Migrant workers pick tomatoes in Immokalee, Fla., in this March photo. Immigrants hold a majority of jobs in picking produce, though US-born workers have a majority in other areas traditionally seen as left to immigrants, such as housekeeping. The recession could change the immigration debate, as illegal immigration falls and it disproves the idea there are some jobs Americans won't take.
(Bill Serne/ St. Petersburg Times/ Newscom/ File)Photos (1 of 1)
ECONOMIC SCENE: How recession has changed the immigration debate
Politics, economics, demographics all come into play.
By David R. Francis | Staff Writer/ June 25, 2009 edition
The deep US recession has had one effect that polls say would please most Americans: Illegal immigration is falling.
More illegal immigrants are leaving. Fewer people are sneaking in – perhaps 200,000 a year instead of 500,000 in recent years, estimates Steven Camarota, an economist at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington. Thus, America’s illegal population has fallen from about 12 million in February 2007 to almost 11 million this February, he calculates.
So when immigration becomes a hot topic again – as it will, inevitably – will the recession have shifted the terms of the debate?
In some ways, yes. The US slump proves that immigration is sensitive to economic conditions. It also weakens the argument of pro-immigration forces that there are some jobs Americans won’t do. Mr. Camarota finds that claim “absurd on its face.”
He points to a newly available sampling of 4.7 million workers in 465 occupations, a massive survey that asks respondents whether they were born in the US. The US-born already hold a clear majority of jobs people often regard as being left to immigrants, such as housekeeping and grounds-maintenance workers. Only in picking fresh produce do immigrants hold a small majority.
Of course, economics is just one component of the immigration debate. Politics plays a huge role.
For example: some 1 million immigrants become US citizens every year. About 300,000 more of them become Democrats than Republicans.
That advantage could be one reason that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, has blocked several immigration-control bills from coming to the floor, says Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, a nonprofit advocate for cutting immigration.
Similarly, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada has been “aggressively pushing amnesty” for illegal immigrants, says Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, another Washington group urging limits on immigration.
Critics sometimes call various forms of amnesty “a Democratic registration program.”
The third component of the debate – the demographics – is vital in the long run. In the 1990s, the US had its biggest 10-year jump in population in its history – 32.7 million – and the fastest growth rate since the 1960s. The growth rate has slowed this decade, but the US is still on track to add some 28 million residents.
That’s the elephant in the room, Mr. Beck says. If President Obama really wants to reach his goals of energy independence and lower carbon emissions, he will have to restrain immigration, he argues. (US-born Americans have a birthrate slightly below the replacement level.) Otherwise, the projected population rise from 307 million today to 439 million in 2050 will swamp his intentions – and heighten other challenges, such as congestion and education.
So far, though, Mr. Obama has shown no enthusiasm for braking that growth, Beck and Mr. Stein say. Obama has said he would like to get illegal immigrants “out of the shadows and on a pathway to citizenship.” The one big change he’s made from the last years of the Bush administration is that instead of raiding plants to round up illegal immigrants, he wants to focus pressure on their employers.
The president plans to hold a key meeting with congressional leaders on immigration reform on June 17. The session is expected to clarify (at least a little) the White House’s position.
Meanwhile, a multimillion-dollar fundraising battle has broken out between pro-amnesty and antiamnesty groups.
It will, warns Stein, be “vitriolic, vicious.”
( More stories )
Comments
2. Gabriel | 06.25.09
Most of the people quoted in this article have ties to white supremacist groups and their views don’t reflect mainstream America. The basic principle for groups like Number’s USA is hate for all immigrants not just illegal immigrants. All their talk about economics and demographics is just a cloak to cover their aspirations of getting rid of everyone non-white from this country. I’m really surprised and disappointed by the Christian Science Monitor for quoting Roy Beck and Dan Stein as experts in this field. By doing a basic Google search, readers can find out exactly what groups like Numbers USA are all about. This is not a fair and balanced journalistic article. How about showing the opposing views?
3. mathew | 06.25.09
Of course we need all those people in the country to start with, cause what would happend if all them left all of a sudden. It’s just like an engine, that would be dangerous to stop. There is a lot of busness’s all around the states, like apartments, restaurants, landscaping companies, car dealers,construction, cleaning companies, etc (it’s a dirty job but somebody gotta do it.) And all that adds to our economy one way or another, plus it would be better if we had control of who really resides in our property.
By paying taxes, be able to buy homes (some)not just rent, im pretty sure that would help our economy. And the farmers for example with work permits not be able to stay, but work only. The ones that are not crimminals, maybe went to school, or made somee kind of positiveness our society, should be consider good people with good family values, that this world needs to continue having. Plus you never know if an educated doctor might find the cure for what ever fatal disease there is now in days. Plus this is AMERICA; “In God we trust”
4. jayjaycameron | 06.25.09
Obama’s constituents are Americans, not illegals. We need to have jobs for our own high school graduates. We need skilled and college educated workers, not chambermaids. We need to choose who we invite in to our country, not be forced to accept an army of illegal squatters. Corporations benefit from cheap illegal labor undercutting American wages, and taxpayers pick up the tab for health, education and welfare.
Obama’s presidency will be over if he tries to charm or force this army of lawbreakers down our throats.
5. Quark | 06.25.09
Yea, yea. He’s committed to immigration reform. He’s committed to lobbyist (the word Congress created for bribery so they could say it is legal) reform. He’s committed to economic reform. He’s committed to health care reform. Blah. Blah. Blah. “Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see.” Only thing I’m seeing is a commitment to the fall of this nation and turning it socialist (or maybe fascist). Even half of what I’m seeing is still totally sad.
6. Wendy | 06.25.09
I suspect that horse stable workers (i.e., stall cleaners, AKA manure shovelers) are also predominantly immigrants. Only once have I seen Americans cleaning stalls, and that time, it was on a temporary basis while the usual help were visiting family in Mexico. The Americans did a really lousy job of it, and from the grumbling I heard, I suspect they would have quit if it hadn’t been a temporary job. We were all glad to welcome the migrants back. So, I would say it IS true that there are some jobs Americans won’t do. One is picking produce, and another is cleaning horse stalls.
7. MaryJay | 06.25.09
Please call and overwhelm the White House switchboards with a “no to amnesty” message today:
Main line 202-456-1414
Leg Affairs: 202-456-2230
You will encounter busy signals. You will also have to follow instructions to get to a recording device or a real person. But please be persistent and be counted.
Make one of these talking points:
I’m calling about the amnesty meeting at the White House today. I oppose giving work permits and citizenship to illegal foreign workers.
When the President meets with Members of Congress about immigration reform today, I hope they talk about suspending most immigration and foreign worker programs during the current jobs depression.
If you want to make a second point, choose from one of these:
14 million Americans are looking for a job and can’t find one. Don’t stab them in the back by giving work permits to 8 million illegal aliens.
The two top principles of immigration reform should be: (1) take away the job magnet for illegal immigration by making E-Verify mandatory for all employers, and (2) greatly reduce the number of green cards given out each year.
What the country needs more than anything is LESS IMMIGRATION.
——————————————I called yesterday and got through after a few busy signals. Persistance paid off. Please everyone, make those calls. Shut down the White House switchboard just like we shut down the Senate one in 2007.
8. Legal Guy | 06.25.09
I don’t care what you have to say about Illegals in this country. People should fix the legal system as well. It is such a pain to immigrate legally even when you are employed, pay taxes and obay the law!!
9. mary | 06.25.09
The battle does not have to “vitriolic”. Prosecute all businesses who hire illegal aliens. Period. Deport illegal aliens. Insist that rules are followed. Why does Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid want the US to fall to a standard of living comparable to “poor countries”? How does that help anyone? How does it help us to be over-populated, with too few jobs for too many people; crowded highways, spoiled environment? The work market is so competive already I cringe to watch us have to compete with the ever constant stream of new immigrants—legal or illegal. Go try to work in Spain. You cannot, legally. Our country is being given away by corporations who benefit from “globalization” and liberal democrats who somehow believe that the whole world should be on the same low level of existence. California is a perfect example of this scenario. Goodbye, middle-class America.
10. Brittancus | 06.25.09
AMNESTY WILL COST US TAXPAYERS $2.6 TRILLION DOLLARS.
Don’t anybody tell you that illegal immigrants are good for the economy? For businesses who harbor the cheap labor and make huge profits a guaranteed–YES! But certainly not for the US taxpayer, who supports the illegal worker? Summoning up the tax situation the Heritage foundation after complex analysis for 2004, conveys “that for low-skill immigrant households paid only $10,573 in taxes. Thus, low-skill immigrant households received nearly three dollars in benefits and services for EACH DOLLAR in taxes paid. The federal government operates over 60 means-tested aid programs. The largest of these are Medicaid; the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); food stamps; Supplemental Security Income (SSI); Section 8 housing; public housing; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF); the school lunch and breakfast programs; the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) nutrition program; and the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG).
Many means-tested programs, such as SSI and the EITC, provide cash to recipients. Others, such as public housing or SSBG, pay for services that are provided to recipients.” Another fallacy is that illegal immigrants cannot apply for any federal benefits, but even those programs have been abused with fraudulent documents.
Then their is the classic illegal female who slips past the undermanned border patrols, pregnant with child under the current misguided law, becomes an instant burden on the US taxpayer. Quoted as, ” Illegal immigrant households do contain some 3 million children who were born inside the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents. These children are U.S. citizens and are eligible for, and do receive, means-tested welfare of every category.” Assuming all Americans, even liberals and so called progressives want to know more, they should venture to the non-profit organization The Heritage Foundation under the headline, ”
The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayer by Robert E. Rector and Christine Kim Verify the extraction tool from the workplace of foreign labor and the 8th Amnesty is enacted against the peoples wishes, the next irreversible ultimate problem is OVERPOPULATION. Another headline that must interest the avid reader from the same source AMNESTY WILL COST US TAXPAXPAYERS $2.6 TRILLION DOLLARS. The only outcome of this massive AMNESTY would be irreversible OVERPOPULATION. Steve Reiss, points a disturbing fact, not disclosed by our government. If the current immigration bill being debated by congress passes it will be the 8th AMNESTY in 21 years. NUMBERSUSA has answers.
MAYBE THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT INVASION DOESN’T GET YOU ON THE PHONE. BUT A FUTURE OF OVERPOPULATION SHOULD?
Copy, paste and distribute freely.
11. Bill on Maui | 06.25.09
Gee, this should be under “Commentary”, or more accurately “Right-wing Commentary”. Instead of ascribing Pelosi’s and Reid’s actions to devious attempts to sell the ranks of the Democratic Party they could just as easily be characterized as a reasonable approach toward solving a problem that has gotten out of hand.
12. John | 06.26.09
Perhaps it simply that there are some jobs Americans don’t want to have to do, but if they have no choice, they’ll do them. The argument about green goals is rational though; Obama is attempting to carry out two contradictory policies. I imagine, when the crunch comes, he’ll stick with the one that increases Democratic votes!
13. helen | 06.26.09
“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 signed by President Ronald Reagan on November 6, 1986) is an Act of Congress which reformed United States immigration law. The Act made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants (immigrants who do not possess lawful work authorization), required employers to attest to their employees’ immigration status, and granted amnesty to certain illegal immigrants who entered the United States before January 1, 1982 and had resided there continuously. The Act also granted amnesty to several million illegal aliens, and its proponents promised (PROMISED) the American public that that would be the last (LAST) amnesty granted.
Although the 1986 amnesty resulted in 2.7 million illegal’s being legalized, over 10 million were actually legalized after they brought their families over.
Pres. Obama meets today (6/25) with a bi-partisan group from Congress to “jump-start” plans to pass a giant amnesty for 12-20 million illegal aliens and their extended families, another 48-80 million.
Why, for heaven’s sake, would Obama and Congress want to makes things even worse on America’s 14 million unemployed (which is actually much larger including those whose benefits ran out, etc.)?
Stop the Amnesty - Join NumbersUSA.com
Call the White House today!
Those who come here illegally, steal our IDs and ignore our laws have already demonstrated they lack the honesty and decency to ever become American citizens.
a.) Enforce the existing immigration laws.
b.) Secure the border.
c.) Don’t hire illegal aliens.
d.) No anchor babies.
e.) Deportation through attrition.
14. zeezil | 06.26.09
After careful review, anyone with a even a modicum of logic can come to no other conclusion: illegal immigration must be halted, illegal immigrants here now must be deported and legal immigration needs decreased from the approx. 2 million allowed in per year currently.
Please review the following report on the FISCAL COST OF IMMIGRATION by economist Edwin Rubenstein released in April 2008:
http://www.esrresearch.com/Rubensteinreport.pdf
A partial summary of the report:
The impact on 15 Federal Departments surveyed was: $346 billion in fiscal related costs in FY 2007.
Each immigrant cost taxpayers more than $9,000 per year.
An immigrant household (2 adults, 2 children) cost taxpayers $36,000 per year.
Legal immigrants were not separated out from illegal immigrants for the fiscal impact study, but if they had been, the fiscal cost per ILLEGAL immigrant would be even more shocking than the figures quoted above.
The most extensive and authoritative study, prior to economist Edwin Rubenstein’s “The Fiscal Impact of Immigration” (April 2008) , is the National Research Council (NRC)’s The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration (1997).
The NRC staff analyzed federal, state, and local government expenditures on programs such as Medicaid, AFDC (now TANF), and SSI, as well as the cost of educating immigrants’ foreign- and native-born children.
NRC found that the average immigrant household receives $13,326 in federal annual expenditures and pays $10,664 in federal taxes—that is, they generate a fiscal deficit of $2,682 (1996 dollars)per household.
In 2007 dollars this is a deficit of $3,408 per immigrant household.
With 9 million households currently headed by immigrants, more than $30 billion ($3,408 x 9 million) of the federal deficit represents money transferred from native taxpayers to immigrants.
Our national immigration policies have to work for the United States. While improving the plight of the world’s poor is a laudable goal, the finite resources we have available to fulfill that goal would be swamped if there wasn’t some orderly and manageable system in place to limit entry into the United States to what this nation can actually support. The more illegal aliens that are permitted to subvert the immigration system, the fewer immigrants we can accommodate who might actually produce a positive benefit for our country.
The more we become a nation of illegal immigrants, the deeper we fall into anarchy.
15. Nathan | 06.26.09
Could we at least make an attempt at balance in this article? Shame on you, CSM. You were once known for your impartiality. You don’t have to find an “pro-amnesty” activist. Just keep in mind that there are other “non-partisan,” equally qualified organizations that reject some of these statistics as patently false. Please, return to your history of honest and thorough reporting.
16. Mike | 06.26.09
Me and My Wife came to this country as highly educated work permit holders. I donot work on low wages than my fellow citizen workers, I pay approx 45000 in taxes every year, I don’t even have a single traffic ticket leave apart a criminal behavioral, I decided to follow law and not break it by crossing border illegally..
WHAT DO I GET?
I am thrown after illegal immigrants when it comes to Green Card. I have to be dependent on my employer to sponsor my Green card, while illegal do it on own. Illegal will get a work permit which allow him to work with any employer, while I have to stick to one employer for years and years until I get Green card. Illegal living in US for 5 years will get green card or Z visa under one proposal and legal like me will not. THIS IS WHAT OBAMA, HARRY REID, PELOSI WILL BE GIVING ME. PUNISHMENT FOR FOLLOWING THE LAW. ILLEGALS BREAKING LAW PREFFERED, LEGALS get lost.
17. Poor Wendy | 06.28.09
Maybe she should clean her the stalls herself. Wonder what the turnover is for that job among the illegals she hires? What a silly post.
18. Helen Holden | 06.29.09
We are happy to have productive LEGAL persons coming to this country. When times were rough in this country. Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and IKE Eisenhower all were able to get illegal immigrants out of this country. Now we have so many Americans looking for work we should do the same. Congress should cut back on the number of Legal immigrants coming to this country as they had boosted the number substantially in recent years.
19. Alpena Bob | 06.29.09
Ha, Ha, Ha! Blame Obama. Blame McCain. Blame the Democrats. Blame the Republicans. Why not blame the Supreme Court or the New York Yankees while you’re at it. But, placing blame will never fix the problems.
You want to fix the political ills in America? Put in TERM LIMITS and PROHIBIT PAC DONATIONS. End the life time gravy train for those in Washington, DC.
20. Phil | 06.30.09
A difference between Mexican and european immigrants in the past
was that europeans brought science like chemistry, physics, metalurgy and calculus to the
U.S. They also brought the industrial revolution that started in europe in the late 1700’s
to the U.S. Most any invention you can think of exits because of the industrial revolution.
Most all science and mathmatics had been developed in europe for about 2 thousand years.
The wealth of the U.S is mainly a result of the higher productivity from industrialization.
21. Paradox | 06.30.09
Immigration creates an interesting paradox: We need more legal immigration, which typically constitutes those individuals with high levels of education and higher SES. Yet, we need to greatly reduce the level of illegal immigration, which typically constitutes those individuals with low levels of education and low SES. There are PLENTY of dumbasses here in the USA who can do nothing but manual jobs. There is a shortage of thinkers and innovaters. Future employment will be based on data usage and not manual labor (look to the CSM as an excellent example of the future; they need workers who can manage the 0s & 1s but don’t need paperboys or press operators). jayjaycameron has hit this point well.
22. stark | 09.18.09
Im not going to say that illigal imigration is right, its just the resoult of U.S succes and maybe some of it policy toward other countrys in america. I agree that native born citizens are to have priority and that uncontroled immigration puts a heavy burden on any state no matter how prosperous.
However I have seen, heard and expirience american workers that have no pride on what they do. Its sad to see immigration refered as anti- american when U.S citizens are the ones faltering and slaking off. Americans often belive they are the only ones that desire a better life that they have somehow invented freedom and self improvement. These alliens are just human beings with a dream to do better for this they will do wathever it takes, what is more patriotic than that?
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1. Charles | 06.25.09
This is a completely biased and one-sided story. Only opponents of immigration are quoted.