Who are the American winners and losers from our immigration policies that are leading to legal and illegal immigration that is predominately low skilled and little educated? The primary winners are middle and upper income citizens who employ immigrants at low wages – company owners and small employers who have a need for low cost labor, and individuals who employ immigrants directly for purposes such as maids, nannies, and gardeners. The primary losers 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 compensation. Moreover, the benefits of our various social safety net and education programs for our own lower-income citizens are diluted by the addition of large numbers of poor immigrants and their children.
It is a myth that our new immigrants are only taking jobs that Americans won’t do. Prior to the large scale immigration of recent years, it was American citizens who made hotel beds, cleaned office buildings, washed restaurant dishes, labored at construction sites, and provided maid and yard labor for homeowners. As time has passed many immigrants have learned to speak English enabling them to find new low-wage work opportunities such as serving as retail clerks. Americans with little education and students seeking part-time or summer work are having increasing difficulty competing with immigrants for low level jobs. Our immigrants will work harder under worse working conditions and for lower compensation than Americans because the immigrants find the income to be much better than what they could earn in their home countries if they could find employment there at all. In the absence of low wage immigrants, American employers of little educated workers would be forced to pay more in order to obtain needed employees and our low income citizens would thereby be better off with the availability of more job opportunities at higher compensation.
An example of social benefits being diluted by immigrants may be found in public housing. It occurs when immigrants occupy such housing units thereby decreasing the availability to citizens. Certain states and municipalities have gone out of their way to protect illegal immigrants from discovery and have offered them social benefits such as public housing without regard to their illegal presence. For more regarding public housing for illegals see blog of July 30 – “U.S. Immigration Law is Unenforced and Unenforceable – A Case in Point: Obama’s Kenyan Aunt Zeituni.”
Another example of diluted social benefits is to be found in public education. In cities where there has been a significant influx of poor immigrants and their children, many of whom do not speak English, their presence has reduced the quality of public education for the Americans who attend the same schools. In general, a disproportionate amount of teacher time and school resources are devoted to these immigrant students. Moreover, the addition of disadvantaged immigrant children to special programs to help disadvantaged children dilutes the resources available to help the children of the disadvantaged segment of our citizen population. The effectiveness of public schools has sometimes been further handicapped by factors such as the high teen pregnancy rates, high dropout rates, and gang activities which too often characterize the immigrant children of today. Those citizens who can afford to send their children to private schools or live in areas with the better public schools may escape the negative consequences of an influx of immigrant children into a school system. Our poorer citizens usually do not have these options.
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. It would be good public policy to reduce future legal and illegal immigration by the unskilled and little educated. Such reductions constitute one of the best ways to help our own disadvantaged citizens improve their lives. This is all the more important in times like the present when a serious recession has reduced the availability of all jobs.
