Impact of U.S. Immigration Policy on Low-Income Citizens

Many Americans have sympathy for and wish to help the poor and downtrodden of the world. Unfortunately, helping the world’s disadvantaged by admitting them to this country through legal and illegal immigration is now more burdensome and disruptive than it was in the past when our public benefits were much smaller, the standard of living and average education of our citizens was much lower, and most jobs required unskilled labor. Although today there are some benefits to us from taking in the hard-working poor of the world, there are also significant costs which are most directly borne by our lower-income citizens.

Who are the American beneficiaries of our current national immigration policies that result in both legal and illegal immigrants who are predominately low skilled and little educated? The primary winners are 1) middle and upper income owners of businesses which employ immigrants at low wages and 2) middle and upper income families who hire immigrants for such purposes such as maids, nannies, and gardeners.

The primary losers of our immigration policy are our own little educated citizens who must compete with the immigrants for jobs. In this competition it is they who suffer reduced job availability and lower wages and benefits since immigrants will typically work harder, under worse working conditions, and for lower compensation than Americans.

The unemployment rate was 10.5 percent for the second quarter of 2010 for all in our labor force without a four-year college degree. By contrast, for those in our work force who had earned a four-year undergraduate degree, the segment that least competed with immigrant job seekers, the comparable unemployment rate was only 4.6 percent.

The impact of immigrant job competition is greatest on our young, our lesser educated, and our disadvantaged minorities (including the children of earlier immigrants). Thus immigration was partly responsible for the 29 percent unemployment rate among blacks who have a high school education or less, were under age 30, and were seeking employment during the second quarter of 2010. The corresponding unemployment rate for the American-born Hispanics was 24 percent.

It is clear that there are plenty of Americans available to fill low level work positions if there were no immigrants competing for these jobs. Nearly 12 million currently unemployed individuals, 85 percent of our total unemployed who are now looking for work, have not earned a four-year undergraduate degree. Given their educational limitations, most of these 12 million unemployed would be interested in many lower level jobs, all the more so if the wages and benefits were attractive to them. In the absence of low-wage immigrants, there would be millions of new job openings for our unemployed, and many American businesses would indeed be forced to pay more in order to obtain employees thereby helping our lower income citizens with both more job opportunities and increased compensation.

It is a myth that our poor immigrants are only taking jobs that Americans won’t do. Prior to the large step-up of immigration of the poor, hotel beds were made, office floors were cleaned, restaurant dishes were washed, taxis were driven, and crops were picked – by American citizens. As time has passed immigrants continue to make inroads into such work and increasingly are also taking jobs in other sectors such as retailing, construction, and truck driving. Unemployed American citizens, especially those who are not college graduates, will work at or return to these jobs if such jobs were available to them and the wages and benefits were sufficiently attractive.

In sum, we are making great efforts and spending large amounts of money to eliminate poverty in this country and at the same time we are importing much more poverty which makes it more difficult for our existing low income citizens to improve their lot. In order to reduce poverty in this country, it would be good public policy to curtail future legal and illegal immigration of the unskilled and little educated.