Immigration and Unemployment

A recent report from the Heritage Foundation is one in a long line of deeply flawed economic analyses which claim to estimate the contributions and "costs" of workers based solely on the amount of taxes they pay and the value of the public services they utilize.

Published On: Wed, May 02, 2007 | Download File

Aging populations and the growing need to provide long-term care to the elderly are among the leading demographic, political, and social challenges facing industrialized countries like the United States. As a result, immigrants will continue to play a significant role in the growth of the U.S. labor force in general and the direct-care workforce in particular. It is in the best interests of long-term care clients, providers, and workers if governments and private donors foster training and placement programs rather than leaving the future of the direct-care industry to chance.

Published On: Wed, Aug 01, 2007 | Download File

The temporary worker program now taking shape in Congress is unlikely to provide the U.S. economy with the numbers or kinds of workers that U.S. industries need.

Published On: Thu, Jun 07, 2007 | Download File

Covers the exploitation of migrant workers doing backbreaking and dangerous clean-up work in New Orleans.

Published On: Wed, Aug 23, 2006 | Download File

The stories of migrant workers who are brought to the United States from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras to plant trees, thin forests and apply herbicides for timber contractors.

Published On: Fri, May 19, 2006 | Download File

Answers the questions: How many high-skilled immigrant workers are in the U.S.?;

Published On: Tue, Jan 01, 2008 | Download File

Answers the questions, How many low-skilled immigrant workers are in the U.S.?

Published On: Tue, Jan 01, 2008 | Download File

NUMBERS:    Opponents of a more robust H-1B program declare that immigrant workers, particularly high skill workers, displace U.S. workers and drive down the wages of those workers.  In many areas of the country, however, businesses are encountering something quite different:  that there simply are not enough qualified, high skill U.S. workers to fill the needs of U.S. employers.  High skill foreign professionals are therefore essential in filling these needs and complementing the native born workforce.  Read more...

Published On: Tue, Jan 01, 2008 | Download File

Myth: Foreign low wage workers depress the wages of U.S. workers.
Fact: Immigrants don’t have a negative impact on the majority of native born workers, and often exact a positive impact.

• The primary reason that immigrants don’t have a negative impact on the majority of native-born workers is that they aren’t competing for the same jobs.
• The U.S. population is growing older and better educated, while the U.S. economy continues to create a large number of low skill jobs that favor younger workers with little formal education. As a result, immigrants increasingly are filling jobs at the less-skilled end of the occupational spectrum for which relatively few native-born workers are available.
• Even among workers with the same level of formal education, the foreign-born tend to be employed in different occupations than U.S. natives. Less-educated foreign-born workers, for instance, are found mostly in agricultural and personal service jobs, while less-educated natives are found mostly in manufacturing and mining.
• Immigration raised the average wage of the native-born worker by 1.1 percent during the 1990s. Among native-born workers with a high-school diploma or more education, wages increased between 0.8 percent and 1.5 percent.
• Since workers with different levels of education perform different tasks and fill different roles in production, the majority of native-born workers (those with intermediate educational levels) experience benefits, more than competition, from foreign-born workers concentrated in high and low educational groups.

Published On: Tue, Jan 01, 2008 | Download File

Includes information on immigrants' language acquisition, tax payments, and effects on U.S. workers and the U.S. labor market.

Published On: Fri, Feb 01, 2008 | Download File