Immigration

http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/back1204.pdf


Economy Slowed, But Immigration Didn’t
The Foreign-Born Population, 2000-2004
By Steven A. Camarota

The 34.24 million immigrants (legal and illegal) now living in the country is the highest number ever recorded in American history and a 4.3 million increase since 2000.

Of the 4.3 million growth, almost half, or two million, is estimated to be from illegal immigration.

The same data also show that in the years between 2000 and 2004 nearly 6.1 million new immigrants (legal and illegal) arrived from abroad. New arrivals are offset by deaths and return migration among the existing immigrant population so that the net total increased by 4.3 million.

Since 2000, 6.1 million new immigrants have arrived, compared to the 5.5 million who arrived between 1996 and 2000, during the economic expansion.

The record pace of immigration is so surprising because unemployment among immigrants increased from 4.4 to 6.1 percent and the total number unemployed grew by 43 percent.

In contrast to current immigration, evidence indicates that economic downturns in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did have a very significant impact on immigration levels.

Immigrants now account for nearly 12 percent of the nation’s total population, the highest percentage in over 80 years.

There is more debate about the size of outmigration.
But the Census Bureau has estimated that
about 280,000 immigrants living here return home
each year.5 It should also be remembered that like any
survey, there exists sampling variability in the CPS.
The margin of error, using a 90-percent confidence
interval, for the foreign born is between 640,000 and
700,000 for data from 1996 to 2001 and between
520,000 and 530,00 for 2002 through 2004 data.
Thus one could say that in 2004 the immigrant
population was 34.24 million plus or minus 530,000.
Because of sampling error, even seemingly large yearto-
year changes may not be meaningful. When looking
for trends it is much better to compare differences over
several years.
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Steven A. Camarota seems to express some bias against immigration, but his numbers seem relatively solid except for an insufficient Sampling size--though it matches Y2000 Census procedure. The numbers do trouble, especially the publication from Oct. 2004
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A Jobless Recovery?Immigrant Gains and Native Losses
October 2004
By Steven A. Camarota
Between March of 2000 and 2004, the number of unemployed adult natives increased by 2.3 million, while the number of employed adult immigrants increased by 2.3 million. Half of the 2.3 million increase in immigrant employment since 2000 is estimated to be from illegal immigration.In addition to a growth in unemployment, the number of working age (18 to 64) natives who left the labor force entirely has increased by four million since 2000.Even over the last year the same general pattern holds. Of the 900,000 net increase in jobs between March 2003 and 2004, two-thirds went to immigrant workers, even though they account for only 15 percent of all adult workers. In just the last year, 1.2 million working-age natives left the labor force, and say that they are not even trying to find a job. Immigrant job gains have occurred throughout the labor market, with more than two-thirds of their employment gains among workers who have at least a high school degree.There is little evidence that immigrants take only jobs Americans don’t want. Even those occupations with the highest concentrations of new immigrants still employ millions of native-born workers. The decline in native employment was most pronounced in states where immigrants increased their share of workers the most.Occupations with the largest immigrant influx tended to have the highest unemployment rates among natives. ..........
the number of employed natives was 500,000 fewer in 2004 than in 2000. In contrast, there was a net increase of 2.3 million in the number of foreign-born workers holding jobs over this same time period. Put another way, there was a net increase of 1.7 million in the total number of adults working in the United States, but all of that increase went to foreign-born workers.
Between 2000 and 2004, the number of natives not working increased by nearly four million, from 30.8 million to 34.8 million. Thus, not only are 500,000 fewer natives working and 2.3 million more unemployed, fewer natives are even in the labor force at all. If we focus just on the four occupations with the largest number of newly arrived immigrants (construction, food preparation, cleaning and maintenance, and production workers) we again find that there are 21.4 million natives employed in these occupations. In these four occupations there were 1.4 million newly arrived immigrants, and there were more than two million unemployed natives. This does not mean that immigrants caused the unemployment of natives, though that is a possibility. But it does mean that the idea that there are no American workers available to fill these lower-skilled jobs is not supported by available data. 2.9 million immigrants in 2004 who said that they arrived in 2000 or later. We know this because the CPS asks immigrants what year they came to stay in the United States. The net increase in the number of immigrants holding jobs was 2.3 million. Therefore, all of the net growth in immigrant employment is due to new immigrants arriving from aboard. It should be noted that the reason the number of adult immigrant workers did not grow by 2.9 million is that some immigrants here in 2000 had died, gone home, or left the labor force by 2004. Thus 2.3 million represents the net increase in immigrant employment. ....
We find some direct evidence that immigration has adversely impacted natives. Areas of the country with the largest increase in immigrant workers were, in many cases, areas that saw the most significant job losses for natives. Immigrant occupations with the largest immigrant influx tended to have the highest unemployment rates among natives. This certainly raises the very real possibility that immigration has adversely affected native employment.
(all Bold the work of lgl)