Webloggin » Immigration Legislation, It's All Smoke and Mirrors

The image is from Michael Cutler’s article, “Congress Shadow Boxing with Illegal Immigration Crisis” discussing the latest attempts at immigration reform in congress. It’s a very good article and you should go read it all. He discusses the Guest Worker Amnesty program, the step-across-the-border-and-back-again citizenship, the the Real ID Act.

Mr. Cutler quotes some very interesting statistics from a report for the Center for Immigration Studies by George J. Borjas, a noted economist and the Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

To sum up some of Prof. Borjas’ findings:

• By increasing the supply of labor between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700 or roughly 4 percent.

• Among natives without a high school education, who roughly correspond to the poorest tenth of the workforce, the estimated impact was even larger, reducing their wages by 7.4 percent.

• The 10 million native-born workers without a high school degree face the most competition from immigrants, as do the eight million younger natives with only a high school education and 12 million younger college graduates.

• The negative effect on native-born black and Hispanic workers is significantly larger than on whites because a much larger share of minorities are in direct competition with immigrants.

• The reduction in earnings occurs regardless of whether the immigrants are legal or illegal, permanent
or temporary. It is the presence of additional workers that reduces wages, not their legal status.

His report was prepared in 2004. Obviously, the rapid increase in the number of illegal aliens in the United States can only have exacerbated the impact on wages since then.

What I find particularly interesting is that in the news article, the AFL-CIO complains that the proposed legislation would permit 400,000 additional alien workers to enter the United States resulting in depressed wages for the labor market. (read it all)

It seems pretty clear to me, so why is congress having such a difficult time passing legislation? I’ll tell you why, because they have no intention of passing a comprehensive immigration bill before the 2008 presidential elections. It’s that simple.

[Discuss this post over at the Right Truth...]