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. 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. Our related goal of improving the distribution of income in this country is likewise set back.
Our immigration policies for both legal and illegal immigration discourage the most accomplished and educated who have good alternatives to living in the United States. Currently only about 8 percent of persons granted U.S. permanent residence visas each year receive them on the basis of education or skill level. The prospect of long years on immigration wait lists discourages many potential legal immigrants who are highly educated and skilled and who are generally reluctant to immigrate here illegally and work at the kinds of jobs most available to illegal immigrants.
Federal Government actions – border enforcement and a handful of workplace raids – are having almost no effect on illegal immigration. With no penalty for attempting an unauthorized crossing, prospective immigrants try as many times as necessary, often with the aid of professional smugglers. An estimated 30 to 50 percent of our illegal immigrants do not even illegally cross our border. They enter the United States legally on visas from all over the world for such purposes as tourism or visiting relatives. After arriving in the United States, they overstay the time limits on their visas, find employment, and establish themselves as residents of our country. The advantages of living in the United States, our known lack of enforcement of immigration laws, and the prospects of eventual citizenship plus automatic citizenship for any children born in the United States have resulted in a long-term upward trend in our illegal immigration numbers.
Many of our past illegal immigrants have gained citizenship through a series of amnesties beginning in 1986 and by other means such as marriage to a citizen. After changes in 1965, our legal immigration system has emphasized preferences for close relatives of citizens. Since it is the recently legalized citizens who have by far the largest number of close relatives living outside the United States, the typical characteristics of our legal immigrants are now mirroring that of our illegal immigrants – low skilled and little educated. Moreover, the annual amount of permitted legal immigration, including the admission of refugees and asylum seekers who also tend to be poor and unskilled, has been trending up over time and is now running about twice the level it had been prior to the 1990s.
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 would be forced to pay more in order to obtain needed employees and our low income citizens would thereby be better off.
It would be good public policy for the Obama administration to do all it can 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.
