co-sponsored the bill and will consider signing the petition if his colleagues can’t reach an agreement on an immigration overhaul. “I’m hopeful this will force a resolution.”
In total, 49 Democrats have signed on to Shuler’s bill. Republicans began circulating quotes in support of the legislation Tuesday from some of those co-sponsors. GOP lawmakers and aides have privately expressed doubts that they can rally enough support from within their ranks to force a vote.
Meanwhile, a group of House Democrats have been huddling for weeks over a modest immigration overhaul that would extend a visa program for low-skilled temporary workers. A coalition of business owners, such as restaurant owners in Massachusetts and resort owners in Michigan, is pushing Congress to quickly approve the extension so these employers will have enough seasonal labor to make it through the summer.
But competing interests are weighing down the core legislation.
On one side, the enforcement-only crowd, which supports the Shuler bill, is holding out for tougher border protection and oversight of the workplace. On the other side, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are angling for more comprehensive reforms that would include some protections for undocumented workers already in this country.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who is trying to broker a truce between the competing interests, has concerns that the knee-jerk rejection of a comprehensive overhaul has complicated the process for members of the majority.
“We can win on the merits of our argument, but it’s hard to win on the politics in a very political year,” Stupak said of reaching a compromise. “We’re trying to find that balance.”
Stupak and a handful of Democratic colleagues held a series of meetings Tuesday, beginning at 8 a.m., to hammer out a compromise that all sides would accept. The group includes Shuler, Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Reps. Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts, Luis V. Gutierrez of Illinois and Xavier Becerra of California.
That group also has reached out to Republicans, but the GOP roiled the process Tuesday by launching the discharge petition.
The Shuler bill was viewed as a political tool when Shuler introduced it last year. Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray of California quickly signed on as a co-sponsor and began recruiting his GOP colleagues to do the same.
But the legislation presents lawmakers with sizable hurdles. For example, the bill calls for the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to share employee data, creating a major new workload - as well as civil liberty concerns - for three agencies that have already been stretched thin under the requirements of their charters.
The Republican discharge petition does force House Democrats to confront the issue in earnest for the first time since coming to power. A Senate immigration package fell apart last spring, sparing the House majority from having to address the complicated politics involved.
But the issue also serves as a stark reminder that House Republicans differ with their presidential candidate on the issue of immigration. GOP leaders were moving forward with the petition last week but postponed that decision until they could confer with surrogates for McCain.
© 2007 Capitol News Company, LLC
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A038B065-3048-5C12-00601E82865ABDD4
As Immigration Grows,
Working-Age Natives Leave Labor Market
Panel Discussion Transcript
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
National Press Club
Washington, D.C.
Read the report
Moderator:
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director, Center for Immigration Studies
Panelists:
Steven Camarota, Director of Research, Center for Immigration Studies
Jared Bernstein, Director, The Living Standards Program, The Economic Policy Institute
Paul Harrington, Associate Director, The Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University
MARK KRIKORIAN: Good morning. My name is Mark Krikorian. I’m executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank here in town that examines impact of immigration on the United States. All of our work is online - the report we’re releasing today, as well as everything else - at CIS.org.
“Jobs Americans won’t do” is one of the most important myths of the immigration issue. It shapes the thinking of policymakers, media, and the public on the immigration issue and creates the sense that mass immigration is inevitable, is necessary. The discussions of this usually have as a kind of moral subtext one of two things - either Americans are too good to do blue-collar work and therefore people have to be imported from abroad to do it, or Americans are too decadent and lazy to do the work that needs to get done in a modern society and therefore people have to be imported from abroad to do it.
The report we’re releasing today challenges this idea that there is such a thing as work that Americans won’t do. And I’m not going to summarize it for you - Steve Camarota, the author, will go into it - but I think this is one of the important issues that simply isn’t dealt with. It’s just taken for granted that it’s true when it’s not. And as Will Rogers said, it’s not so much what people don’t know that’s a problem; it’s what they do know that just isn’t true that’s the real source of problems. So we’re releasing today a report on this subject. You all have copies from outside. Take more if you want them. And it’s online in its entirety already at CIS.org.
The speakers will be first the author and then two respondents. Steve Camarota, the author, is director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies - one of the top people in the country on the economic and demographic and other impacts of immigration on the United States. The two respondents will be Jared Bernstein from the Economic Policy Institute, where he is director of the Living Standards Program - he has been there since 1992 - former economist at the Labor Department and author of a variety of publications, co-author of “The State of Working America,” an annual publication that comes out from his organization; and the other respondent we’re happy to have from Boston is Paul Harrington, associate director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. He’s taught economics for 25 years, and his center examines many of these kinds of similar questions: the youth unemployment, the immigrant labor force in New England, et cetera.
So what we’re going to do is Steve is going to give a presentation summarizing some of the findings in his report, we’ll have responses from the two commentators, and then we’ll take your questions and have some discussion.
Steve?
STEVEN CAMAROTA: Thank you, Mark.
As Mark indicated, one of the central aspects of the ongoing debate over immigration is the economy and the labor market. It’s at the very heart of what’s being discussed right now today, in fact in the Senate. The Senate in general, whether [senators such as] McCain or Kennedy or Arlen Specter, wants to legalize illegal aliens here, increase legal permanent immigration, and create a large new guestworker program. The senators have generally decided, or accepted, the view of the business community that America is desperately short of less-educated workers to fill low-wage jobs that require relatively little education. This of course is very germane in illegal immigration in particular because most estimates agree that about 80 percent of illegal aliens have no more than a high school degree in terms of their education. That is, they have no education beyond high school - 80 percent.
The question is - and what this report that we’re releasing today tries to answer -is, is this view correct? Are we really desperately short of what we might call less-educated workers? Now, to answer this question we used what’s called the Current Population Survey, which is gathered on a monthly basis by the Census Bureau. We used the March file because it over-samples minorities and is usually considered the best file for looking at the foreign-born. And, very briefly, we define the foreign-born as people who were not U.S. citizens at birth. So these are people born in other countries that have come here. People born in, say, Puerto Rico are considered natives or native-born, and so are people born abroad of American parents.
Now, we focus our analysis on people who are 18 to 64 years of age. This is the most important group. They make up the vast majority of workers. They make up the majority of productive workers. They provide most of the household income in American families. So how they do in the labor market, the 18-to-64-year-olds, is obviously one of the most important things.
Now, we examined various ways in which they’re attached to the labor market - how they’re doing. We looked at the share who are holding a job. We also looked at the share who are unemployed. And we also looked at the share that has left the labor market, or is not in the labor market. People not in the labor market are neither working nor are they looking for work, and we focus, again, on the 18-to-64-year-olds.
Well, I would say that we have basically four key or four main findings, and I’ll run through them very briefly. Based on the data that the government collects, we find that there is a huge number of natives with relatively little education in the United States. There are 65 million native-born Americans who have no more than a high school education in the United States in 2005. Nearly 4 million of these 18-to-64-year-olds with no more than a high school education are unemployed. In addition, there are 19 million additional workers - additional individuals 18 to 64 who are not even in the labor market. That is, they’re not working nor are they even looking for work, so the idea that there is just nobody there doesn’t really make any sense. There does seem to be a huge number of natives with relatively little education - and again, that really isn’t in dispute.
Now, the second key finding is also not really in dispute either: The share of less-educated workers has not done well in the labor market in the last five years. Unemployment among workers with no more than a high school degree has increased by 1 million between 2000 and 2005. The share not in the labor force at all - again, not working, not looking for work - is up 1.5 million. But perhaps of greatest concern, the percentages of adult natives 18 to 64 who are in the labor force have been declining.
Looking first at those who haven’t completed high school - the high school dropouts - we find that the share who held a job between 2000 and 2005 declined from 59 percent to 56 percent. And of natives who are adults 18 to 64 who have a high school degree but no additional schooling, the share holding a job declined from 78 percent to 75 percent. And this trend continued through this whole five-year period. There has not been an upturn. In fact, one of the most troubling things is that even through January 2006, the share of dropouts and the share of natives with only a high school education who are not in the workforce - or, that is, who are in the workforce - hasn’t recovered at all despite a general upturn in the economy. Something is going on. Again, this is not in dispute.
Natives with relatively little education - their unemployment is up and their workforce participation is down. And it has not improved, for the most part, even through January of 2006. Now, I think these basic two points should not be - we shouldn’t want to debate them. There are lots of unskilled natives or less-educated natives and they’ve not done well in the last five years.
Now, the third finding I think is also important, and I think most economists agree with this point: The idea that there are jobs that natives don’t do is simply wrong. Or maybe put a different way, the idea that the economy is divided between occupations and job categories that only immigrants do and jobs that only natives do is simply not correct. If we look at Table 5 in the report, for example, we look at the five occupational categories in the United States that have the most immigrants. Well, what we find is these occupations that have the most immigrants still have 22 million native-born Americans - in occupations with very large immigrant shares. If we just focus on less-educated natives - that is, those with no more than a high school degree - we can see in Table 6 that there were 14 - or more than 14 million - in these heavy immigrant occupations.
Now, if the idea was that natives and immigrants did completely different kinds of jobs and they never really competed, we would expect to find virtually no natives in those occupational categories, but in fact we find 14 million less-educated natives in occupations with the most immigrants, and we also find another 1.7 million natives who are unemployed in those same occupations. Now, we also, in Table 10, look at illegals in these top occupations as well, but the main point to take there is, again, there are still millions of less-educated natives in these same occupations who seem to be in direct competition with less-educated illegal immigrants.
Now, you can think about the economy as divided into more broad occupational categories like construction, or you can try to look at great detail at very specific occupations, and one of the things we do in this report is we try to look at all 473 occupations used by the Department of Labor and Department of Commerce the way they divide the total economy and look at what share of each of those occupations is foreign-born, is immigrant. Now, the data that we’re looking at there would be both legal and illegal. I should make that clear. Illegals do show up in most of the government surveys. Most researchers, including myself, people at the Pew Hispanic Center, Urban Institute, think that about 90 percent of the illegals do show up in government surveys of this kind.
When we do highly detailed analysis - and you can see that in the last table of the report, Table D. It turns out that there is virtually no majority immigrant occupations in America. Again, if immigrants do jobs that natives don’t, if the economy really is divided in that way, we should find occupations that are 80, 90 percent immigrant with virtually no natives in them. Those jobs don’t exist.
Some occupations do have a large share of immigrants, but still, there are only 35 of the 473 detailed occupations in which one-third of the workers are immigrants, and these occupations account for less than 7 percent of the U.S. workforce, and I should add that there are over 5 million natives employed in even these most heavy detailed immigrant occupations.
Our analysis shows that when you look at the most detailed occupations, about one-half of native-born dropouts and about one-third of natives with only a high school degree and no additional schooling are in occupations that are about 15 percent immigrant. So that does mean that not every unskilled natives faces a lot of job competition from immigrants, but what it does mean is that a very large share of adult natives 18 to 64 who have relatively little education do face very significant job competition - or, put simply, most of the construction laborers, cab drivers, nannies, maids, housekeepers in America are native.
A lot of times you still, though, even despite this data, will have people say things like, well, immigrants, really they only do jobs that natives don’t want, but most of the people who say that are more educated Americans and more affluent Americans. And what they really mean when they say immigrants only do jobs that natives don’t want is that they do jobs that I don’t want as a more educated and affluent American.
Now, the fourth finding is one of the most difficult to get our handles on. We try to look at the evidence for whether immigration explains this decline. As I said, no one disputes that less-educated natives have done very poorly in the last five years. Again, the debate in the Senate, you would never know that from listening to it on immigration. The possible harm done to natives never comes up in the Senate. It did come up in the House debate. Oddly enough it was the Republicans who brought it up mostly last year, but this year in the Senate the Democrats and Republicans never talk about less-educated natives and the harm immigration may do to them, even though the evidence is overwhelming that that group of workers has done very poorly.
Now, what did we find? Well, we did find that states that saw the biggest growth in their immigrant workforce generally did see the biggest declines in less-educated employment. Just to give you an example, in states that had statistically significant increases in the number of immigrant workers, the share of natives who are less educated holding a job declined by five percentage points. That compares to the overall decline nationally of about 3 percentage points. So what that tells us is that we do have some evidence that less-educated natives tended to leave the labor market more in high-immigrant states.
We also find that in occupations - when we look at occupational categories - that occupations that have the most recent immigrants, in general they’re also occupations where native unemployment tends to be the highest. We also looked at it by age group, divided it by education. Again, in those age groups in general where you saw the biggest growth in immigrants as a share, you saw the biggest declines among natives - not in every case. But in general, when we look at those sectors of the economy or those parts of the country that had the biggest influx of immigrants, we generally find that natives did the worst in those areas.
Now, why might that be? Why would immigration affect natives? Well, as I’ve said, they seem to do exactly the same kind of work. Less-educated natives and less-educated immigrants do often the same work, so they will be competing for jobs, so that’s an important point to make. It could be because the immigrants come in and might be willing to work for less. That possibility exists - there is some evidence for that - so that they crowd out the natives, they get a leg up on the natives. Employers see that; they like that. But the evidence that immigrants work for less is not that strong. Immigrants make a lot less than natives, to be sure. But they mainly make a lot less because they’re a lot less educated on average. Unskilled immigrants or immigrants with relatively little education who are recent arrivals don’t make much money, actually regardless of legal status, but it’s their educational attainment and set of job skills that are the main impediment in the labor market, not that they’re foreign-born, not their illegal status.