Читать книгу To Be An American - Bill Ong Hing - Страница 18

We are young and we come to the United States to work. And [using government services] looks bad. If I know I can pay my doctor, I don’t need to go to the government. I don’t need food stamps. That’s for the old people, for the children that don’t have no fathers. I don’t feel good if I go over there and I can be working. You can find a job in the United States anywhere you go. Especially if you can speak a little bit of English. If you don’t speak no English, you get your green card. If you don’t get your green card, you work in the fields, you work dishwash[-ing], everywhere. There’s a lot of work.

— RODOLFO MARTINEZ PADILLA, age 31 native of Michoacan, Mexico

Negative images of immigrants and their purported impact on the U.S. economy have permeated the airwaves and print media headlines of late. These images largely revolve around two anti-immigrant arguments, broadly conceived of as “economic” in nature. The first argument posits that immigrants have a negative effect on the labor market, displacing native workers and depressing wages. The second is that immigrants burden the public coffers. The labor market complaint is the subject of this chapter, while the next chapter addresses the costs and revenues of immigrants.

The image of immigrants as labor market demons is fueled by comments such as those of Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas, who authored major legislation in the House of Representatives in 1996: “[I]n places where immigrants tend to congregate, particularly in the cities, … the direct impact on citizens, particularly low-income, low-skill citizens, is that they lose jobs and their wages are depressed as a result.”¹ Consider also the views of Daniel A. Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform: “This is throwing kerosene on the blaze.… Immigration is destroying the American middle class.… It’s one of the key factors degrading labor in this country.”²

Accompanying these negative images are a host of state and federal policy proposals—some aimed at undocumented aliens, but many directed at lawful immigrants and refugees. These efforts extend far beyond the 1986 law making it illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers or California’s Proposition 187 which would preclude undocumented aliens from attending public schools, receiving welfare, and obtaining services from publicly funded health facilities. While the constitutionality of Proposition 187 is being determined by the federal courts, it is emblematic of several legislative actions and proposals. These include cutting back on public benefits and social programs available to legal immigrants (ranging from Supplemental Security Income to school lunch and milk programs for lawful resident schoolchildren), denying driver’s licenses to undocumented aliens, making it a felony for an undocumented person to apply to a state university, adding resources to the Border Patrol, calling out the National Guard to help enforce the border, charging a border toll, amending the Fourteenth Amendment so that birth in the United States does not confer citizenship upon a newborn if the parents are undocumented, and cutting back on legal immigration by a third.

The twin economic allegations and the flurry of legislation directed against immigrants demand that we inform ourselves as much as possible before forming judgments (and policies) on proposals that are premised on beliefs about economic impact. A fair reading of available, accurate research suggests that allegations of the negative impact of immigrants on the economy are overblown and largely unsupported. The most reliable studies show that the level of anti-immigrant rhetoric based on economic arguments is simply not justified.

Before considering actual studies that have been conducted on immigrants and the labor market, a theoretical framework—developed from observations of the market—is helpful.