Because they were born in this country, the babies of illegal immigrants are United States citizens. In all in 2008, four million children who were American citizens had at least one parent who was in the country illegally, the Pew study found.
Children of illegal immigrants make up 7 percent of all people in the country younger than 18 years old, according to the study, which is based on March 2009 census figures, the most recent data on immigrant families. Nearly four out of five of those children — 79 percent — are American citizens because they were born here.
Source: "Births to Illegal Immigrants Are Studied" By JULIA PRESTON - NY Times - August 11, 2010
Illegal immigration decreases salaries for workers that are already here. It also delays opportunity for foreigners who immigrate "by the rules" by artificially lowering immigration quotas.
George J. Borjas, a professor of economics and social policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, said he believed that the flow of migrants had significantly depressed wages for Americans in virtually all job categories and income levels. His study found that the average annual wage loss for all American male workers from 1980 to 2000 was $1,200, or 4 percent, and nearly twice that, in percentage terms, for those without a high school diploma. The impact was also disproportionately high on African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, Professor Borjas found. "What this is, is a huge redistribution of wealth away from workers who compete with immigrants to those who employ them," he said.
Source: "Immigrants and the Economics of Hard Work " By JOHN M. BRODER - NY Times - April 2, 2006
The United States has always been a nation of immigrants, but today the country has more than 33 million foreign-born residents, the largest number since the Census started keeping such statistics in 1850. In 2003, foreign-born residents made up 11.7 percent of the population, the highest percentage since 1910. And over the past 16 years, the newcomers, many of them illegal, have poured into places in the South and Midwest that have not seen sizeable numbers of new immigrants in generations.
In 1970, there were 9.6 million foreign-born residents in the country, census data show. By 1980, that figure had surged to 14.1 million. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of foreign-born residents jumped to 31.1 million from 19.8 million.
Source: "Republican Split on Immigration Reflects Nation's Struggle" By RACHEL L. SWARNS - NY Times - March 29, 2006
[T]he United States has a higher proportion of foreign-born residents than at any time since the 1930's.
Source: "Migrant Worry" By DAVID RIEFF - NY Times - November 6, 2005
The number of federal immigration agents who focus on work-site enforcement plunged to 65 nationwide in 2004, from 240 in 1999, according to the Government Accountability Office. Moreover, the government reduced the number of notices of intent to fine employers who hired illegal immigrants to just 3 in 2004 from 417 in 1999.
Source: "Going After Migrants, but Not Employers" By STEVEN GREENHOUSE - NY Times - April 16, 2006
Why illegal immigration is bad for Americans
Wages follow the basic law of supply and demand. When there are more jobs than workers (low unemployment), wages go up as employers bid for workers. When there are more workers than jobs (high unemployment), wages go down as multiple workers compete for the same job. When the market is flooded with illegal immigrant workers, the supply of workers is increased and the value of labor (wages) goes down. This phenomonon is particularly (though not exclusively) harmful to low-skilled American workers.
Businesses get an artificially cheap source of labor while the taxpayer picks up the bill for the immigrants' social services such as school and medical care.
American workers aren't the only losers in this coddling of illegal immigrants. Foreigners who follow the rules and apply for legal immigration status are also hurt. Legal immigration quotas are kept artificially low because the anticipated number of illegal immigrants has to be factored into the equation. The result is longer waits for foreigners that follow the rules and adhere to our immigration policies, exactly the kind of immigrants that we would rather have as new American citizens.
Contrary to popular belief, illegal immigrants often do not pay income and social security taxes. Why illegal immigration is so prevalent
During times of high unemployment, the government has a responsibility to its working citizens to decrease the influx of immigrant workers in order to keep wages at a reasonable level. However, in an effort to assure a supply of cheap labor, businesses exert pressure on the government to admit more foreign workers, and in some cases even exert pressure on the government to turn a blind eye towards illegal immigration.
The current administration faces the highest unemployment levels since 1994. Instead of cracking down on illegal immigration, Texas newest Republican Senator John Cornyn has introduced legislation ("The Border Security and Immigration Reform Act of 2003") that would (after 3 years) allow illegal immigrants to apply for guest worker status.
The solution to illegal immigration
The reason that illegal immigration exists on such a large scale is that the incentives are wrong. If a foreigner can get across the border, life is better. If a foreigner can have a baby on this side of the border, the baby is automatically an American citizen and the illegal immigrant is the defacto relative of an American citizen.
As long as these incentives are in place, no amount of border patrol agents saddled with an impossible job will be able to block the tide of foreigners crossing the border. Reinforcing the borders, particularly the Mexican border, won't stem the tide of excess labor.
The solution is to rearrange the incentives. If we make life harder for illegal immigrants here than it is where they come from, they will stay where they are. At that point the task of the border patrol will be manageable, and with a much smaller force. The key is to make it impossible for someone who is here illegally to function. That means we make it impossible for them to earn money, spend money, find a place to live, enroll kids in schools, receive medical attention, etc. When foreigners know that they won't be able to obtain basic necessities here, they won't attempt the perilous journey across the border. Another change that should be made is a constitutional amendment to change the clause that makes anyone born in America an American citizen. The amendment should provide citizenship only for babies that are born to citizens or to legal immigrants.
This policy of lax immigration enforcement is characteristic of the Bush pro-business/anti-worker philosophy. It guarantees an endless supply of cheap labor for business while at the same time depressing wages for working Americans
In the first six months of 2003, Mexican immigrants…sent $6.1 billion back to their homeland.
Source: Dallas Morning News - 8/14/2003 -- "More money flowing Back to Mexico" by Diane Solis
Extracting this money from the US economy also costs American jobs.
President Bush plans to kick off his re-election year with a proposal to make it easier for immigrants to work legally in the United States, the most significant change to immigration law in 18 years, Republican officials said Tuesday [12/23/03].
Mr. Bush said last week that he was preparing to send Congress recommendations for an "immigration policy that helps match any willing employer with any willing employee."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge referred to ... "some kind of leagal status" for undocumented workers in this country. The sources said White House officials ... concluded that they needed a response to the large population of illegal immigrants for the plan to be credible and for Mr. Bush to get credit from Hispanic voters. The White House plan is being designed by Mr. Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove. [P]residential advisers said they believed that Hispanic voters, one of the targets for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, would give him credit for pushing for the changes even if nothing is enacted before the election.
Source: Dallas Morning News - "Bush seeks to link immigrants, jobs" by Mike Allen -- Dec 24, 2003
Some of the [Thai slave workers from a garment factory in El Monte, California] had been held prisoner for years in a housing complex crudely remade into a prison sweatshop. The more than 70 slaves were paid less than $2 per hour and never allowed to leave the compound, which was guarded around the clock and encircled by razor wire. They could only shop at a "company store" that sold them basic goods at grossly inflated prices. Montgomery Ward and Federated were among the chains that sold merchandise suspected of originating in the sweatshop.
But for all the horror of the El Monte bust, there also was something terribly mundane about it. After all, the look of the sweatshop, in which cowed workers produced brand-name clothing under abysmal conditions for less than the minimum wage, was not all that much of a departure from the appalling conditions I had witnessed on dozens of other federal and state agency raids of California garment factories. These sweatshops invariably employed Asian and Latin American immigrants whose status as fugitive workers meant that, de facto, they did not enjoy the standard protections provided by labor, occupational safety and health laws.
Although not slaves like the El Monte workers, these workers were desperate enough to be at the mercy of their employers, laboring for little pay in cramped, unhealthy workplaces. And as in El Monte, these workers usually arrived here in global human smuggling operations charging exorbitant fees that took years to pay off.
Source: "A welcome return to enforcing labor laws" by Robert Scheer - Creators Syndicate - 08.03.05
"Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to work free (or at least very cheap.)"
Paraphrased from the statue of liberty
Need to hire an employee? You can look right over the heads of the 3 million Americans that have lost their jobs during the Bush presidency. Hire an illegal immigrant instead for poverty wages.
This President won't be happy until no one in this country has a decent job. Maybe when the middle class has been totally decimated, they will bring back slavery and we'll ALL have a job again!
Source: NY Times - 4/2/06 - Pew Hispanic Center; Pew Research Center for the People and The Press; Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Dr. Gordon H. Hanson, Uinversity Of California, San Diego
Source: NY Times - 4/2/06 - Pew Hispanic Center; Pew Research Center for the People and The Press; Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Dr. Gordon H. Hanson, Uinversity Of California, San Diego
Source: NY Times - 4/2/06 - Pew Hispanic Center; Pew Research Center for the People and The Press; Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Dr. Gordon H. Hanson, Uinversity Of California, San Diego
Source: NY Times - 4/2/06 - Pew Hispanic Center; Pew Research Center for the People and The Press; Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Dr. Gordon H. Hanson, Uinversity Of California, San Diego
Source: NY Times - 4/2/06 - Pew Hispanic Center; Pew Research Center for the People and The Press; Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Dr. Gordon H. Hanson, Uinversity Of California, San Diego
Source: NY Times - 4/2/06 - Pew Hispanic Center; Pew Research Center for the People and The Press; Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Dr. Gordon H. Hanson, Uinversity Of California, San Diego
Source: NY Times - 4/2/06 - Pew Hispanic Center; Pew Research Center for the People and The Press; Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Dr. Gordon H. Hanson, Uinversity Of California, San Diego