To Be An American. Bill Ong Hing

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      — RODOLFO MARTINEZ PADILLA, age 31 native of Michoacan, Mexico

      Negative images of immigrants and their purported impact on the U.S. economy have permeated the airwaves and print media headlines of late. These images largely revolve around two anti-immigrant arguments, broadly conceived of as “economic” in nature. The first argument posits that immigrants have a negative effect on the labor market, displacing native workers and depressing wages. The second is that immigrants burden the public coffers. The labor market complaint is the subject of this chapter, while the next chapter addresses the costs and revenues of immigrants.

      The image of immigrants as labor market demons is fueled by comments such as those of Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas, who authored major legislation in the House of Representatives in 1996: “[I]n places where immigrants tend to congregate, particularly in the cities, … the direct impact on citizens, particularly low-income, low-skill citizens, is that they lose jobs and their wages are depressed as a result.”¹ Consider also the views of Daniel A. Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform: “This is throwing kerosene on the blaze.… Immigration is destroying the American middle class.… It’s one of the key factors degrading labor in this country.”²

      Accompanying these negative images are a host of state and federal policy proposals—some aimed at undocumented aliens, but many directed at lawful immigrants and refugees. These efforts extend far beyond the 1986 law making it illegal for employers to hire undocumented workers or California’s Proposition 187 which would preclude undocumented aliens from attending public schools, receiving welfare, and obtaining services from publicly funded health facilities. While the constitutionality of Proposition 187 is being determined by the federal courts, it is emblematic of several legislative actions and proposals. These include cutting back on public benefits and social programs available to legal immigrants (ranging from Supplemental Security Income to school lunch and milk programs for lawful resident schoolchildren), denying driver’s licenses to undocumented aliens, making it a felony for an undocumented person to apply to a state university, adding resources to the Border Patrol, calling out the National Guard to help enforce the border, charging a border toll, amending the Fourteenth Amendment so that birth in the United States does not confer citizenship upon a newborn if the parents are undocumented, and cutting back on legal immigration by a third.

      The twin economic allegations and the flurry of legislation directed against immigrants demand that we inform ourselves as much as possible before forming judgments (and policies) on proposals that are premised on beliefs about economic impact. A fair reading of available, accurate research suggests that allegations of the negative impact of immigrants on the economy are overblown and largely unsupported. The most reliable studies show that the level of anti-immigrant rhetoric based on economic arguments is simply not justified.

      Before considering actual studies that have been conducted on immigrants and the labor market, a theoretical framework—developed from observations of the market—is helpful.

      THINKING ABOUT JOBS AND WAGES

      IMMIGRANTS AND JOB CREATION

      One concern about immigrants is that every job that goes to an immigrant is a job that a native worker loses (or fails to gain). The fear that immigrants take away jobs from native workers rests on the theory that the number of jobs is static or fixed. Under this theory, when immigrants get jobs, fewer jobs are left for native workers thereby causing increases in unemployment among native laborers.

      The idea of a fixed workforce has a certain commonsense appeal, but is inaccurate. The number of jobs is dynamic rather than fixed. As more persons begin working and spending their earnings, the demand for more goods follows, and generally more labor is needed. Immigrants are not simply workers—they are also consumers. Like everyone else, immigrants need basic goods such as food, shelter, and clothing. Immigrant workers spend their earnings on these goods as well as (to the extent they can afford them) on other nonessential items. Immigrants therefore increase the total demand for goods. In response, businesses increase their production. To do this, they must increase their labor force and hire more workers. Thus, the entry of immigrants into the labor market ultimately creates jobs by pressuring businesses to expand their production. In fact, the mere presence of a new immigrant—even one who is not working—can increase consumption or the demand for goods and services, and cause the same result. Thus, all native workers—including minorities and women—would find better job opportunities due to overall economic growth.³

      If immigrants actually create jobs for native workers, why do so many people believe that immigrants pose a threat to native workers’ jobs? This may be a matter of what we think we see. While the average person may actually see an immigrant working in a job once held by a native worker, the more indirect job-creation process attributable to immigrants (and verified by studies discussed below) is not as easily perceived.⁴ This may help account for much of the public suspicion of immigrants and jobs.

      IMMIGRANTS ARE COMPLEMENTARY WORKERS

      The notion that increases in immigration correspond to losses in native workers’ jobs relies not only upon a model of the workforce as static, but also upon the belief that immigrants and native workers are vying for the same types of jobs. However, immigrants and native workers generally do not compete for the same jobs. Immigrants largely fill undesirable, unskilled jobs in which native workers have little interest, thereby serving as complements to, rather than substitutes for, native workers in the labor force.

      The labor market is divided into primary “good” jobs and secondary “bad” jobs. The first group is largely populated by native workers, the latter by migrants. Primary sector jobs are situated in so-called “core” industries, where investments and financing of production are relatively high, and mainly large-scale and unionized, and where instability has been minimized by such market features as little effective competition. Workers who fill such jobs must have relatively high skills. They are well paid and work under generally desirable conditions. By contrast, secondary jobs are found in smaller firms where production is not as highly financed and products face highly competitive markets. Positions tend to be unstable, low or unskilled, relatively low paying, and generally marked by undesirable working conditions.⁵

      Migrants are more suited for these low-paying, low-skilled jobs due to (1) the flexibility of the migrant workforce; (2) the lasting nature of the migrant labor supply; and (3) their susceptibility to manipulation and control. Migrants thus dominate low-paying, low-skilled jobs. The question then is whether, on account of immigrant domination of secondary jobs, native workers are pushed into primary jobs, or whether they are unemployed. President Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, agreeing with the principle that immigrants generally do not displace native workers, emphasized the job and occupational mobility of native workers. Native workers can move from one sector of the labor market to another, while immigrants generally cannot.⁶

      Yet this conclusion is not comforting for native workers ill-suited, on account of skills and/or geography, to occupy primary jobs. Further, immigrants get secondary jobs because they are more subject to manipulation and control—in other words, exploitation. Emphasizing the exploitability of immigrants for “good” economic effect is troubling even if such an approach does help us understand that immigrants generally do not take jobs that native workers desire. (These concerns are more fully addressed in chapter СКАЧАТЬ