How Immigration Steals Jobs,
Depresses Native Births

By Virginia Deane Abernethy

obs, optimism, marriage, and births are bound up tightly together. Young people who have jobs and a bright future tend to marry and plan a family. Young people without jobs, or finding only jobs that are below their expectations, do not marry and try to avoid parenthood. For as long as it takes.

History shows that rapid growth in the number of people looking for work depresses wages and conditions of work. Labor force growth - if not matched by enough new capital to both create jobs and maintain the usual level of capital investment per job - results in lower paid jobs, worse working conditions, fewer benefits or some combination of these.

Part of the pain of the present recession comes from growth in the labor force that is more rapid than almost any economy could absorb, even in times of high demand for goods and services. And yes, the 2.4 million jobs lost since the start of 2001 and a record low U.S. birth rate in 2002 are linked, as in A-causes-B. People without jobs, or good enough jobs, try to avoid the responsibility of parenthood.

A long-lasting trend, beginning with the 1973-74 oil shock and persisting due to mass immigration's pressure on labor, causes today's average intact family to need the incomes of two working parents. Together, they can usually support the family life style and educational opportunities for children that previously were afforded on one - typically the father's - income.

Conditions that force married women and mothers of very young children into the labor force do not encourage larger family size. Since 1975, Americans have not had enough children even to replace themselves! U.S. births in the generation that is now 20 to nearly 40 years old - that is, people born after 1965 - did not cause the booming supply of labor that competes for jobs in today's market.

The crowded labor market faced by today's labor force is caused by a rapidly increasing number of foreign-born workers. In the 1990s, more than 13 million net new immigrants arrived in the United States, accounting for a 7.5 million increase, or 48% of the net growth, in the nation's labor force. Write Andrew Sum and his colleagues at the Center for Labor Market Studies of Northeastern University, "New foreign immigrants contributed nearly one-half of the growth in the nation's civilian labor force" - labor force defined as those of working age either employed or looking for work.

Men face the greatest job competition because 70% of working-age immigrants are male. In fact, 8 of 10 male workers joining the labor force between 1990 and 2000 were newly arrived immigrants.

In his book, Heaven's Gate, economist George Borjas of Harvard University shows that enlargement of the labor force by immigration is very costly to workers. In 1998, the most recent year calculated, the immigration-related combination of wage depression and job displacement cost native American workers $152 billion. That loss is repeated annually, only increasing with the size of the immigrant labor force. Updating figures based on latest government statistics, Edwin Rubenstein calculates that the total annual income loss from immigration suffered by native-born workers is $302.9 billion.

Employers gain from cheap labor - about $7 to 10 billion more than workers lose. This "immigration surplus," trivial in a $10 trillion economy, amounts to a huge redistribution of wealth from employees to the employers of labor. The process polarizes rich and poor, progressively undermining the middle class.

In 1996, Herbert Stein, former chairman of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, observed that, "the risk of becoming unemployed has now spread to people who did not expect to have that risk." Even when - for the first time in many years - unemployment dipped below 5 percent in 1997 and briefly reached 4 percent in year 2000, some observers suggested that fewer than half of Americans were as financially secure as they had been some decades earlier. In 1995, a feature article in U.S. News and World Report showed that well-compensated industrial jobs were being replaced with lower-capitalized service, temporary, or part-time jobs with few benefits. So despite an increase in the net number of jobs, many families were worse off. Family income was, and is, maintained by having more members of the family in the labor force, and many working two jobs -- the highest proportion in half a century.

Hourly labor is not alone in enduring the effects of labor market saturation. Professionals in technical fields where fluent English is not required also suffer. Between 1968 and 1995, engineers with 10 years experience were hit with a 13 % constant-dollar decline in wages, moving demographer Michael Teitelbaum to declare the obvious, that the problem was too many engineers for too few jobs.

In 1995 (Jan. 20), Joel B. Snyder testified before the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, on behalf of the one-quarter-million-member Institute for Electronic and Electrical Engineers, that immigration is the cause of significant increases in unemployment and underemployment among engineers. Similar labor surpluses exist in chemistry, physics, mathematics and other specialties.

Phyllis Schlafly attributes increasing unemployment among American engineers and information technology specialists (programmers) to the large number of foreigners admitted to the United States. Technically not immigrants, they enter under H-1B, limited in number, and unlimited L-1 visas. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently counted 384,191 foreigners who hold H-1B and 328,480 who hold L-1 visas. That number working in the United States in 2001 excludes those who have had visas extended for an allowable 3-year period or who work in educational institutions. Schlafly cites estimates of at least 890,000 H-1B job-holders in the United States at any one time.

Congress passed the H-1B and L-1 visa programs in response to industry cries of insufficient labor. But businesses that are most importune, especially those hiring computer programmers, are arguably self-serving in claiming labor shortages.

Before the current recession, computer science professor Norman Matloff cited a 17 percent unemployment rate for programmers over 50 years of age. At the height of the business cycle, salaries for computer programmers were rising modestly, but not at the rate that would suggest labor shortage. Matloff states that the profit motive - without regard for fellow Americans - explains industry's eagerness to import workers, because "imported programmers are paid between 15% and 30% less than their native counterparts."

Congress's watchdog, the General Accounting Office, takes no official position on scarcity of skilled labor. Nevertheless, in 1998 the GAO pointed out serious flaws in two studies that were a primary basis for claims of skilled-labor shortage.

The current recession has increased unemployment in almost all sectors of the workforce, and immigrants typically have higher unemployment rates than native-born Americans. The differential persists during recessions - in 2002 the immigrant unemployment rate increased to 6.5% - several points higher that the rate for native-born workers at that time.

Nevertheless, a strange, counter-intuitive pattern emerges. Between 2000 and 2002, inclusive, nearly 600,000 more immigrants found employment. At the same time, 1.5 million native-born Americans became unemployed.

Thus, although the recession caused higher unemployment on a percentage basis among the immigrant sector than among native-born Americans, the total number of jobs held by immigrants increased, while native-born Americans lost jobs. Write Andrew Sum and his co-investigators, "All of the decline in net employment over the 2000-2002 period was borne by native-born workers."

Sum and his colleagues suggest a pattern: "In a slack economy, where the number of unemployed substantially exceed the estimated number of job vacancies, gains in employment of the foreign born are increasingly more likely to come at the expense of native born workers." Especially during recessions, immigrants take American jobs.

Between 2000 and 2002, the working-age, foreign-born population grew by 1.6 million because "push" factors for emigration and the United States' policies favoring mass immigration persisted virtually unchanged. Despite the recession and the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center, government and major corporations show little hesitancy to welcome foreigners.

By May, 2003, the national unemployment rate was 6.1 percent. Hispanic unemployment - a proxy for immigrant unemployment - was 8.2 percent. Paul Harrington, part of the Northeastern University group studying the labor market effect of immigration, explains "rising employment and rising unemployment for the same group of people… happens when the labor force surges faster than the number of unemployed people."

Labor market effects are issues for all Americans who wish to preserve a strong and vital middle class. Since approximately 1974, the working and middle classes have experienced a significant erosion in buying power, in leisure and family time, and in women's economic freedom to choose to be a full-time homemaker and mother.

Indeed, the labor market in place almost continuously for over 25 years discourages young Americans from becoming economically independent of their parents. For many, leaving home is an unaffordable choice. For others, economic independence is won through hard work and extensive time commitments to career that militate against developing relationships.

Women may be as reluctant to marry a man who has not proved himself financially successful as men resist marrying without the wherewithal to support a family. The result is the singles culture, a postponement of both marriage and the responsibilities of parenthood.

Mass immigration strengthens the forces that lead to delayed marriage and declining fertility rates among the native-born population. Harsh labor market competition, depressed wages, and threatened unemployment propel choices toward later marriage and smaller family size.

Explicit measurement of immigration's effect on the employment prospects of successive cohorts of young Americans supports this dismal view. Calculating labor market forces and their effect on decision-making, economist Diane Macunovich concludes in her 1999 article in Population and Environment that one native U.S. birth is foregone for every immigrant that comes.

Continuing current immigration policy results in replacing the present ethnic mix of Americans with a new people. Immigrants - fine though they may be - inevitably introduce their own cultures and dilute the existing culture. Replacement by newcomers who bring different values and share little kinship is not the sort of continuity envisioned by the average loyal American.

If the existing population expects to see its own reflection in the American future, the nation must show its young adults a more caring face. If the economy cannot grow, or when it grows slowly, the limited pool of jobs, and the limited opportunity that exists, should be set aside for America's own.