The Racial Blame Game: Immigrants Are Not the Cause of High Unemployment and Low Wages Among Minority Workers

PRESS RELEASE

The Racial Blame Game:
Immigrants Are Not the Cause of High Unemployment and Low Wages Among Minority Workers

March 1, 2011

Washington D.C. - Today, the House Immigration Policy and Enforcement Subcommittee is holding a hearing entitled "Making Immigration Work for American Minorities." Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, some are still trying to make the claim that deporting millions of unauthorized immigrants would free up jobs for unemployed American workers, and minority workers specifically. However, the best available evidence suggests that there is no correlation between high levels of immigration and high unemployment among native-born workers.

Immigration is not the cause of poor employment prospects for American minorities. According to noted scholar, Gerald Jaynes, the impact on less-educated native-born workers of competition with immigrant workers "is swamped by a constellation of other factors (such as declining factory jobs and other blue-collar employment)." Moreover, the most recent economic research indicates that immigration produces a slight increase in wages for the majority of native-born workers. A recent report estimates that, from 1994 to 2007, immigration increased the wages of native-born workers - including African American workers - by 0.4 percent.

IPC has produced a fact sheet summarizing the best data available on the impact that immigration has on employment and wages:
The Racial Blame Game: Immigrants Are Not the Cause of High Unemployment Among Minority Workers (IPC Fact Check, March 1, 2011)

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For more information contact Wendy Sefsaf at wsefsaf@immcouncil.org or 202-507-7524