Читать книгу To Be An American - Bill Ong Hing - Страница 23

Economist Donald Huddle created a commotion in 1993 when he issued a report that purports to be the “first comprehensive study of the public sector costs of legal and illegal immigration.”¹³ Huddle argues that part of the cost of immigration is the cost of public assistance to those whose jobs are displaced by immigrant workers. In order to calculate the cost of public assistance to these displaced U.S. workers, Huddle assumes that for every one hundred immigrant workers that enter the labor market, twenty-five low-skilled U.S. workers lose their jobs (a 4:1 ratio).

Huddle provides no basis for this assumption. Presumably relying on INS data (he fails to offer a clear explanation), he determines that the percentage of less skilled immigrant workers who entered in 1992 was 62.2 percent. Extrapolating, he figures that 4.24 million low-skilled immigrants have entered the labor force since 1970. Therefore, applying a displacement coefficient of 25 percent to this number, he estimates that legal immigrants caused more than a million U.S. workers to lose their jobs in 1992. He further hypothesizes that because undocumented and formerly undocumented (amnestied) aliens have

markedly lower skills than legal immigrants and higher labor force participation, their displacing effect on less skilled native born workers is more severe. The number of less skilled among 3.7 million undocumented labor force members is almost 3.0 million—80 percent. Assuming a displacement rate of 25 percent, 741,000 low-skill U.S. workers are jobless because of [undocumented] immigration. Some 265,000 additional workers are displaced by amnestied alien workers.¹⁴

The most questionable aspect of this analysis is, of course, the displacement rate of 25 percent. The figure is completely undefended in the paper, other than a brief mention of an unpublished piece by Huddle entitled “Immigration and Jobs: The Process of Displacement.”¹⁵ In light of theoretical and empirical works that suggest that immigrants actually create jobs, it seems unsound that such an important figure would go unexplained. In fact, if every four immigrants also created one job opening, there would be no adverse displacement effect from immigration. Another well-publicized 1993 report, by the Los Angeles County Internal Services Department on the public sector costs of immigrants, recognizes that most of the extant empirical studies “have found no evidence to show that immigrants displace native workers.”¹⁶ The Urban Institute, responding to both the Huddle and LA reports, points out that labor market empirical work does not support this supposition of job displacement by immigrants.¹⁷ (The public sector cost aspects of these reports are discussed in chapter 5.)

One way to test the economic theory that immigrants create more jobs than they take, thereby facilitating increased job opportunities, is to examine regional unemployment statistics. If, as much political commentary charges, immigration takes more jobs than it creates, one would expect that high immigration leads to high unemployment.¹⁸ If, on the other hand, relatively high levels of immigration are accompanied by average or low levels of unemployment, one may take this as an indication that immigration does, in fact, lead to overall job creation.

A comprehensive study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution yields striking results on the relationship between immigration and unemployment. The researchers examined every state comparing unemployment figures and foreign-born populations from 1900 to 1989. Their findings were unequivocal: the median unemployment rate was higher in states with relatively little immigrant presence. If anything, unemployment seemed negatively associated with immigration—the more immigrants, the less unemployment; immigration does not cause unemployment.¹⁹

The study gave particular attention to the effects of recent immigrants, and concluded that even recent waves of immigration have reduced joblessness. In response to the current debate over immigration, the researchers performed an analysis that looked exclusively at the 1980s. They looked at the ten states with the highest unemployment, compared them with the ten states with the lowest unemployment, and found that the immigrant population (defined as foreign-born) in the high unemployment states was much lower than in the low unemployment states. Then they looked at the ten states with the largest proportion of immigrants, compared their unemployment rates with the ten states with the smallest immigrant population, and found that the typical unemployment rate in the states with low immigration was nearly one-third higher than in the states with relatively high immigration.²⁰ Of course, one might wonder if the causal relationship between high immigration and low unemployment could work in the other direction—namely, whether high unemployment states simply attract fewer immigrants. But that relationship has been discounted by others.²¹

Anecdotal evidence of individuals who are perceived to have lost jobs due to immigration is more than offset by the less visible, positive employment effects that immigration provides. Immigration is not associated with higher unemployment. Instead, immigrants actually create more jobs than they take, thereby reducing the overall rate of unemployment and producing increased employment opportunities for immigrants and native workers alike.²²