Exclusive: Over a million immigrants land U.S. jobs in 2008-10
By Ed Stoddard
DALLAS | Thu Jan 20, 2011 8:40am EST
DALLAS (Reuters) - Over the past two years, as U.S. unemployment remained
near double-digit levels and the economy shed jobs in the wake of the
financial crisis, over a million foreign-born arrivals to America found
work, many illegally.
Those are among the findings of a review of U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics and
Census Bureau data conducted exclusively for Reuters by researchers at
the Center for Labor Market Studies at
Northeastern University in Boston.
Often young and unskilled or semi-skilled, immigrants have taken jobs
Americans could do in areas like construction, willing to work for less
wages. Others land jobs that unemployed Americans turn up their noses at or
lack the skills to do.
With a
national unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, domestic job creation is
at the top of President
Barack Obama's agenda and such findings could add to
calls to tighten up on illegal immigration. But much of it is Hispanic and
the growing Latino vote is a key base for Obama's
Democratic Party.
Many of the new arrivals, according to employers, brought with them skills
required of the building trade and found work in sectors such as
construction, where jobless rates are high.
"Employers have chosen to use new immigrants over native-born workers and
have continued to displace large numbers of
blue-collar workers and young
adults without college degrees," said Andrew Sum, the director of the Center
for Labor Market Studies.
"One of the advantages of hiring, particularly young,
undocumented
immigrants, is the fact that employers do not have to pay health benefits or
basic
payroll taxes," said Sum.
From 2008 to 2010, 1.1 million new migrants who have entered America since
2008 landed jobs, even as U.S. household employment declined by 6.26 million
over that same period.
But in a sign of the times, the pace of job growth for new arrivals has also
slowed, to an average of 550,000 a year from 2008 to 2010 from over 750,000
a year from 2000 to 2008.
Sum said it was fair to estimate that around 35 percent of these workers
were undocumented or illegal.
Many immigrants acquired jobs in traditional low-wage work associated with
foreign, undocumented and especially Mexican labor: hotels and food
services, retail trade, sanitation, cleaning and construction.
There are a number of programs by which the United States lets
foreign
workers into the country to fill gaps in its domestic labor market but
employer groups complain little is done in this area for legal, unskilled
workers.
"There is basically no unskilled immigration that is legal. There are
basically no provisions in the law for unskilled immigrants," said Bill
Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business.
Farm workers in particular argue that Americans would not do the tough field
work that is rife with undocumented workers, titling one recent union
campaign "Take Our Jobs". The slogan meant that if Americans wanted their
jobs, then take them. But it is likely they don't.
Immigrant hiring also comes despite stepped-up workplace enforcement against
companies that hire illegal immigrants and the rapid expansion of the online
E-verify system used by employers to check immigration status.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70J37P20110120 
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