Immigrants Not The Source of Unemployment

IPC: Immigrants Not The Source of Unemployment
Posted by Staff on May 19, 2009 | ShareThis

By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service

Recent immigration is not leading to a rise in unemployment of natives in the United States. Such was the conclusion of two reports issued today by the Immigration Policy Center.

The current unemployment rate in April 2009 was 8.9%.

IPC demographer Rob Paral, demographer and Principal of Rob Paral & Associates, said:“There is this talk, allegation, discussion that somehow immigration is a cause of unemployment…(but) there is no direct link between the level off immigration in an area and its unemployment rate.”

The issue has become central in Congress’ scramble for tools to reduce unemployment in the midst of the economic crisis. Understanding the sources of unemployment would provide a better understanding of the strategy to use in order to address this issue.

Paral said: “We understand why it is a concern because we are at historically high levels of unemployment in the U.S and we are also a nation that receives a substantial numbers of immigrants, so people are wondering if there is some kind of connect.”

In order to conduct this study, Paral said, “Let’s look across the United States, at areas of high and low unemployment and let see if there’s any correlation between them and if whether there is a lot or little of recent immigrants in the region.”

Both Paral and Siciliano defined “recent immigrants” as those having moved to the U.S “in the past ten years.”

Paral said that “You have almost identical levels if unemployment in the Pacific states right now in the US as you do in the Midwest (10% unemployment) and yet the Pacific states have a much higher level of recent immigration amongst their workers and among their population as you do in the Midwest.”

Paral thus concluded that “What we are trying to show is that there s this total disconnect with whether you have high unemployment and low immigration.”

Siciliano added that “When you look at the kinds of workers that the immigrants are compared to the unemployed natives, you’re looking at two very different kinds of people in terms of skills and where they live etc…,” suggesting that immigrants are not in fact taking away jobs from the natives.


May 19, 2009