New studies have been released assessing the impact of US immigration policy. The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has released a study finding that immigration reduces the wages of natives employed in the low-skilled sectors of the economy. Low-skilled positions are defined as jobs requiring no more than a high school degree.
The report entitled “The Wages of Immigration: The Effect on the Low-Skilled Labor Market,” is authored by Steven Camarota, a resident scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies. His report contains the following findings:
– immigration may reduce the wages of the average native in a low-skilled occupation by as much as 12 percent or $1,915 per year.
– the effect of immigration on wages is national and not limited to high immigration areas.
– native-born black and Hispanic workers are more likely to be impacted by immigrant wage pressure than white workers.
– many immigrant workers are negatively affected as well by wage pressures from other immigrants
Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, noted that the study “clearly implicates federal immigration policy.” According to Krikorian, “Reducing the flow of low-skilled immigrants, legal and illegal, would ease the government-induced competition at the bottom of the labor market and help the working poor and those coming off welfare to improve their lot.”
The CIS study stands in contrast to the National Research Council/US Commission on Immigration Reform study that found that immigration is a net positive for the US economy and the effect on wages for most native-born Americans is negligible. The study noted that lower income workers were more likely to be adversely affected by immigration, but the impact is closer to a 5% wage reduction, not 12% as the CIS study suggests.
A recent paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds that recent immigrants are less likely to end up going to prison than native-born Americans. The study found that among native-born men, the rate of institutionalization is near 2.16%. By comparison, only 1.49% of immigrants in the same period were institutionalized. The study also found that, unlike native populations, economic status and education status were not likely to increase the likelihood significantly if at all.
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