THE CLAIM: Undocumented immigrants are stealing American jobs. THE PURVEYORS: The allegation that illegal immigrants are causing native unemployment is pervasive in the nativist movement. Terry Anderson, a black Los Angeles radio host and hard-line anti-immigration activist, for instance, told Lou Dobbs Tonight on Oct. 23, 2003, that legal and illegal immigration was killing the [native-born] work force. Texas nativist leader Debbie Rawlins said in 2006 that Hispanics were taking our jobs, our homes. The far-right California Coalition for Immigration Reform has a billboard on the California-Arizona border that reads, Demand Illegal Aliens Be Deported. The Job You Save May Be Your Own. THE FACTS: A 2006 Pew Hispanic Center study, Growth in the Foreign-Born Workforce and Employment of the Native Born, found no evidence that the large increases in immigration since 1990 have led to higher unemployment among native Americans. The center examined census data on the increase in immigrants in each of the 50 states, comparing those figures to state jobless rates and participation in the labor force by the native born. Although immigrants tended to be younger and less educated than native workers, the report found no apparent relationship between the growth of foreign workers with less education and the employment outcome of native workers with the same level of education. These findings were in line with those of most economists, who have failed to find a link between immigration and job loss. The big message here, said University of California economist Giovanni Peri, who conducted a similar study in California, is there is no job loss from immigration. ----- THE CLAIM: Poor immigrants cost native taxpayers a fortune in social services. THE PURVEYORS: Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told CNNs Lou Dobbs Tonight on June 12, 2006, that immigrants were exponentially driving up welfare costs. [I]f youre bringing in high school dropouts who arent married and have children out of wedlock, what are they going to do? Theyre going to be on welfare. … Its going to cost at least $70 billion a year. Heather MacDonald, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at its City Journal, wrote in 2002 that illegal immigrants do get welfare based on having children who are born in this country and are therefore citizens (she did not explain how parents pulled this off). U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), citing Rector, claimed this year that low-skill immigrant households were costing American taxpayers over $1 million per head of household. THE FACTS: As a general rule, the federal government reaps a net benefit from illegal immigrants in the form of Social Security payments that the workers are never able to collect because they are not citizens; it is the states, in terms of social services, education and medical services, that pay the bulk of costs associated with supporting the undocumented population. Even so, Rector and MacDonalds claims are disputed by numerous scholars, including even MacDonalds senior colleague at the Manhattan Institute, Tamar Jacoby. Jacoby, who studies immigration extensively, told the conservative National Review that while individuals might receive more in services than they paid in taxes, they are growing the [overall economic] pie so significantly that that cost pales in comparison. Jacoby cited a recent study of immigrants in North Carolina that reported that over the prior 10 years, Latino immigrants had cost the state $61 million in a variety of benefits — but were responsible for more than $9 billion in state economic growth. The same point was made in a 1997 National Academy of Sciences study that found the less-educated immigrants who impose a fiscal burden are the very same immigrants who provide the economic benefit reported. A major survey of the net effects of immigration, published in 2006 in The New York Times Magazine, cited only one economist, George Borjas of Harvard, claiming a negative net effect. Many other economists disputed Borjas. If Mexicans were taller and whiter, University of California, Berkeley, professor David Card told the magazine, it would probably be a lot easier for the public to accept the majority view of economists that the net effects of immigration, which is now predominantly Latino, are positive. ----- THE CLAIM: Proposed immigration reform would vastly overpopulate America. THE PURVEYORS: Heritage Foundation senior fellow Robert Rector, quoted in a May 15, 2006, article on the far-right NewsMax website, said that the proposed Kennedy-McCain immigration reform bill would likely result in 103 million legal immigrants in the next 20 years. He added that the maximum number in that period could reach 200 million people. Years earlier, immigrant-bashing columnist Frosty Wooldridge of Colorado claimed that current immigration is pushing us toward 200 million added people vying for diminishing resources, though he offered no support for his number. Other nativists have repeatedly made similar assertions. THE FACTS: As was quickly pointed out when Rector first made these claims, his numbers defy basic logic. His minimum figure of 103 million people is roughly equal to the entire current population of Mexico; to reach his high figure of 200 million people moving to the United States in the next 20 years, youd have to throw in the equivalent of the current population of Central America, too. Several leading demographers told the San Francisco Chronicle in May 2006 that Rectors projections were vastly overstated, ignored the effects of emigration, and used unreasonably high estimates of legalization and naturalization. The same month, a report from the Congressional Budget Office, specifically analyzing the Kennedy-McCain proposal, estimated that the bill would result in 8 million people entering the country legally over 20 years — 4% and 8% of Rectors two estimates.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 14:51:22 +0000