Unemployment

While Congress prepares to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform, restrictionist groups are doing their best to perpetuate the myth that immigrants are to blame for our nation’s unemployment problem. The following Immigration Policy Center (IPC) resources dispel this myth with facts and research.

Letter to the Editor: Immigration and Employment

In his Dec. 3 Ideas piece, “Recovering Stolen Jobs Key to Recovery,” Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) misconstrues the relationship between unauthorized immigration and unemployment among native-born workers. Smith seems to think that deporting the 8 million unauthorized-immigrant workers now in the United States would magically create 8 million job openings for unemployed, native-born Americans. In the real world, however, it’s not that simple. Immigrant and native-born workers cannot simply be exchanged for one another like batteries.
(Politico, December 7, 2009)Read more...

Published On: Tue, Dec 15, 2009 | Download File

Untying the Knot (Part I of III): The Unemployment and Immigration Disconnect

With Congress once again poised to consider comprehensive immigration reform, a key question confronting lawmakers is to what extent immigration and unemployment are related. Opponents of immigration reform frequently argue that immigrants “take” jobs away from many native-born workers, especially during economic hard times. Yet an analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau clearly reveals that this is not the case. In fact, there is little apparent relationship between recent immigration and unemployment rates at the regional, state, or county level.

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Untying the Knot (Part II of III): Immigration and Native-Born Unemployment Across Racial/Ethnic GroupsRead more...

Published On: Tue, May 19, 2009 | Download File

The Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI) recently released a report highlighting the contributions of immigrant workers in the 25 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. FPI’s report broadens a growing understanding that immigrant workers make important economic contributions to the U.S. and to their local economies. Immigrants are likely to be of prime working age, work in occupations across the economic spectrum, and contribute robustly to economic growth in each of the 25 metropolitan areas studied and in the United States as a whole.

Published On: Tue, Dec 01, 2009 | Download File

While some characterize our immigration crisis as solely an issue of the 11 to 12 million unauthorized immigrants living in this country, our problems extend beyond the number of undocumented people to a broader range of issues. Read more...

Published On: Wed, Oct 21, 2009 | Download File

IPC Research Fellow Dan Siciliano told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that immigration is directly responsible for billions of dollars annually in U.S. economic growth. Siciliano, who also is Executive Director of the Program in Law, Economics and Business at Stanford Law School, explained to the Committee that "if the United States were to reform the immigration system to better address the demand for foreign-born labor, the economic benefits of immigration could be even greater than what we have already experienced."

Published On: Sun, Apr 16, 2006 | Download File

A study by the Pew Hispanic Center suggests that new immigration initiatives must find a balance between controlling labor flows and homeland security. The report shows immigrant workers provide most major sectors of the U.S. economy with valuable labor.

Published On: Mon, Apr 01, 2002 | Download File

University of California professor AnnaLee Saxenian's new study shows that a substantial share of the astounding growth in Silicon Valley can be traced to the labor and capital of foreign nationals.

Published On: Wed, May 01, 2002 | Download File

America's current immigration policies are antiquated and fail to recognize the importance of Mexican workers to the national economy. U.S. immigration law must provide ways for Mexican workers to enter and remain in the U.S., in both temporary and permanent status, with protections to assure that they have the dignity and respect they deserve, given the important contributions they make to America. The status quo can no longer be accepted if the United States is to remain the world's leading economy.

Published On: Sun, Sep 01, 2002 | Download File

A new report published by the Cato Institute examines the impact of Mexican immigration on the U.S., and explains why fixing the dysfunctional immigration system makes sense to the economic recovery and national security of America.

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Remittances – money immigrants and foreign workers send abroad to their families – exert a key positive influence on the global economy, concludes a new report by the World Bank. The report carries implications for everything from U.S. policies on temporary workers to international development assistance.

Published On: Tue, Apr 01, 2003 | Download File