The Impact of Illegal Immigration on the Wages and Employment Opportunities of Black Workers, August 2010

Book excerpt: In the midst of public debate over immigration reform, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted to examine the possible effects of illegal immigration on particularly vulnerable segments of the U.S. working population, specifically low-skill black workers. Since the april 4, 2008, briefing, the severe economic downturn has affected workers in general, and –if unemployment rates are any indication – has had an even more severe impact on low-skill workers. To help air important aspects of the debate, the commission invited experts who have published and spoken on this issue to weigh the relative effects of factors that influence black low-skill workers’ wages, job gains or losses and report conclusions to the Commission. The speakers discussed factors that included the economic costs to this particular group, fiscal costs to taxpayers of social services for low-skill workers, competing skill levels of affected workers, the economic gains of the U.S. economy as a whole from flexible,low-cost labor and what constitutes a fair comparison between legal and illegal workers and their job opportunities. The panelists addressed the following issues in response to Commissioners’questions: The consensus by panelists that there is a negative effect on wages of low-skill black workers and the range of negative effects; The importance of other factors contributing to low-skill black unemployment; Possible discrimination resulting from the use of ethnic networks; Benefits and costs to the U.S. economy from illegal immigration; Policy recommendations from panelists, including strict enforcement of existing immigration laws; Effect of capital flows, including those across and within national borders, that decrease the negative effects of immigration; Tradeoffs to employers between increasing their capital investment versus hiring more low-wage workers; The potential disruption to the economy and to low-wage workers and communities of abrupt economic changes resulting from enforcing immigration laws strictly; The sharp differences between the employment opportunities of low-skill black men and low-skill black women; The ethical and civil rights implications of using immigration to drive down low-skill wages. The Commission selected balanced panels that included Harry Holzer, professor of public policy at Georgetown University; Gordon H. Hanson, professor of economics at the University of California- San Diego; Julie Hotchkiss, research economist and policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta; Vernon Briggs, professor emeritus of labor economics at Cornell University; Gerald Jaynes, professor of economics and African American Studies at Yale University; Richard Nadler, president of Americas Majority Foundation; Carol Swain, professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University; and Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC.