One of the many ironies of the Democratic Party is its pursuit of policies that are anathema to groups considered its “core constituencies,” namely workers, children and minorities.

A case in point is the Democrats perennial push for both amnesty for illegal immigrants and laxer standards for immigration in general. This policy is great for people and businesses that want a downward pressure on prevailing wage rates and bad for American workers...especially low-skilled workers, children and minority groups. That is to say, that large scale immigration serves as one of the most effective “Corporate Welfare” programs in the United States.

A recent study by the Chicano Studies Research Center of UCLA found that both natives and naturalized Americans earned 11% less when they worked with new Hispanic immigrants and minority workers earn even less – 14% less!

Large scale immigration puts a downward pressure on wages because by providing a large pool of cheap labor, it creates a supply far greater than the demand, thus drastically weakening the bargaining power of American workers.

Worse still, large scale immigration impacts the poorest and most vulnerable Americans the most. Steven Camarota, Director of the Center for Immigration Studies points out that over the last ten years alone U.S. immigration increased the supply of workers without a high-school education by 21%, while increasing the pool of workers with at least a high-school education by only 4%.

The Center for Immigration Studies has also found that “Because immigration increases the supply of U.S. labor, it reduces wages or makes jobs more scarce for natives. Job competition between immigrants and natives is especially fierce at the bottom of the labor market, because so many immigrants are employed in the low-skilled/low-wage segments of the economy. When the average American wage exceeds the average Mexican wage by a factor of ten, even the most menial American job can be a forceful inducement to emigrate... Although immigrants comprise about 12 percent of America's workforce, they account for 31 percent of high school dropouts in the workforce. This means that any effects on the wages or job opportunities of natives will disproportionately affect less-skilled workers.”

This fact has disastrous effects for low-skilled native born American workers. Camarota contends that “As a consequence, poverty in the U.S. is increasingly being driven by immigration policy. Between 1979 and 1997, immigrant households increased their representation in the U.S. population by 68 percent, but over that same period their share of the total poor population increased 123 percent. And the gap between the immigrant and native poverty rates is widening - this gap tripled between 1979 and 1997.”

Of course children are among those most heavily impacted by the negative consequences of immigration. Camarota asserts that, “One-third of the children in poor working families are dependent on at least one parent without a high-school education. This factor impacts minorities most of all, for as 7% of native-born white full-time workers lack a high-school education, that figure jumps to 12% for native-born blacks and 20% for native-born Hispanics.”

In fact, the impact on America’s native-born African-American workforce is probably the highest. According to Steven Camarota, “A study of the Harlem labor market by Newman and Lennon (1995) provides some systematic evidence that employers prefer immigrants to native-born blacks. Their study found that although immigrants were only 11 percent of the job candidates in their sample, they represented 26.4 percent of those hired. Moreover, 41 percent of the immigrants in the sample were able to find employment within one year, in contrast to only 14 percent of native-born blacks. The authors conclude that immigrants fare better in the low-wage labor market because employers see immigrants as more desirable employees than native-born African-Americans. I have also found some evidence in my work that in comparison to whites, there is an added negative effect for being black and in competition with immigrants.”

While the poorest and most vulnerable sector of Americans are disproportionately effected, rampant immigration costs every American dearly. According to the Center for Immigration Studies’ calculations, 36% of all immigrants, both legal and illegal, without a high-school education receive some form of public assistance. Steven Camarota’s research shows that “In 1998, nearly one out of three native workers living in poverty lacked a high school education. Additionally, 1.6 million native families or more than three million people living in poverty, depended on the wages of a person who lacks a high school education for support. Put another way, the wage losses suffered by high school dropouts because of immigration are roughly equal to the combined federal expenditures on subsidized School Lunches, low-income energy assistance, and the Women Infants and Children program.”

Pro-immigration groups have consistently recommended amnesty for immigrants here illegally as a possible solution, but an amnesty program would only encourage a new flood of illegal immigrants, further depressing the labor pool and exacerbating the problem already caused.

One of the major problems with America’s contemporary immigration situation is that while in the past it has always been true that entrepreneurship has been a mitigating factor in reducing the consequences of immigrant poverty, with past waves of immigrant small businessmen recharging our nation's creative spirit, research shows that that is no longer the case.

Moreover, the economic lag between immigrant groups and native-born Americans did not always exist. As recently as 1960, the average immigrant man living in the United States actually earned about 4 percent more than the average native-born American man. That figure had changed drastically by 1998, when the average immigrant earned about 23 percent less than the average native-born American.

The worsening economic performance of immigrants is due virtually entirely to a decline in the relative skills across the successive waves of immigrants. According to George J. Borjas, the Pforzheimer Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, “The newest immigrants arriving in the country in 1960 were better educated than natives at the time of arrival; by 1998 the newest arrivals had almost two fewer years of schooling. As a result of this growing disadvantage in human capital, the relative wage of successive immigrant waves also fell. At the time of entry, the newest immigrants in 1960 earned 13 percent less than natives; by 1998, the newest immigrants earned 34 percent less.”

Dr. Borjas also notes that national origin matters when it comes to immigration. As he asserts, “Prior to 1965, immigration was guided by the national-origins quota system, which granted visas mainly to persons originating in Western European countries, particularly Great Britain and Germany. The 1965 Amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act repealed the national origin restrictions, increased the number of available visas, and made family ties to persons already living in the United States the key factor that determines whether a visa applicant is admitted into the country.”

According to Dr. Borjas, “Over two-thirds of the legal immigrants admitted during the 1950s originated in Europe or Canada, one-quarter in Latin America, and only 6 percent in Asia. By the 1990s, only 17 percent of the immigrants originated in Europe or Canada, almost half in Latin America, and 30 percent in Asia.”

This is vital because there are huge differences in economic performance among immigrants from varying national origins. As Dr. Borjas points out, “Immigrants from El Salvador or Mexico earn 40 percent less than natives, while immigrants from Australia or South Africa earn 30 to 40 percent more. These differences in economic performance partly mirror the dispersion in skills across the populations of the source countries. Immigrants who originate in countries that have abundant human capital and higher levels of per-capita income tend to do better in the United States.”

Dr Borjas concludes that “The strong link between national origin and economic performance raises an important — and disturbing — problem for immigration policy. Because national origin and immigrant skills are so closely related, any attempt to change one will inevitably change the other.”

What about the economic gains that increased immigration promises?

Certainly the reduced cost of labor created by the influx of cheaper low-skilled labor is a boon to native run businesses in search of low-cost labor and a boon to American consumers as well, but how much of a boon has it produced?

According to Dr. Borjas, “Immigrants increase the number of workers in the economy. Because of the additional competition in the labor market, the wage of native workers falls. At the same time, however, native-owned firms gain because they can now hire workers at lower wages; and many native consumers gain because the lower labor costs lead to cheaper goods and services. As with foreign trade, the gains accruing to the persons who use or consume immigrant services exceed the losses suffered by native workers, and hence society as a whole is better off. However, all of the available estimates suggest that the annual net gain is astoundingly small, less than .1 percent of GDP. In the late 1990s, this amounted to a net gain of less than $10 billion a year for the entire native population, or less than $30 per person.”

Dr. Borjas further points out that, “Immigration...does more than just increase the total income accruing to natives. Immigration also induces a substantial redistribution of wealth, away from workers who compete with immigrants and toward employers and other users of immigrant services. Workers lose because immigrants drag wages down. Employers gain because immigrants drag wages down. These wealth transfers may be in the tens of billions of dollars per year.”

So, hgw many immigrants should the U.S. admit? Well, Dr, Borjas suggests that “an annual flow of 1 million immigrants is probably too large — regardless of whether the losers are at the bottom or at the top of the skill distribution. Such a large flow can substantially depress the economic opportunities of workers who compete with immigrant labor.” In his opinion, “A good place to start the process of converging to the "magic number" might be to let in 500,000 immigrants per year — which happens to roughly correspond with the recommendation made by the Commission for Immigration Reform in 1997.”

Steven Camarota would seem to agree. As Camarota says, “Immigration is unlike technological change or globalization because it is a discretionary policy that can be altered to suit our needs and values. After all, Congress cannot legislate a pause in the expansion of human knowledge or stop the Japanese from setting up factories in Malaysia — but it can reduce unskilled immigration. And based on the latest research, we can do so secure in the knowledge that doing so will not harm to the U.S. economy. In fact, it would probably be good for the country as a whole.”

Camarota concludes that “In the end, arguments for or against immigration are as much political and moral as they are economic. If one is concerned about low-wage and less-skilled workers in the United States, then clearly our current policy is unwise. On the other hand, if one places a high priority on helping unskilled workers in other countries, then allowing in a large number of such workers makes sense. Of course, only an infinitesimal proportion of the world's poor could ever come to this country even under the most open immigration policy one might imagine. Those who support the current high level of unskilled immigration should at least do so with an understanding that it is likely to come at the expense of the most vulnerable and poorest workers in the United States.”