Confusions over Illegal Immigrants vs Refugees

[kgambit]

 

 

 

Do you really see lots of Americans doing the low income jobs that many Hispanics are prepared to do? Like construction, cleaners and domestic maids. My experience has been these are jobs most  Americans aren't really prepared to do?

 

 

 

If the claim is that there are jobs that Americans simply won't do, you would expect to find industries that are dominated by immigrants.  A study published in August 2009 by Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler  of the Center for Immigration Studies found the following:

 

http://www.cis.org/illegalImmigration-employment

 

This analysis tests the often-made argument that immigrants only do jobs Americans don’t want. If the argument is correct, there should be occupations comprised entirely or almost entirely of immigrants. But Census Bureau data collected from 2005 to 2007, which allow for very detailed analysis, show that even before the recession there were only a tiny number of majority-immigrant occupations.

 

In fact, their study found no job categories where immigrants represented more than 56% of the total work force.  As for jobs typically perceived as being dominated by immigrants, the study found the following:

 

Many jobs often thought to be overwhelmingly immigrant are in fact majority native-born:

• Maids and housekeepers: 55 percent native-born
• Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 58 percent native-born
• Butchers and meat processors: 63 percent native-born
• Grounds maintenance workers: 65 percent native-born
• Construction laborers: 65 percent native-born
• Porters, bellhops, and concierges: 71 percent native-born
• Janitors: 75 percent native-born

 

 

The study found that there were six job classifications (out of 465) that employed 50% or more immigrants and four where immigrants represented a majority.  They are:

 

• Construction:  Plasterers and Stucco Masons 56%
• Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations - Graders & Sorters, Agricultural Products 54%
• Personal Care and Service - Misc. Personal Appearance Workers - 53%
• Production - Tailors, Dressmakers, & Sewers - 51%
• Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations - 50%
• Production --Sewing Machine Operators - 50%

The four job categories where immigrants comprise a majority (>50%) account for less than 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Moreover, native-born Americans comprise 47 percent of workers in these occupations.

 

Here's the complete list:

 

http://www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2009/bigtable2.html

 

So I'm sorry but I'm not buying the premise that there are jobs that native born Americans "won't do".

 

Just for grins:

 

Here's a list of some of the lowest paying jobs by sector according to the BLS.  I included the ones on your list and added several others.  

 

food (including fast food) cooks and service:  $9.08

farm laborers:  $9.65

maids and housekeepers:  $10.64

janitors and cleaners:  $12.09  (excluding maids and housekeepers)

landscaping and grounds keeping services:  $12.65

Helpers, Construction Trades: $13.54

construction (general):  $16.84

painters:  $18.89

 

 

all data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2013

 

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes452092.htm

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes372012.htm

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes372011.htm

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes373011.htm

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes473019.htm

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472061.htm

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472141.htm

 

It's interesting to examine the regional variations on salary by states.   

 

Here's a couple of interesting articles, one by the Brooking's Institute on the changing demographics of the US labor force:

 

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/03/15-immigrant-workers-singer

Edited August 16, 2014 by kgambit

[kgambit]

This is where we've come full circle.  As I've said before, I support a robust partnership with Mexico that allows us to tap the necessary workforce.  It should be possible to create a partnership that benefits both economies and helps the workers thrive.  It is obviously much more complex than that, but this talk of building walls instead of partnerships is short-sighted, xenophobic, and unrealistic.

 

Putting aside the issue of tapping a necessary workforce and how that should be managed, there is still a problem with the increasing number of unaccompanied minors (who can't be construed as a possible work force addition).  What do you propose doing about that?     

 

 

PS:  While I agree with you in principle on the necessity of taping into a needed workforce, there needs to be a way to do that within the boundaries of US Immigration law.  If the laws need to be changed, so be it.

Edited August 16, 2014 by kgambit

[Namutree]

I also don't think the "Jobs Americans won't do" line is true to be honest. We need the labor force for two reasons:

 

A) We need CHEAP labor. 

 

B) We need the additional consumer base.

 

 

 

Edit: Also, if really need those jobs filled, what's all the legal immigration for anyway? Or is it just that we need to somehow exploit people by paying below minimum wage, or our economy will shut down?

 

That's it. They exploit us for a higher standard of living; we exploit their willingness to work for pennies an hour. Everyone wins.

 

 

You can not have a democratic society without rule of law.

Interesting that you'd call us a democracy when we aren't one. We are a representative republic; not a democracy. As for the rule of law; I agree. The rule of law is very important, and in our current case where the law can't be enforced because it makes no sense the law needs to change.

[Hurlshort]

So...the percentages that kgambit posted seem super high to me.  If a workforce is made up of anywhere near 50% immigrants, that sounds like a fairly dominant group.

[kgambit]

So...the percentages that kgambit posted seem super high to me.  If a workforce is made up of anywhere near 50% immigrants, that sounds like a fairly dominant group.

 

CIS is the only published study I could find that offered such a comprehensive breakdown by job skill pools.  There is a Bureau of Labor Statistics study from May 2014 that offers another comparison but with much broader job skill breakdowns. 

 

A "fairly dominant group" does not translate to "jobs that native born Americans won't do" which was my point.      

 

Here is one example from the BLS study:

 

"Within service occupations about one-third of foreign born workers were employed in building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations, about twice the proportion for native born workers."  According to Table 4 the relative percentages of foreign born and native born workers in that category were 8.6 and 3 percent respectively.  The relative size of the two work pools means that native born workers in those categories would outnumber foreign born by ~ 2 to 1. 

 

The total number of people (ages 16-65) in each labor pool as of Q1 2013 according to CIS were:

 

Native born - 113,519,000

Immigrants -    22,414,000

 

BLS quotes different numbers as follow: 

Native born - 120,340,000

Foreign born - 23,582,000

 

Note the ratio is each case is very close:  5.065 from CIS to 5.103 from BLS

 

One issue is educational background. While the percentage of immigrants and native born Americans with college four year degrees (or better) is fairly close, the percentage of immigrants who lack a high school diploma is nearly five times greater than native born Americans. 

 

 

According to BLS data. the share of the U.S. civilian labor force that was foreign born was 16.3 (actually 16.38) percent in 2013.  [Note:  That's a 5.105 to 1 ratio]

In 2013, 24.3 percent of the foreign-born labor force age 25 and over had not completed high school, compared with 4.8 percent of the native-born labor force

The proportions for foreign-born and native-born persons that had a bachelor’s degree or higher were more similar, at 33.8 percent and 37.5 percent, respectively.

 

 

Here's the link to the BLS study

 

Source:    http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/forbrn.pdf

 

 

A back of the envelope calculation would go as follows:  a given unskilled job would attract employees based on their overall skill levels and the size of the force pool; so with a 5 to 1 ratio in the size of the respective force pools, and a 1 to 5 ratio in lower levels of education levels you might expect that the immigrant - native born total employment to be nearly equal in terms of numbers.   (There's a smaller percentage of native born who would be qualified for that labor but a larger pool for that percentage to be drawn from)  So the relative splits on the CIS data don't surprise me.    That ignores regional variations and any inequalities in wages between the two groups.

 

In fairness, the BLS data is based on a broader classification of job skills.  It only lists a couple of dozen (I didn't count them so that's a rough guess) as opposed to 450+ from the CIS study. 

 

FYI, every group except for immigrants aged 50-59 and both native and immigrants aged 60-65, saw a drop in work force employment rates from 2000 to 2013.  And Hispanics suffered the biggest drop of any individual group.

 

I'm not trying to bust your chops on this Hurlie.  If you have any studies that conflict with this data, please drop a link or two. 

Edited August 16, 2014 by kgambit

[Hurlshort]

kgambit, I don't think you were around when I posted this story, so I'll repost it.  Now this article is more of a human interest spin looking at a very particular scenario, not necessarily a collection of a large amount of data.  

 

I guess my big question moving forward would be if you removed the foreign born workers tomorrow, would you be able to replace them with American born labor effectively?  

[kgambit]

kgambit, I don't think you were around when I posted this story, so I'll repost it.  Now this article is more of a human interest spin looking at a very particular scenario, not necessarily a collection of a large amount of data.  

 

I guess my big question moving forward would be if you removed the foreign born workers tomorrow, would you be able to replace them with American born labor effectively?  

 

It's funny that you should post that link since I ran across that story when I was looking for statistics on employment.    It's a good read.  Here's another article from CIS:.

 

http://cis.org/immigration-and-the-american-worker-review-academic-literature

 

Here's one claim from the NYTimes:

 

 

There are many ways to debate immigration, but when it comes to economics, there isn’t much of a debate at all. Nearly all economists, of all political persuasions, agree that immigrants — those here legally or not — benefit the overall economy. “That is not controversial,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told me.

 

 

In fact, most economists do agree that immigrants boost GDP.  According to George Borjas from CIS:

 

The presence of all immigrant workers (legal and illegal) in the labor market makes the U.S. economy (GDP) an estimated 11 percent larger ($1.6 trillion) each year.

 

 

But do those positives extend across all demographics groups?  Schierholz (NYTimes) claims "there is a consensus that, on average, the incomes of families in this country are increased by a small, but clearly positive amount, because of immigration.”    That seems to be true as well but here's the rub::  "on average" doesn't mean there is a net positive across all demographic groups and certainly not across all native born groups. 

 

In fact, the NYT article states that most economists "have concluded that undocumented workers have lowered the wages of U.S. adults without a high-school diploma — 25 million of them — by anywhere between 0.4 to 7.4 percent."    George Borjas of the CIS goes further: 

 

Of the $1.6 trillion increase in GDP, 97.8 percent goes to the immigrants themselves in the form of wages and benefits; the remainder constitutes the “immigration surplus” — the benefit accruing to the native-born population, including both workers, owners of firms, and other users of the services provided by immigrants.

 

The immigration surplus of $35 billion comes from reducing the wages of natives in competition with immigrants by an estimated $402 billion a year, while increasing profits or the incomes of users of immigrants by an estimated $437 billion. 

 

and elsewhere: 

 

Immigration has its largest negative impact on the wage of native workers who lack a high school diploma, a group that make up a modest (and, in recent decades, shrinking) share of the workforce.

 

And remember that Borjas is considering all immigrant employment here and hasn't broken out illegal immigration.  He goes on to add:

 

Some research argues that virtually all American workers gain from immigration because immigrants and native workers with the same level of education and age do not compete with each other, but in fact complement each other. 

Although the early empirical studies that examined this assumption claimed that there were substantial complementarities, the published version of these studies reports much weaker, if any, complementarities

 

Lack of complimentaries implies competition.  Even the basis of the NYTimes article with Mr Chan agreed on that point.  It was pointed out that the benefits of Chan's job relied in no small part on its complimentary nature relative to his more specialized co-workers.  

 

I'll admit that at this point I am getting rapidly out of my depth.  The one thing that is clear to me is that this isn't a cut and dried issue.

 

 

So back to your question, "would you be able to replace them with American born labor effectively?"  I'll be honest Hurl, I don't know.  Given that a significant number of foreign born are employed in high tech and skilled jobs, the flip side of the question would be "Would you want to?".  Okay I know - that's a huge dodge. 

 

I'll also admit that I'm not an impartial observer as my wife (and her parents) are all naturalized citizens.  They entered the US legally and went thru the legal citizenship process.  So I tend to side with the folks who expect immigrants to obey the law and enter the country legally as archaic a concept as that might be to some.   (And the folks who jump student visas really frost my butt)  /rant

 

 

There are regional disparities in the supply and demand of the job pools as well as disparities in wages.   I think that explains in part some of the regional disparities we see in the opinions expressed on this issue.   

[Wrath of Dagon]

So people are rioting saying they can't find jobs, yet we need to let in more illegals to take those jobs?

[Gorgon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik

 

 

Sorry.

[Hurlshort]

So people are rioting saying they can't find jobs, yet we need to let in more illegals to take those jobs?

 

Who is rioting over jobs?  Are you talking about the Occupy movement?  They just want a better distribution of wealth, they don't seem too concerned about working for it.

[Wrath of Dagon]

People rioting in Ferguson, one of the top reasons they give is that there are no jobs available.

[Orogun01]

People rioting in Ferguson, one of the top reasons they give is that there are no jobs available.

The thing about jobs is that is a lot like having a water drought, is not that there is not water is just that is on a different place. This transition towards a globalized economy has pushed jobs away from the people who now lack the means to reach them. I'd imagine (hope) that there are people investing on high speed transports to fix this issue.

[Namutree]

People rioting in Ferguson, one of the top reasons they give is that there are no jobs available.

This is an issue I'd like to comment on. There are two major problems that need to discussed:

 

A) First Issue: Laws preventing self-employment. One of the main reasons people can't get work is because in most of the country these days it is almost impossible in America to be self employed, and thus people need to find a business to hire them.

 

There are many reasons people can't be self employed very easily. A big one is licensing. Basically, it's illegal to do almost anything without a license. Illegals can easily self employ themselves since they don't follow the law anyway. So, there is no way the menial jobs illegals do could be done by citizens because it would be illegal for said citizen to do so. Get rid of stupid licensing laws and you'll see unemployment go down, and you'll see Americans doing work that many illegals do.

 

B) Second Issue: Ferguson. I need to be quite frank; no one is entitled to be given a job. You need to go get or make one yourself. If there are no jobs in Ferguson; move. There are towns in this country where unemployment is very low and a quick look on the internet could tell you where they are.

Edited August 22, 2014 by Namutree

[ktchong]

Here is a case that presents an interesting contrast against the recent masses of illegal immigrant children from Central America who somehow got to stay in the US (at least for now.)  People complain that Americans are discriminating against "brown" people, and that is supposedly the real reason why Americans are against letting immigrants from Central America stay.  Here is an interesting case that says otherwise.

 

The YouTube video below is about a child under 18.  A white girl who had entered the US legally on visa.  Her visa had just expired, so she had to go back to... Eastern Ukraine.   Her host family here in the US (who had sponsored her VISA) wanted to find a way for her to stay, but they could not get the necessary paperwork to renew or extend her visa.   The girl's mother and sister were in a refugee camp.  Her other sister was displaced and missing.   Her program director in Ukraine who handled her paperwork was missing, (which was why they could not get the paperwork to extend her visa.) 

 

Here is the irony: all those Central American children who, illegally, without a legal entry visa, entered the country; they can stay.  They are demanding the US to grant "refugee" status to them so that they can stay indefinitely - because their home country was supposedly in a state of chaos and violence.  As of now, they are allowed to stay in the US - even though they entered the country without any legal papers or visa.  On the other hand, the Ukrainian girl entered the country legally.  We know her home is now a war zone, in a state of chaos and violence.  Yet she had to go back regardless.  No exceptions.  By the book.  I assume she could not even claim to be a refugee; (as I explained in my first post, she would not fit the criteria for claiming the refugee status in the US.)

 

And, all those children who get to stay are brown.   The one that did not get to stay and had to go was white.  So much for the "America does not like brown people!"

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9m7jBwW7Zo

 

P.S. Personally, I vote for letting all the hot girls stay.  Kick out everyone else.  America can never have enough hot girls.

Edited August 30, 2014 by ktchong