Myth: Undocumented or foreign born workers take away jobs from Americans.
Fact: Undocumented workers fill open jobs for low-skill work in critical industries such as agriculture, construction and food services that are not being filled by native-born workers.
- The majority of undocumented workers are concentrated in areas of high demand for low-skilled work, such as farming, food services, construction and in-home domestic work. (The Perryman Report, p. 30)
- “In 1960, about 50% of men in this country joined the low-skilled labor force without completing high school; the number is now less than 10%.” (“Late, Great Immigration Debate,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 2007, as cited by The Perryman Report, p. 31.)
- This critique assumes that unemployed Americans from the financial or manufacturing sectors in the Northeast would move to areas of high demand and engage in low-skilled work such as picking crops, butchering meat or hanging dry wall in the Southwest.
Fact: Foreign-born workers fill critical needs for doctors, nurses and engineers that cannot otherwise be filled by the native-born workforce.
- 40 percent of America’s high skilled positions in engineering and medical services are filled by foreign-born, qualified personnel. Their visas depend on employers being unable to first find qualified people to fill that position from among the existing workforce.
Fact: Immigrant workers compliment rather than compete with America’s native-born workforce. (2006 University of California, Davis study)
Fact: Native-born American workers experience wage gains from immigration, totaling between $30 billion and $80 billion a year. (White House Council of Economic Advisors, 2007)
Fact: Undocumented workers contribute to America’s economy through both productivity and consumption.
- The Social Security Administration receives over $7 billion a year in taxes from undocumented workers, who cannot claim those benefits due to their non-citizen status. According to the report, the taxes paid by other-than-legal immigrants will close 15 percent of the system’s projected long-term deficit. (NYT, quoting the Social Security Administration’s Annual Report to Congress, April 2, 2008)
- Between 50% and 75% of undocumented immigrants pay federal, state and local taxes. (“The Impact of Unauthorized Immigrants on the Budget of State and Local Governments,” Congressional Budget Office, December 2007, p. 6, as cited by the Perryman Report, p. 35.)