Research shows that immigrants don’t steal jobs from Americans
A coalition of groups that want to limit immigration, legal and illegal, has an ad claiming that illegal immigrants steal jobs from Americans. That’s a popular talking point among the build-the-fence, seal-the border types, but it’s just not so.
Factcheck.org has rounded up a lot of academic research that shows that immigrants don’t steal jobs:
The video from the congressional caucus and the statement from Sen. DeMint refer specifically to illegal immigrants. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there were nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2008, with 8.3 million in the labor force. About 5.4 percent of the nation’s workforce, then, was composed of illegal immigrants.
But whether they’re legal, as in the CFAW ad, or illegal, as in our two other examples, really doesn’t matter for the purpose of answering our question: The truth is that immigrants don’t “take American jobs,” according to most economists and others who have studied the issue.
Immigrant workers “create almost as many” jobs as they occupy, “and maybe more,” said Madeleine Sumption, policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, which is funded by a range of foundations, corporations and international organizations. “They often create the jobs they work in.” In addition, “they buy things, and they make the economy bigger,” she told us. As she and a co-author wrote in a report last year for a group created by the British government:
Somerville and Sumption: [T]he impact of immigration [on a nation's economy] remains small, for several reasons. Immigrants are not competitive in many types of jobs, and hence are not direct substitutes for natives. Local employers increase demand for low-skilled labor in areas that receive low-skilled immigrant inflows. Immigrants contribute to demand for goods and services that they consume, in turn increasing the demand for labor. And immigrants contribute to labor market efficiency and long-term economic growth.
Of course, none of that matters to the folks who don’t live in the reality-based universe.
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340 comments Add your comment
A Lumpkin Resident
May 17th, 2010
12:09 pm
This was all true when we had 5.4% unemployment in the economy. It no longer holds true.
Kamchak
May 17th, 2010
12:10 pm
Factcheck.org has rounded up a lot of academic research that shows that immigrants don’t steal jobs:
I beg to differ. Thirty years in the construction biz has illustrated to me that they have.
Oxymoron
May 17th, 2010
12:12 pm
At this point, I would gladly offer an illegal immigrant Cynthia Tucker’s job. They’d probably do a better job, too.
AFret
May 17th, 2010
12:13 pm
Cynthia, Can you define what an Anerican is?
DeKalb Conservative
May 17th, 2010
12:13 pm
(Illegal) immigrants do not produce more than they consume. Further, they depress the overall income ability for workers with lower skills. By not having a legal status, they are able to drive down wages because they are not burdened by tax structures that document immigrants and (documented) citizens have.
Something the readers of this blog might want to explore, I believe there is substantial research illustrating that black males are hurt significantly more because of illegal immigrants driving down wages.
DeKalb Conservative
May 17th, 2010
12:15 pm
My shirt was likely created by tiny 6 year old fingers in China because they, like illegals in the U.S., hold a competitive advantage in the price of labor.
Those 6 year old fingers are doing a job that Americans wouldn’t due (for less than $7.25 an hour Federal minimum wage).
MiltonMan
May 17th, 2010
12:15 pm
Factcheck.org founded by the Annenberg foundation. The same foundation that created the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that had none other than Barack Obama as Chairman of the Board. Yes, no conflict at all there.
Cynthia is Sexy!!
May 17th, 2010
12:22 pm
Im finding that 6 year olds do some of the best tailoring Ive yet seen.
Cynthia is Sexy!!
May 17th, 2010
12:24 pm
Taking jobs or not, illegal is illegal and deporation efforts should begin immediately. Even MS KSU who had well over 10 years to become legal should be sent packing.
buycott.com
Cynthia is Sexy!!
May 17th, 2010
12:25 pm
$7.25 Federal Minimum wage is too high. Should be reduced to $6.65 per hour OR LESS.
buycott.com
Peadawg
May 17th, 2010
12:26 pm
No problem with the LEGAL immigrants. Just the ILLEGAL immigrants. Cynthia still doesn’t see the difference.
That KSU student lied on her college application, yet Cynthia wants to keep her here.
ctucker
May 17th, 2010
12:31 pm
MiltonMAN, Factcheck is a reputable organization, but you don’t have to believe them. They just rounded up the research. They didn’t conduct the studies.
Huckabee The Next POTUS-2013
May 17th, 2010
12:31 pm
Please sin-dee, They not only steal jobs, some of them steal cars, education, beds in the hospital, wic benefits as well as ebt benefits and then there are the perverted ILLEGALS who steal the innocence of young children or the raping of American women. Don’t get on your racist high horse and say white men do it at a greater rate ( they should all be gassed first conviction), my point being if an ILLEGAL was treated as such when found in this country the crimes would decline.
I'm here from the government and I'm here to help
May 17th, 2010
12:35 pm
What part of ILLEGALS do you not understand? Please explain?
Granny Godzilla
May 17th, 2010
12:39 pm
Fact Check! They don’t need no stinkin’ Fact Check.
resno2
May 17th, 2010
12:39 pm
Who’s “reality-based universe” are we taking about?
ctucker
May 17th, 2010
12:39 pm
Huckabee the Next POTUS-2013, Take a look at the crime statistics for the last decade. Crime has been going down all over the country — including Arizona — even as illegal immigration has increased.
resno2
May 17th, 2010
12:41 pm
Shhhhh… we can’t use the term illegal… we have to use undocumented, because we don’t want anyone to have their feelings hurt by calling them something bad.
resno2
May 17th, 2010
12:42 pm
“even as illegal immigration has increased”. Now that you have acknowledged it… how do we fix it?
Peadawg
May 17th, 2010
12:46 pm
resno2, amnesty. Then they’ll all vote Democrat. Right, Cynthia?
Cosby Smith
May 17th, 2010
12:49 pm
Tired of the smoke screen..Illegal means against the law. those that hire illegals are aiding criminals. Call it what you want, but if a law is brokern, one should suffer the consequaences. Many excuses do not make that go away!
Alatsea
May 17th, 2010
12:53 pm
If GG agrees with fact check, that would put them right up there with the credibility of Wapo or Huffmiester or Herr Gibbs.
DeKalb Conservative
May 17th, 2010
12:54 pm
@ Cynthia
Thank you for pointing out that AZ crime has gone down as illegal immigration has gone up. My question to that point is, what is an acceptable crime rate for illegal immigrants?
I’m fairly certain there are a few rape victims and possibly a few families of murder victims that would think that anything above 0.0000% is too high.
DeKalb Conservative
May 17th, 2010
12:55 pm
we don’t need to look to AZ for this. we have our own AZ via home invasions and drug cartel crimes going on 20 minutes to the north of Atlanta in Gwinnett County.
resno2
May 17th, 2010
12:56 pm
I wonder if the next blog is going to be about how big of a tax drain the illegals are on our system, or how much their kids take out of the system that our property taxes pay for.
I wonder if any teachers/coaches jobs would have been saved if we weren’t providing free public education.
Granny Godzilla
May 17th, 2010
12:58 pm
Alatsea
You make my point. Thanks.
You don’t need no stinkin’ facts.
Yo ho ho, swabby.
I'm here from the government and I'm here to help
May 17th, 2010
12:59 pm
@ CT, Crime has been going down all over the country — including Arizona — even as illegal immigration has increased.
If true, your okay with ILLEGAL immigration? Please explain?
Chris
May 17th, 2010
12:59 pm
This is good information to chew on. We also know that undocumented workers do, in fact, pay a significant amount of federal, state, and local taxes.
There is still the issue of whether illegal hiring of undocumented workers drives wages down. We do know that it results in employer abuse of worker protection laws.
ctucker
May 17th, 2010
1:00 pm
dekalb Conservative, I’m in favor of deporting any illegal immigrants found guilty of violent offenses.
ctucker
May 17th, 2010
1:00 pm
Actually, Peadawg, Arizona had more Republican Hispanics than any other state before Arizona’s new law. Now, they’re running away from the GOP.
joan
May 17th, 2010
1:03 pm
Well, I have nothing to add to the comments above. Cynthia has just had her head, and her head up her b… opinion handed to her by people who can see clearly. It boggles my mind how she can find her way into work.
Peadawg
May 17th, 2010
1:04 pm
“dekalb Conservative, I’m in favor of deporting any illegal immigrants found guilty of violent offenses.”
But not lying to the cops? Not lying on your college application? Just violent ones?
DeKalb Conservative
May 17th, 2010
1:05 pm
This is about a $10-12 million / day problem, assuming you enforce jail time on current federal law.
Sheriff Joe in AZ can house a person for about .97 cents a day in his tent jails. I’m sure he could get that number lower than .97 with economies of scale kicking in.
pat
May 17th, 2010
1:06 pm
No? Well maybe the can spell english better than you…Anericans, really? Spell check, use it love it.
We don’t care about immigrants, since I am one myself, we are talking about illegal immigrants. They are the problem.
resno2
May 17th, 2010
1:07 pm
Are those the same Republican Hispanics that are for the AZ law?
I'm here from the government and I'm here to help
May 17th, 2010
1:07 pm
CT, You have to be joking. We have to have a “violent crime” committed against us for you to agree to deport. Why wait for someone to pay the price of a crime? Illegals immigration is a “CRIME”! What part do you not comprehend?
Some Guy
May 17th, 2010
1:08 pm
Which part of the definition of illegal do you not understand. Your “blog” above is irrelevant. It is apparent you do not live in a “reality” base universe!
Alatsea
May 17th, 2010
1:12 pm
GG your nothing but air in the room, the swabby comment is insulting but that is the norm from you you old b*t*h
blutto
May 17th, 2010
1:13 pm
CT: “the folks who don’t live in the reality-based universe”
You mean like those who believe that we can insure 30 million additional people with no increase in costs? Or like those who believe that government always knows best? Or like those who believe we can make the poor wealthy by making the wealthy poor? Or like those who believe that we can tax and spend our way to prosperity? Or like those who believe that if only America would reach out to terrorists and stop calling them what they are then we would have everlasting peace?
To argue that illegal immigrants are creating jobs and only occupying jobs that others will not do is just plain silly.
T-Town
May 17th, 2010
1:14 pm
The crime rate is only going down, because the input of crime data is going down. Local governments have had to reduce the number of employees to balance the budgets, so data entry is low on the totem pole of City jobs. Many Cities in the US have discontinued the entering of Part II offenses (theft, criminal damaging, trespassing, etc.) and seriously reduced the entries of the Part I offenses (murder, robbery, grand theft, burglary, etc.) because of lack of data entry personnel. Even with the use of the Mobile Data Computers (MDCs) now being employed by many police departments, some the info collected by the MDCs can not be downloaded by the police because of software issues in the police department’s Record Management Systems (RMS). This make it difficult to report data in a timely manner to make the FBIs Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). No inputting of the info, walla the crime rate goes down.
Kamchak
May 17th, 2010
1:15 pm
Uh, oh.
Tick…tick…tick….
Kamchak
May 17th, 2010
1:17 pm
Alatsea
Red card or yellow?
resno2
May 17th, 2010
1:25 pm
Kamchak
May 17th, 2010
1:17 pm
Yellow – only a caution, but persistence could warrant a second one.
Granny Godzilla
May 17th, 2010
1:28 pm
Alatsea
Overreact much?
We’ll Captains need facts……
Alatsea
May 17th, 2010
1:28 pm
Kamchak@ 12:10 Thirty years in the construction biz has illustrated to me that they have.
Your comment above explains your level of intelligence. Thirty years shoveling dirt in the hot sun will dull your brain.
T-Town
May 17th, 2010
1:32 pm
Alatsea; Mr. Kamchak loves to be condescending, don’t stoop to that level. It’s beneath you.
HDB
May 17th, 2010
1:33 pm
resno2 May 17th, 2010
1:07 pm
Are those the same Republican Hispanics that are for the AZ law?
From Newsmax:
The Latino Decisions poll of 402 voters in Arizona and the Grove Insight poll of 500 base voters in Arizona tested overall views and political implications of the passage of the new law, as well as voters’ views on immigration reform.
Key findings included that 81 percent of Arizona’s Hispanic voters oppose SB 1070. Since the bills passage, the polls found, immigration reform has become the leading issue among Hispanic voters, shooting up by 16 percentage points and moving ahead of the economy and health care as the leading issue among Latino voters.
“The data shows very clearly that Latino voters in Arizona, from first-generation immigrants to fourth-generation families, are very much opposed to SB 1070 and national immigration reform is now their single most important issue,” said Matt A. Barreto, a pollster with Latino Decisions and associate professor of political science at the University of Washington.
“Overwhelmingly, Latino voters fully expect the federal government to take up national immigration reform during 2010 to fix this problem in Arizona,” he said.
Arizona Hispanics understand something that the majority of Americans don’t: SB1070 will create legalized apartheid and is the first step in the creaton of a police state!! If one would take the time to read the two bills that comprise SB 1070 (SB 1070 and HB 2162), you’ll discover that “LAWFUL CONTACT” is such a nebulous construct, ANY contact with the police would be considered as lawful….and and IN check could be mandated!! If I were standing on the corner waiting for a ride and the police pulled up, they could, under the law, throw me up against a wall and ask for ID. Furthermore, the accompanying Arizona House bill states that ONLY an Arizona driver’s license is to be considered proof of citizenship; the other qualifying documents would be a birth certificate, passport, tribal papers…….a Georgia driver’s license would NOT considered proof!! An American citizen could be deported because he has no proff of citizenship……
People need to read between the lines……
T-Town
May 17th, 2010
1:34 pm
Enter your comments here
Cynthia is Sexy!!
May 17th, 2010
1:34 pm
Afternoon Snackytime…
“We must divide the nation by classes, to create two hostile camps, setting against each other those of lower income against the wealthy capitalists. Only if we are able to do this (split America into two camps) and to start true class warfare, can we achieve our ultimate goal – which is to collectivize and socialize the American economy at all levels.”
— Barack Obama (Columbia College thesis)
Peadawg
May 17th, 2010
1:34 pm
Something the readers of this blog might want to explore, I believe there is substantial research illustrating that black males are hurt significantly more because of illegal immigrants driving down wages.
I wish we could sent them back instead of the illegals. I would keep the illegals over any legal black males anytime. Maybe AZ can send some of them back by “mistake” lol