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What effects do immigrant workers have on the availability of jobs to the rest of the US labor force? It depends on whom you ask.
At one extreme are those who believe that every job taken by an immigrant consigns an American to the ranks of the jobless. (This can't be true, because there are about 21 million immigrant workers in the United States, and only 8.6 million Americans were unemployed as of June 2006, including unemployed workers "marginally attached to the workforce," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
At the other extreme are those who say that because the products of immigrant contribute to the overall economy, the only significant effect immigrant workers have on their native-born counterparts is to create jobs. (Any qualified applicant who has ever lost a job opportunity to a better qualified immigrant candidate will dispute this.)
Many immigrants, including most of the 11 million or so who are here illegally, take on low-paying work, the kind most native-born Americans and many assimilated immigrants would do almost anything to avoid. But the makeup of the immigrant population is complex. Specifically, it is bimodal: There is a large population of workers with little education, and another substantial population with college or even advanced degrees, often some of the best and brightest of their native nations.
Many Immigrant Workers Are Highly Educated
"When you look at the education and experience levels of immigrants, it's really quite remarkable," says Bernard Baumohl, director of Economic Outlook Group in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, and a former analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations. "About 28 percent of legal immigrants have bachelors or higher degrees, versus 26 percent of citizens."
So the truth about the effects immigrants have on the labor economy lies somewhere in the middle: Immigrants fill jobs that help the economy grow, and, in the professional ranks, they raise the bar for applicants and sometimes elbow out the native-born competition.
Immigrant professionals who compete with native-born Americans often encounter racial prejudice and ignorance of the value of any foreign education to US business. "People don't know that a Mongolian accountant knows GAAP [generally accepted accounting principles]," says Jane Leu, executive director of Upwardly Global, a San Francisco nonprofit that matches immigrant professionals with employers. "Americans don't always have a global perspective on the transferability of skills."
H-1B Work Visas Are a Flashpoint in Debate over Foreign-Born Professionals
Some advocates for native-born professionals argue that the H-1B work visa program, which regulates the influx of immigrant scientists, researchers and technology professionals into the United States, is taking jobs away from Americans. But others give American professionals more credit.
"US workers are fully capable of competing and thriving in a labor market where foreign-born professionals are allowed to participate," says Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.
Congress sets the number of H-1B visas available for each year, and the cap for fiscal 2009 was reached months before the start of that year, October 1. Some believe this restriction on the inflow of talent will constrain economic growth for all of us, and even contribute to the offshoring trend.
The difficulty of obtaining work visas for highly skilled executives, engineers and researchers "is a terrible problem for our corporate clients," says Mitchell Wexler, a partner with immigration law firm Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy LLP in Irvine, California. Unable to recruit the talent within the United States or import it, "many multinational corporations are just sending the work overseas."
"The cap always seems to be out of sync with the economy, because it's not executed in real time" but rather according to a political calendar, says Wexler. "Any artificial cap needs to be pegged to the economy."
