Immigration's Human Cost
AnAmericanCitizen
http://immigrationshumancost.org/
A must read. Each of us should post two of three of the listed charges against
illegal aliens on this and other newsgroups. Post and Repost. Too many American
citizens are suffering many by the ultimate cost of losing their lives.
Some Examples (and there are many more on the website):
While legal immigrants and illegal aliens come to America for an improved standard of
living, those millions of foreigners are decidedly harming the quality of life for
many in this nation — from those who have been displaced in their jobs by cheap
immigrant workers to taxpayers paying for endless infrastructure and services,
students getting a worse education in radically “diverse” classrooms and crime
victims who have suffered at the hands of criminal aliens in this country. (Please
see a victims of criminal aliens flyer using the many examples found here.)
This website is dedicated to telling the stories of forgotten citizens who still hope
that their American dream will not be extinguished. We continue to hope for a better
America for the next generation, too, although that tradition is just as endangered
by irresponsible mass immigration as our natural resources and the individual
freedoms that have been our birthright up to now.
Everyone who knew paramedic Ryan Ostendorf agreed that he had a tremendously
promising life ahead, as a cardiologist and married to his long-time girlfriend,
Meagan Kennedy. But that future is not to be, because a previously deported
drunk-driving illegal alien crashed head-on into Ryan's Jeep Cherokee and killed him.
A resident of Lawrence, Kansas, 28-year-old Ryan was driving to his paramedic job
in Topeka when his car was hit. When the ambulance arrived on the scene, the
paramedics were shocked to find the body of their friend and co-worker.
Victor Anzua-Torres was sentenced in Topeka in late June to a measly 13 years and
nine months in jail for the head-on crash, which was the maximum sentence he could
have received.
Anzua-Torres had a blood-alcohol level of 0.26 percent, more than three times the
legal limit of 0.08, authorities said. He had no driverÂąs license, had a prior
drunken-driving arrest and had been deported as an illegal immigrant once before.
[Drunken driver gets 13 years for fatal wreck, Lawrence Journal-World, 6/30/06]
Prosecutor Karen Wittman noted that Anzua-Torres insisted on driving to show how
"bad" he was even though he was very drunk and a friend offered to drive. (Driving
while drunk is believed by many hispanics to show macho attributes -- a reason why
they are hugely overrepresented in drunk driving crashes.)
At sentencing, Ryan's friends and family spent two hours explaining how his death
left a hole in their lives that would never go away.
• • •
Three children were playing in the parking lot of the Chastain Apartments in Sandy
Springs early Monday evening when a red car with a wobbly wheel drove through.
Jordin Paulder, a 9-year-old boy with chubby cheeks, called out to the car's
passengers to tell them of the bad tire.
Jordin didn't mean to insult anybody, he just thought they should know, witnesses
told police.
But the car stopped. A man got out and slammed an ax into Jordin's face.
Emergency workers were afraid to remove the ax during the helicopter flight to
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite hospital, where Jordin died. [Boy,
9, hacked to death, 6/7/06, Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
When the police approached the crime scene, Cabrera Borjas fled to a nearby apartment
complex. After he broke an officer's arm by throwing a tire iron (or maybe a "rimmed
tire" — accounts differ) and made threats with an iron pipe, the officer shot and
killed him.
Since the accused killer is dead, there will be no trial to remind the public
that illegal immigration is not a victimless crime — assuming Santos Cabrera Borjas
was indeed an illegal entrant, which was apparently the case. The authorities may not
pursue that detail, wishing to forget the whole sordid thing.
• • •
Update: In January 2005, there was an incident in which 21-year-old illegal alien
Francisco Serrano lived in a Minnesota high school for several weeks and posed as a
student until he was discovered. At that time, locals rallied to his defense. High
school kids made up "Free Francisco" t-shirts and evidently no parents were concerned
that a lawbreaking adult male was rubbing elbows with their teenaged daughters.
A typical sentiment at the time was expressed in an editorial from the Pioneer
Press, Story points to rising homelessness.
Serrano's legal problems detract from the focal point of this story, which is
homelessness. We don't know if a fear of discovery as an illegal immigrant kept
Serrano from seeking social services.
In October 2005, an immigration judge ordered Serrano back to Mexico. But the
lawbreaker never boarded the plane and he later turned up as a violent felon in
Boston.
A Boston woman said Serrano kicked in her apartment door and threatened to attack her
early in the morning on March 29.
"He said, 'I'm not here to steal, I'm here to kill,'" the woman said, requesting
anonymity.
Serrano's Minnesota attorney remarked, "I never figured Serrano for a ski mask and a
butcher knife. He just didn't seem to have any violence in him."
This link includes a news video, which has a clip of Serrano in a pink sweater!
(Here is a still photo.) An example of a lawyer playing extreme dress-up with a
criminal client? Even the notorious parent-murdering Menendez brothers didn't go
beyond muted pastels for a collegiate look in their trial makeover.
• • •
Can you imagine a person being struck down and killed as she strolled out to check
her roadside mailbox? That's what happened to Joyce Dargan of Myrtle Beach, South
Carolina. She was hit by a car driven by a 14-year-old illegal alien Mexican (a
student at the local high school) as he drag raced against another Mexican boy at
speeds of 80 miles per hour.
As is so often the case, the perp had prior arrests, having been stopped twice
for traffic violations in the six weeks before Joyce Dargan had been killed. As a
result, her husband Waldeck observed that laxity about illegal immigration had
contributed to his wife's death.
He vowed to be there when the boys are released from prison in six years to make
sure they are deported. As juveniles, they received the maximum sentence.
• • •
gringogirl
> http://immigrationshumancost.org/
>
> A must read. Each of us should post two of three of the listed charges against
> illegal aliens on this and other newsgroups. Post and Repost. Too many American
> citizens are suffering many by the ultimate cost of losing their lives.
>
>
>
> Some Examples (and there are many more on the website):
>
> While legal immigrants and illegal aliens come to America for an improved standard of
> living, those millions of foreigners are decidedly harming the quality of life for
> immigrant workers to taxpayers paying for endless infrastructure and services,
> students getting a worse education in radically "diverse" classrooms and crime
> victims who have suffered at the hands of criminal aliens in this country. (Please
> see a victims of criminal aliens flyer using the many examples found here.)
> killed him.
> Since the accused killer is dead, there will be no trial to remind the public
charles bash
carnage they are causing ,, nationwide.
Although accidents don't happen there every day, we have a highway
intersection in Arlington County (VA) which is somewhat confusing , for
the first time ,, to sober & alert motorists,, but they manage to get
safely around or through it ,, as the case may be.
There are 2 sets of access and exit ramps off notorious " I-95" which
come up to a divided highway carried by 2 different bridges.
To repeat ,, it doesn't happen every day there, but twice in the last 10
years, intoxicated illegal alien drivers drove down an "Up ramp" causing
collisions resulting in fatal consequences to everyone concerned ,, the
illegal driver and all the occupants in the second ,, legal car. In one
case it was 4 family members.
As I will post on another thread ,, all these undesirable Infestations
are Temporary,, but we have to endure perhaps several more years of
"Temporary".
But Days of Reckoning are Definitely coming. The seeds are being
planted. And the Times will be A' Changing.
C. Bash
catfish2006
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/us/22employ.html
>
> New illegal immigrants accounted for 56 percent of the increase in
> employed
> workers in the United States in the five years after 2000, and competition
> from these immigrants contributed to a sharp decline in employment of
> teenage and young adult Americans, according to a labor market study
> released yesterday.
>
> The survey found that in the five-year period, foreign-born workers,
> including both legal and illegal immigrants, made up 86 percent of the net
> increase in the total number of employed workers, the highest share for
> immigrants ever recorded in this country.
>
> At the same time, the number of employed native workers ages 16 to 34 fell
> by more than 1.5 million. The study contends that 90 percent of the job
> deficit for young Americans would be erased if American teenagers and
> young
> adults held the jobs that immigrants now hold.
>
> The study was carried out by Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington and Ishwar
> Khatiwada from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern
> University in Boston and was published by the Center for Immigration
> Studies, a group in Washington that advocates reducing immigration.
>
> Last month a study by the Pew Hispanic Center, another Washington research
> organization, concluded that there was no nationwide pattern of
> displacement
> of American workers by immigrants.
>
> Several economists noted that the past five years had been marked by a
> slow
> economic recovery that created unusually few jobs for all workers in the
> United States. They said that several factors contributed to declining
> employment among young people and that an increase in the number of youths
> going to college was one.
>
> Employment rates have plummeted for young black men without high school
> diplomas.
>
> "They face tremendous barriers, but immigrant competition is not the
> biggest
> one," said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute,
> a
> Washington group that focuses on labor issues. "If immigrant competition
> were to drop significantly, they would still have big problems."
As I recall, for young black men between the ages of 18 and 30 who do
not have college degrees, unemployment hovers around fifty percent.
From the Center for Immigration Studies, a "think tank" in Washington DC:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back806release.html
<quote>
Immigrant Influx Harms Young Workers
Employment Declines as Immigrants Arrive
WASHINGTON (September 2006) - A new study authored by economists at
Northeastern University and published by the Center for Immigration
Studies finds that the arrival of new immigrants (legal and illegal) in
a state is accompanied by a decline in employment among young
native-born workers in that state. This indicates that immigration is
displacing young native-born workers in the labor market. Although one
recent report by another Washington think tank found no relationship
between immigration and the troubling recent decline in the employment
of the native-born, that study did not focus on young workers, who are
often in direct competition with immigrants and are the ones most
adversely affected.
These findings are particularly troubling because a person's early work
experience - or lack thereof - has a significant impact on their
performance in the labor market later in life. It is when young that
people learn the skills necessary to successful employment, such as
punctuality and taking direction from supervisors.
The report, entitled, The Impact of New Immigrants on Young Native-Born
Workers, 2000-2005, is embargoed until Thursday, September 21, 2006 at
9:30 am. Advance copies are available to the media. The study will be
available online at www.cis.org .
For more information, contact Andrew Sum at (617) 373-2242, Paul
Harrington at (617) 373-2243, or Steven Camarota at (202) 466-8185 or
s...@cis.org
</quote>
Here is the report itself:
http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back806.html
<quote in-part no-graphics>
The Impact of New Immigrants on
Young Native-Born Workers, 2000-2005
September 2006
By Andrew Sum, Paul Harrington, and Ishwar Khatiwada
Over the 2000-2005 period, immigration levels remained very high and
roughly half of new immigrant workers were illegal. This report finds
that the arrival of new immigrants (legal and illegal) in a state
results in a decline in employment among young native-born workers in
that state. Our findings indicate that young native-born workers are
being displaced in the labor market by the arrival of new immigrants.
* Between 2000 and 2005, 4.1 million immigrant workers arrived from
abroad, accounting for 86 percent of the net increase in the total
number of employed persons (16 and older), the highest share ever
recorded in the United States.
* Of the 4.1 million new immigrant workers, between 1.4 and 2.7
million are estimated to be illegal immigrants. This means that illegal
immigrants accounted for up to 56 percent of the net increase in
civilian employment in the United States over the past five years.
* Between 2000 and 2005, the number of young (16 to 34) native-born
men who were employed declined by 1.7 million; at the same time, the
number of new male immigrant workers increased by 1.9 million.
* Multivariate statistical analyses show that the probability of
teens and young adults (20-24) being employed was negatively affected by
the number of new immigrant workers (legal and illegal) in their state.
* The negative impacts tended to be larger for younger workers, for
in-school youth compared to out-of-school youth, and for native-born
black and Hispanic males compared to their white counterparts.
* It appears that employers are substituting new immigrant workers
for young native-born workers. The estimated sizes of these displacement
effects were frequently quite large.
* The increased hiring of new immigrant workers also has been
accompanied by important changes in the structure of labor markets and
employer-employee relationships. Fewer new workers, especially
private-sector wage and salary workers, are ending up on the formal
payrolls of employers, where they would be covered by unemployment
insurance, health insurance, and worker protections.
Introduction
During the last five years, new immigrants have accounted for an
overwhelming share of the growth in the number of employed persons in
the United States. Native-born adults and established immigrants have
been unable to capture much of the new employment opportunities that
have been created in the nation since 2000. The number of employed
persons in the civilian working-age (16 and over) population rose by
4.835 million between 2000 and 2005. During 2005, a total of 4.134
million new immigrants were working in the United States. New immigrants
who entered the United States since 2000 and were still residing here
during 2005 accounted for 86 percent of the total increase in employment
in the nation over the 2000 to 2005 period. Native-born and established
immigrants accounted for less than one-sixth of the total rise in
civilian employment that occurred in the nation over the past five
years. These findings differ by gender. Among men, new immigrants
accounted for all of the rise in employment, as the total number of
employed men in the nation increased by only 2.665 million while the
number of employed new immigrant males was 2.767 million during 2005.
For the first time since the end of World War II, there has been no gain
in employment among native-born men over a five-year period.
[ TABLE 1 ]
A substantial share of employed new immigrants appear to be illegal
workers, often employed in off-payroll jobs that are increasingly
concentrated in a newly emerging informal sector of the American labor
market. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that there were 4.4 million
illegal immigrants residing in the United States in 2005 who had entered
the country since 2000[1]. We estimate that 2.857 million of these new
illegal immigrants were actively participating in the labor force during
2005 and that about 5.5 percent of the immigrant labor force was
unemployed[2]. With a labor force of 2.857 million and an estimated
unemployment rate of 5.5 percent, we conclude that the number of new
illegal immigrants who were working in the United States during 2005 was
2.7 million. This means that about two-thirds of all employed recent
immigrants in the United States were working illegally during 2005 and
that more than one-half (56 percent) of the total rise in employment
that occurred in the nation between 2000 and 2005 was attributable to
the growth in employment among illegal immigrant workers.
The extraordinarily high share of new employment captured by new
immigrants was accompanied by a powerful shift in the organization of
the nation's labor markets. In a subsequent section of this report we
will provide evidence that some employers have begun to re-organize work
in ways that systematically exclude certain native-born workers,
especially those under the age of 35, from employment and that create
work that does not meet the basic labor standards that have been
developed over the years by federal and state legislation, custom and
tradition, and through labor-management/collective bargaining agreements.
The ability of the nation's teen and young adult (20-24) population to
become employed has deteriorated badly over the past five years.
Employment levels for all those aged 16 to 34 have fallen by more than
1.5 million between 2000 and 2005, even as the total number of employed
persons increased by more than 4.8 million over the same period of time.
Several alternate explanations might help explain this employment
decline among young people in the nation. Part of the explanation could
simply be associated with demographic change. Reductions in the size of
the teen and young adult age cohorts can result in employment declines
even though the likelihood of a member of that cohort finding work
doesn't change. Alternately, changes in the likelihood of becoming
employed can reduce the number of young people working. The first
explanation has no validity since the number of native-born people aged
16 to 34 rose as the echo generation (baby boomers' children born
between 1978 and 1996) moved into this age group in large numbers.
[ TABLE 2 ]
The number of native-born males aged 16 to 34 in the population
increased by nearly 1.1 million between 2000 and 2005[3]. Rather than
reducing employment levels, these demographic forces would have been
expected to increase overall employment levels of native-born males aged
16 to 34. Indeed, we estimate that if the proportion of native-born
young males working during 2005 were the same as the share of
native-born workers employed during the full employment year of 2000,
1.721 million more young native-born men would have been at work during
that year. Employment among native-born young men declined not because
there were fewer young men, but because their employment rates declined
precipitously. The employment to population (E/P) ratio of young males
has fallen sharply over the last five years. Some of these declines are
quite extraordinary and, in the case of male teens, the 2005 E/P ratio
was the lowest in the nation over the entire 58-year period covered by
the Current Population Survey (CPS) teen employment series.
[ TABLE 3 ]
Among females, the trends in employment have been similar. While the
size of the young native-born and established-immigrant female
population has increased at about the same rate as males, the number who
are employed has declined sharply. Similar to findings for their male
counterparts, the E/P ratio of native-born female teens and young adults
fell considerably over the last five years, accounting for all of the
decline in employment among young native-born females. If native-born
teen and young-adult females had been able to maintain their employment
rate at the same level as the full employment year of 2000, then the
number who were employed in 2005 would have increased by 1.382 million.
The decline in employment levels among native-born teens and young
adults implies that employers have turned to alternative sources of
labor supply to meet their labor requirements. One alternative source of
substitute labor is, of course, the surging older worker population
fueled by the baby boom age cohort entering their pre-retirement years
in the past five years. These individuals represent a ready potential
source of substitute workers for teens and young adults. The other
potential alternative source of labor supply is the flow of new
immigrants to the United States since 2000. Large numbers of new foreign
workers, the majority of whom entered the United States and work here
illegally, also represent a ready source of labor supply to take the
place of native-born and established-immigrant teens and young adults in
the nation's labor markets.
As noted below, the job deficit for native-born male teens and young
adults in the nation was 1.721 million, while the number of new
immigrant male workers in the same age group in 2005 was 1.859 million
(Table 4). If the jobs held by new immigrant males aged 16 to 34 were
made available to jobless native-born males, then the job deficit among
the native-born would be completely eliminated. Among women, the
substitution of jobless native-born young women for recent young female
immigrants would result in the native-born female job deficit declining
by more than 60 percent. Overall, nearly 90 percent of the native-born
teen and young adult job deficit that has emerged over the last five
years would be eliminated if native-born teens and young adults worked
in jobs now held by recent immigrants of the same age. While some
mismatches in the occupational composition of employment might occur
between native-born and foreign-born workers, the jobs held by these
groups are quite similar to jobs in all occupations simultaneously held
in large numbers by both foreign-born and native-born workers[4]. These
findings strongly suggest that a major proportion of the native-born job
deficit of teens and young adults that has developed in the United
States over the past five years is the result of newly arrived, young
female, and especially male immigrants displacing these potential
workers from employment. Native-born older workers are a much
less-likely substitute for employers who hire many fewer native-born
teens and young adults. Native-born older workers have differing levels
of work experience, expectations of hours and weeks of work, and are
paid at considerably higher wage rates than are teen and young adult
workers. Recent young immigrant workers are much closer substitutes for
young native-born workers compared to the aging members of the baby boom
generation.
[ TABLE 4 ]
Impacts of New Immigrants on Young Adult Employment
Most studies of the economic impacts of immigration on native-born
workers have focused on wage and annual earnings impacts rather than
employment impacts. There is a general tendency among labor market
analysts to assume that, as a result of labor market and wage
flexibility, there are few job displacement effects of immigration on
native-born workers, citing older studies to back up these opinions.
Several more recent statistical studies, however, indicate that
less-educated native-born workers, teenagers, and black males do suffer
employment declines as a result of immigrant labor inflows[5].
Ethnographic research work in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York
City, and other large central cities across the nation has revealed that
young immigrant workers are often preferred by employers over poorly
educated native-born workers, especially those from inner city
neighborhoods characterized by high poverty rate[6].
One might well expect the labor displacement effects of immigration to
be low in periods of full employment, when job opportunities are
abundant and vacancy rates are high, such as the late 1990s in the
United States when employment rose across the board among both most
native-born workers and new immigrant workers. However, in more slack
labor market environments, such as the 2003-2004 period, one might well
expect that a rise in the supply of immigrant labor could generate
displacement impacts on native-born workers, especially among those in
most direct competition for available jobs with newly arrived immigrant
workers, such as young, native-born adults with limited formal
schooling, especially those in central cities.
To test whether the influx of new immigrant workers over the 2000-2003
period had an adverse effect on the employment prospects of the nation's
young adults (16-24 years old), we estimated a series of multivariate
statistical employment models for young adults, including a variable
representing the relative size of new immigrant inflows into the labor
force of the state in which the young adult resided at the time of the
2003 American Community Survey (ACS)[7]. The relative sizes of these new
immigrant labor force inflows varied quite considerably across states
between 2000 and 2003. The size of these immigrant inflows ranged across
the 50 states and the District of Columbia from a low of .2 percent to a
high of 3.9 percent, with a mean of 1.63 percent.
The dependent variable in this multivariate statistical model was the
employment status of a 16-24 year-old respondent at the time of the 2003
ACS. The variable was a dichotomous variable that took on the value of
one if the respondent was employed (either part-time or full-time) and
the value of zero if he/she was not employed at the time of the ACS. The
right-hand-side predictor variables included the gender, age,
race-ethnic group, and educational attainment of the respondent, the
unemployment rate of the state in which he/she resided at the time of
the survey in 2003, and the relative size of new immigrant labor inflows
into the state since 2000. We estimated these employment probability
models for all 16-24 year olds and for a variety of gender, nativity,
gender and schooling, and school enrollment subgroups[8]. The findings
in Table 5 display the estimates of a one percentage-point increase in
the state labor force due to new immigration on the probability of
employment among young adults.
[ TABLE 5 ]
For the entire sample of 16-24 year olds[9], a one percentage-point
increase in the state labor force due to new immigration would have
lowered the predicted employment rate of such youth by 1.2 percentage
points. The estimated impact was highly statistically significant
(.001). For a state with a recent large influx of new immigrants (a
three percentage-point rise in the civilian labor force of the state),
the probability of employment among 16-24 year olds in that state would
have declined by a substantial 3.6 percentage points.
The estimated impacts of new immigrant workers on the employment rates
of 16-24 year olds were approximately the same for the native-born as
they were for all 16-24 year olds, but as expected were considerably
larger for men than for women (-1.6 percentage points for men versus -.9
percentage points for women)[10], and were larger for less-educated
women than for women with some post-secondary schooling[11], The finding
of larger adverse employment impacts for men than for women is not
surprising given the relatively high share of new immigrant workers that
were men (66 percent). Larger adverse impacts for less-educated workers
were also expected given the above-average share of new immigrant
workers who lacked a high school diploma and the weaker national labor
market for less-educated native-born workers during this time period.
The results in Table 6, thus, provide substantive empirical evidence
that the recent influx of new immigrant workers has resulted in job
losses for many subgroups of young adults in the nation, especially in
those states that were more heavily impacted by new immigrant labor.
Males, in-school youth, less-educated workers, and black males appear to
have been more adversely affected than other demographic subgroups of
young adults.
[ TABLE 6 ]
The availability of the public use micro data from the 2004 ACS allowed
us to update our findings on the impacts of new immigrant worker inflows
in states on the employment probabilities of very young adults. Given
the continuing severe labor market problems of teens and youth in their
early 20s throughout 2004, we selected 16-20 year olds for our analysis.
There were observations for approximately 74,000 youth in this age group
on the ACS public use files, of whom 58,600, or nearly 80 percent, were
enrolled in school at the time of the ACS survey's completion[12].
The dependent variable in these models is the employment status of the
respondent at the time of the survey. Those employed respondents,
including persons with a job but temporarily absent due to vacation,
weather-related factors, etc., were coded as a "1" and all others as
"0." In these models, we control for a wide array of demographic and
family income background variables, the school enrollment status and
educational attainment of the respondents, the unemployment rate of the
state in which they lived, and the relative size of new immigrant worker
inflows since 2000[13].
These regression models of young adult employment rates were estimated
for all 16-20 year olds and for a variety of gender, race, and school
enrollment subgroups. Estimates of the impact of new immigrant inflows
on the probability of employment of young adults are displayed in Table 6.
For the entire group of 16-20 year olds, the presence of new immigrants
in their state's workforce had a strong, statistically significant,
negative impact on the likelihood that they will be employed. A one
percentage-point increase in the share of new immigrants in the state's
workforce will reduce the probability of employment of young adults by
2.1 percentage points. The effects of new immigrant workers are negative
and statistically significant for each subgroup of young adults in Table
6, and are equally large for both men and women[14], but they are much
larger for in-school youth than for out-of-school youth (2.4 percent vs.
0.6 percent). The size of the coefficient was highest for black men,
implying that they are the most adversely affected by new immigrant inflows.
New Immigrant Workers' Impact on the Job Market
The rise in immigrant employment, especially among illegal workers, over
the past decade has been accompanied by a number of important changes in
the structure of employment relationships in U.S. labor markets. Recent
years have seen the growth in contractor employment relationships and
the use of independent consultants and off-the-books workers[15]. These
newly hired workers do not go on the formal payrolls of the firms that
hire them, and they typically are not paid employee benefits such as
health insurance and pension benefits or covered by the Unemployment
Insurance, workers compensation, or Social Security systems.
These changing employment relationships are not simply revealed in
growing media coverage of labor market developments at the local level,
but also show up in the large differences between employment changes
registered by the two national surveys used by the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics to estimate monthly employment, the Current Employment
Statistics Survey (CES) payroll survey and the Current Population Survey
(CPS) household survey[16]. The CES generates a monthly count of wage
and salary payroll jobs from a monthly sample of about 160,000
businesses and federal, state, and local government organizations
covering 400,000 individual establishments that participate in the
unemployment insurance system. The CES is considered by many economic
and financial analysts to be the primary source of data on wage and
salary job growth and decline in the nation and among states and is a
primary topic of discussion and analysis in BLS' monthly Employment
Situation news release, which is widely covered by the national media.
One of the most important uses of the CES data at the national level is
to measure the job-generating performance of the economy over the course
of the business cycle.
A second source of information on monthly employment trends at the
national and state levels is the findings of the CPS. The CPS is a
survey of approximately 60,000 households conducted each month by the
Census Bureau for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unlike the CES,
which measures only the number of private and public formal payroll
jobs, the CPS provides a more comprehensive count of the number of
employed persons ages 16 and older each month. The CPS employment count
includes not only workers in traditional wage and salary jobs, but also
workers outside the scope of the payroll employment survey, including
agricultural workers, the self-employed, independent contractors, unpaid
family workers, and some "under the table" or "off-the-books"
workers[17]. The CPS survey counts each employed person only once,
regardless of the number of jobs he/she holds at the time of the survey,
while persons holding multiple wage and salary jobs will be counted
twice in the CES. Historically, the CPS and CES employment measures have
tracked one another fairly well. However, during the past five years
considerable differences have emerged between the two surveys' estimates
of the overall increase in the nation's employment levels, with the CPS
showing much greater growth in private sector wage and salary
employment. These findings stand in sharp contrast to that observed for
earlier time periods.
During both the 1980s and 1990s economic expansions, the growth in
payroll employment levels in the nation was greater than that measured
by the household survey. Typically, payroll employment levels in the
nation grow rapidly during the early stages of recovery from an economic
recession. Rising Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increases the demand for
labor by employers who then add more workers to their payrolls. Over the
period from the early 1960s though 2000, the nation experienced five
recoveries from economic recessions. On average, the nation's wage and
salary employment levels increased by 11.7 percent during the first four
years of recovery for these five post-recession periods. The rates of
new job creation varied from a low of 7.3 percent during the early
stages of recovery from the 1990-1991 recession to a 16 percent rise in
the nation's wage and salary employment levels during the recovery from
the recession of 1974-75.
However, the rate of job growth during the first four years
of recovery from the recession of 2001 has been much
slower than the historic pace of national payroll
employment growth in recovery periods. Despite robust
rates of growth in real GDP, strong growth in corporate profits,
and a stock market boom, the nation's rate of
new payroll employment growth was just 2.5 percent
between 2001 Q4 and 2005 Q4. This rate of new job creation
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
was equal to only one-fifth of the historical average rate
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
of new job creation over the previous five recoveries (Table 7).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Why has the rate of payroll employment growth been
so slow over the past four years, given the
strong overall performance of the nation's economy
by most key economic indicators? Increased labor
productivity growth appears to be an important explanation,
but part of the answer is associated with
strong growth in off-payroll employment,
especially among the recent-immigrant population.
Since the end of the 2001 recession in the
fourth quarter of 2001, payroll employment in the nation
increased by just 3.23 million jobs while
the number of working-age persons who were employed,
according to the CPS, rose at twice that pace,
increasing by 6.446 million (Table 8).
Unlike the employment expansions of the 1980s and 1990s,
when payroll employment growth substantially
outpaced that of household employment,
the current recovery is characterized by
a new pattern of job growth.
[ TABLE 7 ]
[ TABLE 8 ]
Over the entire 2000 to 2005 period, the nature of the relationship
between the employment growth estimates of the two surveys has changed
radically. Between 2000 and 2005, wage and salary employment levels, as
measured by the CES, rose by only 1.678 million or 1.3 percent while the
CPS found that the number of employed workers increased by 4.672 million
over the same period of time (Table 9). On an annual average basis, we
find that employment as measured by the CES business establishment
survey increased from 131.785 million during 2000 to 133.463 million by
2005, an increase in non-agricultural payroll jobs of only 1.678
million. In contrast, the household survey found that the number of
working-age persons employed in the nation increased from 136.934
million to 141.606 million, a rise of 4.672 million over the 2000 to
2005 period, a difference of nearly three million.
[ TABLE 9 ]
The CPS household survey measured a rise in employment
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
that was nearly three times greater than that measured
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
by the CES over the 2000-2005 period. As we noted earlier,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
the CPS and the CES use somewhat different employment concepts.
The CPS includes agricultural workers, the self-employed,
independent contractors, unpaid family workers, and some
off-the-books workers while the CES does not.
We have adjusted the CPS employment data to more closely fit the CES
employment concepts in order to obtain a more direct comparison between
the CPS and CES measures of employment change over the 2000 to 2005
period[18]. Our first adjustment was to exclude agricultural workers
from the CPS household survey employment count since the CES measures
only employment in the non-agricultural sector of the nation's economy
(Table 10). After excluding agricultural workers, non-farm employment as
measured by the CPS survey increased more considerably - by 4.976
million between 2000 and 2005 - indicating that employment among
agricultural workers declined over this five-year period. It is
important to note that recent immigrants are about 1.8 times more likely
to work in the nation's agricultural industries than are the native-born.
[ TABLE 10 ]
The estimated decline in agricultural employment over the last five
years suggests that this sector was not a major source of new employment
opportunities for new immigrants[19]. Excluding agricultural sector
employment from the CPS totals further widens the difference between the
CPS employment growth estimate and the CES job growth estimate over this
period, raising the size of the gap in employment growth from 2.994
million to 3.268 million. The CPS estimate of new employment growth
rises to 2.95 times that estimated from the CES payroll survey versus
only 2.78 times when agricultural employment is included in the CPS totals.
Much of the new payroll job creation that occurred in the nation over
the 2000 to 2005 period was concentrated in the government sector. About
60 percent of the total rise in payroll employment that was generated
nationally over the last five years has been on government payrolls.
Native-born workers are much more likely than immigrants, especially
recent immigrants, to work in federal, state, and local government
agencies. During 2005, native-born workers were three times more likely
to be employed in a government job compared to employed recent
immigrants (Table 11). The CES estimated that between 2000 and 2005,
federal, state, and local government payroll employment increased by
1.023 million jobs while the CPS found that the number of persons who
said they were employed by the government increased by 1.143 million.
Thus, the CPS government employment growth estimate was nearly identical
to that of the CES.
[ TABLE 11 ]
Findings from the CES, however, reveal very small increases
in private sector wage and salary employment in the nation
over the past five years. The CES found that non-farm,
private sector payroll employment increased by
just 665,000 jobs over the past five years.
In contrast, the CPS household survey estimated that the number of
persons employed in non-farm, private sector jobs increased by
3.026 million. The CPS estimate of non-farm,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
private sector employment growth between 2000 and 2005
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
was more than five times larger than that estimated
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
by the monthly CES establishment survey.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Recent immigrant employment is heavily concentrated
in the private non-agricultural sector of the nation's
labor market. While about three-quarters of all native-born
workers are employed in private wage and salary jobs,
86 percent of recent immigrants report that they work
for an employer in the private non-farm sector.
Over the past five years, the relationship between the CPS and CES
estimates of employment growth rates has changed dramatically. Instead
of observing the pattern of substantially more payroll job growth
compared to increases in the number of employed persons from the CPS
prevailing in the 1980s and 1990s, the employment data since 2000 reveal
much higher growth in employment measured by the CPS relative to the
slow growth registered by the CES. We also have analyzed the
relationship between the CPS and CES estimates of job growth at the
state level over the last five years. Our findings reveal that those
states that had large increases in the number of employed immigrants
were also those states with the largest gaps in employment growth
estimates between the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program
and the count of jobs from the state CES survey. The LAUS program is a
statistical program used by states to estimate the monthly number of
employed and unemployed residents.
For example, the findings in Table 12 reveal that, while the number of
employed residents in the state of Texas increased by 733,000 between
2000 and 2005, total payroll employment levels in the state increased by
less than half of this amount, rising by just 308,000 over the same
five-year period. At the same time, the number of new working immigrants
in the state increased by more than 388,000, the second largest increase
in the nation. A look at the top-20 states ranked by the size of the
CES-CPS employment growth gap reveals a fairly strong connection between
the size of the gap and the size of the increase in the number of new
immigrants employed in each state. The correlation between the CES-CPS
employment gap and growth in employed immigrants is quite high. We
estimate a correlation coefficient of .79 between the absolute size of
the difference in employment change between the two jobs measures and
the change in the number of employed immigrants in each state over the
2000 to 2005 period.
[ TABLE 12 ]
The above findings imply that large numbers of these new
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
immigrant workers are not appearing on the formal payrolls
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
of their employers. Instead, they are being hired as
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
independent contractors or completely off the books and
being paid in cash. Evidence from other data sets,
field research by the authors, and growing media stories
support this assertion that a high share of new immigrants, especially
illegal immigrants, are employed in the informal or "black" economy[20].
In 2003 and 2004, only one-third of new employed immigrants reported
being covered by a health insurance plan at work and fewer than one in
five reported that they were covered by a pension plan at work, versus
nearly one-half of the native-born.21 Among less-educated workers from
Mexico and Central America, the dominant sources of illegal workers,
only about 15 percent reported any health insurance coverage from their
employers. When unemployed, fewer than 10 percent report being covered
by unemployment insurance benefits.
The employment growth gaps between the CPS and the CES at the national
level were systematic in nature and specific to particular classes of
workers. The size of the employment growth gap for the government sector
of the labor market was quite small. Government was among the least
important sources of jobs for employed new immigrants and access to
government jobs is largely confined to formal wage and salary positions.
Few illegal workers have the opportunity to find work in most government
organizations. Strict hiring protocols dramatically limit the potential
use of off-the-books work for many government positions. The
comparatively small employment growth gap between the household and
payroll survey for the government sector appears to be the result of
increasing use of workers as independent consultants by some state and
local government agencies, a common practice in states such as
Massachusetts.
In contrast, the CES data reveal little growth in the nation's non-farm
private sector wage and salary jobs over the past five years. These
positions are ones in which the overwhelming majority of employed
Americans work. They are characterized by a formal employer-employee
relationship such as that defined in the Social Security Act. Indeed, a
hallmark of formal payroll jobs is the automatic payroll deductions made
for employee contributions to the Old Age, Survivors, Disability, and
Health Insurance trust fund. Yet, in contrast to the very slow private
sector wage and salary job growth as measured by the CES, the CPS
reveals non-farm, private wage and salary growth that was 5.5 times higher.
We find that the unprecedented gap between the household and payroll
surveys' estimates of employment growth over the past five years is
primarily the result of concentrating new employment growth in
independent contractor and off-the-books jobs. Employers in many
sectors, especially construction, landscaping, retail trade, office
cleaning, and leisure and hospitality industries as well as in private
households where strong job growth also has been reported in recent
years, are increasingly re-organizing work to take advantage of the
substantial influx of new illegal immigrants into the United States
since 2000. Many of these jobs are filled by illegal immigrants who
arrive on street corners, informal shape-ups, and convenience store
parking lots waiting for any of a number of potential employers to come
by and pick them up for a day's work.
Increasingly, the nation's employers seem to be operating outside of the
legal framework that has defined U.S. labor markets since the New Deal.
Expansion of contract employment, off-the-books workers, and black labor
markets in an increasing number of communities throughout the nation has
meant that a growing fraction of workers now provide their labor outside
of the fundamental worker protections that the nation had previously
taken for granted, including wage and hour laws, worker safety and
health mandates, and minimum wage protections established over the past
70 years. These changes in labor relationships also have reduced rates
of unionization, lowered the share of workers receiving key employee
benefits, such as health insurance, paid vacations, and pensions and
have decreased unemployment insurance, Social Security, and workers'
compensation tax receipts.
The growing inflow of illegal-immigrant workers has contributed to a
fundamental breakdown in the nation's labor laws and labor standards as
the sheer volume of illegal hiring activity overwhelms what has amounted
to meager enforcement levels of basic labor standards across the nation
by federal and state officials from both political parties.22 Absent
renewed efforts to strengthen enforcement of both border security and
federal and state labor laws, these new forms of work organization will
continue to grow in the future. The past formal relationships between
workers and employers will continue to unravel, undermining the
unemployment insurance and social security systems and basic worker
protections that have evolved in the nation over the last century. These
adverse effects on employer-worker relationships have to be taken into
account in any benefit-cost calculus of the impacts of new immigration.
Advocates of guestworker programs have been derelict in addressing these
key economic concerns.
===========================
End Notes
1 Jeffrey S. Passel, The Size and Characteristics of the Unauthorized
Migrant Population in the U.S.: Estimates Based on the March 2005
Current Population Survey, Pew Hispanic Center, Washington DC, March 2006.
2 Our estimates of the size of the immigrant labor force are based on
applying population shares by age/sex group and labor force
participation rates for key age/sex groups in the new immigrant
population to Pew estimates of the number of illegal immigrants for each
of these age/sex groups.
3 All of this increase was among native-born males aged 16 to 29. This
age cohort increased in size by more than 1.6 million. However, this was
partially offset by a decline of 537,000 in the number of native-born
persons aged 30 to 34 in the nation.
4 Steven Camarota found this was the case between foreign-born and
native-born workers in general: See Steven Camarota, Dropping Out:
Immigrant Entry and Native Exit from the Labor Market, 2000-2005, Center
for Immigration Studies, Washington DC, March 2006.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back206.html
5 For recent statistical evidence on the links between immigrant worker
inflows and the employment of native- born workers, See: (i) George
Borjas, "The Labor Demand Curve is Downward Sloping: Reexamining the
Impact of Immigration on the Labor Market," Quarterly Journal of
Economics, November 2003, pp. 1335-1374. (ii) Paulo Tobar, The
Employment Experiences of Teens in Central City Labor Markets: The
Influence of Demographic/Human Capital Traits, Family Background, and
Environmental Factors, M.A. Workshop Paper, Department of Economics,
Northeastern University, Boston, 2004; (iii) Ishwar Khatiwada, Andrew
Sum, and Tim Barnicle, New Foreign Immigrant Workers and the Labor
Market in the United States, February 2006.
6 See: (i) William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears, Alfred Knopf,
New York, 1996; (ii) Katherine S. Newman, No Shame in My Game: The
Working Poor in the Inner City, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1999.
7 The immigration variable is defined as the ratio of the number of new
immigrant labor force participants in the state between 2000 and 2003 to
the size of the resident civilian labor force of the state in 2003.
8 The models are linear probability models estimated by ordinary least
squares regression techniques. The coefficient on the foreign immigrant
labor force variable indicates the percentage point change in the
likelihood of employment among the designated group from a 1 percentage
point increase in the state's civilian labor force due to new immigration.
9 There were 127,151 16-24 year old youth in the ACS sample.
10 The difference between the coefficients of the new immigrant labor
force variable in the male and female employment models was large enough
to be statistically significant at the .01 level.
11 In fact, the coefficient on the new immigrant labor force variable
was not statistically significant at the .05 level in the model for
women with 13 or more years of schooling.
12 The ACS questionnaire asks respondents whether they had been enrolled
in school at any time in the prior three months. If they answer "yes" to
this question, they are classified as enrolled in school. Persons must
be attending a school or college that will lead to the attainment of a
regular diploma or a college degree.
13 The new immigrant worker variable is measured similarly to that for
the previous models based on the ACS 2003 data. It is the ratio of the
number of new immigrant labor force participants in 2004 as a percentage
of the state's resident labor force in 2004.
14 The modestly larger coefficient of the immigrant variable in the male
equation (.022 vs. .019 for women) is not significantly different from
that of women.
15 For a review of these changing job market operations in Massachusetts
and the United States, See: Paul E. Harrington and Andrew Sum, "As Jobs
Go Off the Books, Immigrants Edge Out Some Native-Born Workers,"
Commonwealth, Volume 11, Number 2, 2006, pp. 83-90.
16 For a recent review of conceptual differences between the two
surveys, See: Mary Bowles and Teresa L. Morisi, "Understanding the
Employment Measures from the CPS and CES Surveys," Monthly Labor Review,
February 2006, pp. 23-38.
17 It is not clear that all off-the-books workers will report their
employment to the CPS interviewer despite guarantees of confidentiality.
Besides, immigrants have been historically undercounted in the CPS survey.
18 Changes in multiple job holding can also be a source of divergent
growth in employment levels between the two surveys. While important in
the past, this factor appears to have had little impact on the
employment estimates of the two surveys during the first half of this
decade. The number of persons who held multiple jobs remained virtually
unchanged between 2000 (7.556 million) and 2005 (7.546 million). See:
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, January 2001
and January 2006, Washington, D.C.
19 Jeffrey Passel estimates that fewer than 4 percent of all illegal
workers in the nation worked as agricultural workers in 2005.
20 See: (i) Naomi R. Kooker, "Hospitality Immigrant Quandary," Boston
Business Journal, April 2006; (ii) Josh McHugh, "Notes from the
Underground Economy," www.cnn.money.com , May 30, 2005; (iii) Casey
Ross, "Contractors: Stop the Illegal Insanity," The Boston Herald, May
5, 2006; (iv) Peter Reull, "Shadow Workers: Towns Take Aim at Illegal
Restaurant Help," The Boston Herald, May 4, 2006; (v) Shawn Sutner,
"Illegal Immigrants: These Workers Are Often Anxious and in a Constant
State of Fear," Worcester Telegram, April 16, 2006.
21 These estimates are based on our analysis of the March 2004 and March
2005 CPS work experience supplements, which capture information on
health insurance and pension coverage.
22 The Washington Post recently reported that, during 1999, only 182
employers were prosecuted for unlawfully employing immigrants.
Remarkably this figure fell to just four prosecutions during 2003. See:
Spencer S Hsu and Kari Lydersen, "Illegal Hiring Is Rarely Penalized,"
The Washington Post, June 19, 2006.
=============
Andrew Sum is the Director, Paul Harrington the Associate Director, and
Ishwar Khatiwada an Associate at the Center for Labor Market Studies at
Northeastern University.
"AnAmericanCitizen" <NoAm...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:0r6hh2l621mqr7iv8...@4ax.com...
>
> http://immigrationshumancost.org/
>
> A must read. Each of us should post two of three of the listed charges
> against
> illegal aliens on this and other newsgroups. Post and Repost. Too many
> American
> citizens are suffering many by the ultimate cost of losing their lives.
>
>
>
> Some Examples (and there are many more on the website):
>
> While legal immigrants and illegal aliens come to America for an improved
> standard of
> living, those millions of foreigners are decidedly harming the quality of
> life for
> many in this nation - from those who have been displaced in their jobs by
> legal limit of 0.08, authorities said. He had no driver零 license, had a
> prior
> drunken-driving arrest and had been deported as an illegal immigrant once
> before.
> [Drunken driver gets 13 years for fatal wreck, Lawrence Journal-World,
> 6/30/06]
>
> Prosecutor Karen Wittman noted that Anzua-Torres insisted on driving to
> show how
> "bad" he was even though he was very drunk and a friend offered to drive.
> (Driving
> while drunk is believed by many hispanics to show macho attributes -- a
> reason why
> they are hugely overrepresented in drunk driving crashes.)
> At sentencing, Ryan's friends and family spent two hours explaining how
> his death
> left a hole in their lives that would never go away.
> . . .
>
>
> Three children were playing in the parking lot of the Chastain Apartments
> in Sandy
> Springs early Monday evening when a red car with a wobbly wheel drove
> through.
> Jordin Paulder, a 9-year-old boy with chubby cheeks, called out to the
> car's
> passengers to tell them of the bad tire.
> Jordin didn't mean to insult anybody, he just thought they should know,
> witnesses
> told police.
> But the car stopped. A man got out and slammed an ax into Jordin's
> face.
> Emergency workers were afraid to remove the ax during the helicopter
> flight to
> Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite hospital, where Jordin
> died. [Boy,
> 9, hacked to death, 6/7/06, Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
> When the police approached the crime scene, Cabrera Borjas fled to a
> nearby apartment
> complex. After he broke an officer's arm by throwing a tire iron (or maybe
> a "rimmed
> tire" - accounts differ) and made threats with an iron pipe, the officer
> shot and
> killed him.
> Since the accused killer is dead, there will be no trial to remind the
> public
> that illegal immigration is not a victimless crime - assuming Santos
> Cabrera Borjas
> was indeed an illegal entrant, which was apparently the case. The
> authorities may not
> pursue that detail, wishing to forget the whole sordid thing.
> . . .
> . . .
>
> Can you imagine a person being struck down and killed as she strolled out
> to check
> her roadside mailbox? That's what happened to Joyce Dargan of Myrtle
> Beach, South
> Carolina. She was hit by a car driven by a 14-year-old illegal alien
> Mexican (a
> student at the local high school) as he drag raced against another Mexican
> boy at
> speeds of 80 miles per hour.
> As is so often the case, the perp had prior arrests, having been
> stopped twice
> for traffic violations in the six weeks before Joyce Dargan had been
> killed. As a
> result, her husband Waldeck observed that laxity about illegal immigration
> had
> contributed to his wife's death.
> He vowed to be there when the boys are released from prison in six
> years to make
> sure they are deported. As juveniles, they received the maximum sentence.
>
> . . .