Myth and Fact about US Immigrants

compiled by Judy Ancel, Institute for Labor Studies

Numbers

Myth: Immigrants are overrunning our society.

Fact: The number of immigrants living in the United States remains relatively small as a percentage of the total population. While the percentage of U.S. residents who are foreign-born is higher today than it was in 1970 (currently about 11 percent), it is still less than the 14.7 percent who were foreign-born in 1910. Only 5.8% of the Kansas City metro area population is foreign born. The annual rate of legal immigration is low by historical measures. Only 3 legal immigrants per 1,000 U.S. residents enter the United States each year, compared to 13 immigrants per 1,000 in 1913.

Myth: Most immigrants are illegal.

Fact: By most estimates this is false. The mid range estimate is that there are 11.5-12 million people here illegally out of a total immigrant population of 28.4 million. However, the rate of illegal migration has climbed significantly since NAFTA and is estimated at half a million a year.

Myth: We can’t absorb such a high number. We have too many people as is.

Fact: The 2000 Census found that 22 percent of U.S. counties lost population between 1990 and 2000. Rather than “overrunning” America, immigrants tend to help revitalize demographically declining areas of the country, most notably urban centers. They are also revitalizing small towns in the Midwest where there are meat packing plants.

Myth: They will take over and undermine our culture. Immigrants aren’t really interested in becoming Americans.

Fact: Nearly 70 percent of foreign-born Hispanics in 2003 said they identify more with the United States than with their country of origin.” Within ten years of arrival, more than 75% of immigrants speak English well; moreover, demand for English classes at the adult level far exceeds supply. Greater than 33% of immigrants are naturalized citizens; given increased immigration in the 1990s, this figure will rise as more legal permanent residents become eligible for naturalization in the coming years. The number of immigrants naturalizing spiked sharply after two events: enactment of immigration and welfare reform laws in 1996, and the terrorist attacks in 2001 In San Diego 90 percent of second-generation immigrant children speak English well or very well, according to a Johns Hopkins University study. In Miami the figure is 99 percent. The children of immigrants, although bilingual, prefer English to their native tongue at astounding rates. Only 3 percent of long-term immigrants report not speaking English well. . Source: New York Times/CBS News poll, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services)

The Law and History

Myth: The immigrants of today are different from previous immigrants who assimilated and stayed.

Fact: Immigrants 100 years ago initially often settled in mono-ethnic neighborhoods, spoke their native languages, and built up newspapers and businesses that catered to their fellow émigrés. They sent millions of dollars back to their countries of origin. It’s estimated that between thirty and fifty percent of Italians who came in the 1890s returned home after less than five years working in the U.S.

Previous immigrants have been met with hysterical xenophobic movements which were often anti-Catholic and racist, yet, ultimately, every past wave of immigrants has been vindicated and saluted. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, National Immigration Forum, June 2003 and http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/italian3.html)

Myth: Immigrants today are different because they’re illegal.

Fact: Most immigrants are here legally. Around 75% have legal permanent (immigrant) visas. Of the 25% that are undocumented, 40% overstayed temporary (nonimmigrant) visas. Presumably the rest, or 15% of all immigrants came in without legal authorization. The legal/illegal distinction is also very complex since, according to a 2005 study of Kansas City area Latino immigrants, 82% live in families with mixed status – some legal, some illegal. The criminalization of immigration ignores the fact that our immigration laws are broken with long delays in processing, very weak provisions for family unification, and no means for long-time immigrants to become legal. Despite the number of jobs available to immigrants, there are insufficient means for them to legally work the jobs. Immigration laws are also unjust, historically favoring admission of Europeans, failing to recognize economic factors of globalization which give people no alternative but to leave to find work. The addition of employer sanctions in the 1986 IRCA Act primarily served to divide the workforce between those who had labor rights and those who didn’t while failing to punish employers for violation of immigration or labor law. (Sources: INS Statistical Yearbook, En Medio de la Decada: An examination of the economic, social, political, and cultural context of Latino immigrants in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, (El Centro, 2005).

Myth: Weak U.S. border enforcement has lead to high undocumented immigration

Fact: From 1986 to 1998, the Border Patrol’s budget increased sixfold and the number of agents stationed on our southwest border doubled to 8,500. The Border Patrol also toughened its enforcement strategy, heavily fortifying typical urban entry points and pushing migrants into dangerous desert areas, in hopes of deterring crossings. Instead, the undocumented immigrant population doubled in that timeframe, to 8 million—despite the legalization of nearly 3 million immigrants after the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986.

Myth: We need strong border enforcement laws to protect us from terrorism.

Fact: How many Mexicans and Central Americans have been arrested for terrorism? The answer is zero. No security expert since September 11th, 2001 has said that restrictive immigration measures would have prevented the terrorist attacks—instead, the key is good use of good intelligence. Most of the 9-11 hijackers were here on legal visas. Since 9/11, the myriad of measures targeting immigrants in the name of national security have netted no terrorism prosecutions. In fact, several of these measures could have the opposite effect and actually make us less safe, as targeted communities of immigrants are afraid to come forward with information.

Jobs and Economics of Immigration

Myth: Immigrants take jobs from citizens.

Fact: This may be true in some jobs like roofing and other non-union construction, but there is no evidence to prove it. The largest wave of immigration to the U.S. since the early 1900s coincided with our lowest national unemployment rate and fastest economic growth. There’s no such thing as a fixed number of jobs. One study showed that unemployment is lower in high areas of immigration than in low. Immigrants expand demand for goods and services through their consumption. Immigrant entrepreneurs create jobs for U.S. and foreign workers, and foreign-born students allow many U.S. graduate programs to keep their doors open. While there has been no comprehensive study done of immigrant-owned businesses, we have countless examples: in Silicon Valley, companies begun by Chinese and Indian immigrants generated more than $19.5 billion in sales and nearly 73,000 jobs in 2000. (Source: National Immigration Forum, June 2003)

The problem with the job market is the low rate of job creation since 2000. Because low wage immigrants are concentrated in certain kinds of jobs they tend to compete with one another. Some have argued that competition for jobs with immigrants has hurt African American high school dropouts the most, but the barriers to employment for them are much more complex having to do with racist social policy and the so-called war on drugs which pushes high numbers into prison. In fact the rate of native-born high school dropouts is decreasing. The greatest threat of displacement of citizen workers, however, could come from an expansion of guest worker programs (Source: Economic Policy Institute).

Myth: Immigrants ruin jobs

Fact: Employers ruin jobs by union busting, moving to greenfield sites and by pitting citizen workers against immigrants. Take the meatpacking industry. It was union busting and a wave of concessions in the 1980s that drove wages down from about $10 an hour to $6. This was before the wave of immigrants took these jobs which were then only fit for the truly desperate. American employers have done this for decades. When textile mills moved south starting in the 1890s to avoid unionization and higher wages in the north did we blame poor southerners who could no longer farm? A standard tactic of industry has been to use mechanization to replace skilled native born workers with immigrant unskilled workers. The answer, as many unions proved in the 1930s was to organize.

Even in construction, the attack on unions, the expansion of non-union contractors, and the lowering of wages and benefits preceded the influx of immigrants to the lower skilled jobs. Add to that the decline of enforcement of prevailing wage laws, employer sanctions, and OSHA regulations plus the failure to prosecute employers for misclassifying workers as independent contractors paved the way for unscrupulous employers to misuse immigrant labor.

Myth: Immigrants don’t pay taxes

Fact: All immigrants pay taxes, whether income, property, sales, or other. While some work for cash, thus avoiding income and social security taxes or are misclassified as independent contractors, a Kansas City study found that 81% of Latino immigrants reported receiving W-2 forms from employers. As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 and $140 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes. Even undocumented immigrants pay income taxes, as evidenced by the Social Security Administration’s “suspense file” (taxes that cannot be matched to workers’ names and social security numbers), which currently has about $540 billion.
A report by the National Academy of Sciences also found that immigrants benefit the U.S. economy overall, have little negative effect on the income and job opportunities of most native-born Americans, and may add as much as $10 billion to the economy each year. Even states come out ahead. In Congressional testimony, University of California, Berkeley economist Ronald Lee, the principal author of the fiscal analysis in the National Academy of Sciences study, concluded that a dynamic analysis, with the appropriate assumptions, would likely show that 49 of the 50 states come out ahead fiscally from immigration, with California a close call. Lee testified that some have misinterpreted the Academy study’s use of the annual costs of immigrant households to argue that immigrants are a large fiscal cost to states. He found that it is misleading, on an annual basis, to calculate the school age, native-born children of immigrants as costs caused by immigrant households but not to include the taxes paid by those children when they enter the workforce. Professor Lee also testified: “Reducing immigration would make it more difficult to support the health and retirement of the baby boom generation.” (Source Al Medio de la Decada, www.DeleteTheBorder.org, Testimony of Ronald D Lee, Member, National Academy of Sciences Panel on the Demographic and Economic Impacts of Immigration, Before the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, “Economic and Fiscal Impact of Immigration,” (Sept. 9, 1997), Cato Institute, Urban Institute, Social Security Administration.)

Myth: Immigrants come here to take welfare.

Fact: Immigrants come to work and to reunite with family members. Immigrants are ineligible for anything but emergency medical care, K-12 education, disaster relief, and some English programs. Reports of widespread use of “welfare” by illegal immigrants are just plain false. In one estimate, immigrants earn about $240 billion a year, pay about $90 billion a year in taxes, and use about $5 billion in public benefits. In another cut of the data, immigrant tax payments total $20 to $30 billion more than the amount of government services they use.

As for health care, a May, 2006 study of health data from 2000 found that while many Mexican immigrants arrive in the U.S. healthier than their white counterparts, their health deteriorates the longer they live in the U.S. Recent Mexican immigrants were more likely than U.S.-born whites to not have seen a doctor in the past two years. Fewer than 10% of recent Mexican immigrants reported using an emergency department in 2000, compared with 20% of U.S.-born whites, and more than 33% of Mexican women ages 18 to 64 who were recent immigrants had not had a Pap smear in three years while 29.7% of Mexican adults had visited a dentist in the past year. Other groups reported more frequent dental visits and pap smears. Immigrants use health clinics (where you generally have to pay cash) at a rate more than double US born whites. (Source: University of California and the Mexico's National Population Council, AP/Contra Costa Times, and the Los Angeles Times).

Myth: Immigrants are a drain on the U.S. economy

Fact: During the 1990s, half of all new workers were foreign-born, filling gaps left by native-born workers in both the high- and low-skill ends of the spectrum. Immigrants fill jobs in key sectors, start their own businesses, and contribute to a thriving economy. The net benefit of immigration to the U.S. is nearly $10 billion annually. As Alan Greenspan points out, 70% of immigrants arrive in prime working age. That means we haven’t spent a penny on their education, yet they are transplanted into our workforce and will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years. (Source: National Academy of Sciences, Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, Federal Reserve.)

Why they come

Myth: Mexican immigrants should stay home and force their government to provide jobs.

Fact: Over 190 million people in the world today work outside their country of birth. Indeed migration is essential to today’s global economy. As for Mexico, starting in the early 1980s their economy went into crisis caused by international debt -about $150 billion of it. The medicine was restructuring and privatization, followed by NAFTA.

After it defaulted on its international debt to multinational banks, Mexico was forced to turn itself into an export economy. It did this in two ways: first by allowing foreign investment to come in to produce goods for export to the US and second by exporting people to send money home. Both would bring cash infusions which could be dutifully returned to Wall Street. Of the two, exporting people was more successful. Today the remittances from abroad outstrip oil, tourism, and manufactures in generating foreign income. In 2005 they were $20 billionNeither strategy created an internal market or living wage jobs so that people could stay there. The maquiladora export factories, mostly located along the northern border, paid less 15% of wages in the US – ranging upward from $4.66 a day. Do the math: in many border towns in 2000 you worked 197 minutes at the minimum wage to earn enough to buy a half gallon of milk. In the US at minimum wage you had to work 20 minutes.

With NAFTA the export of people got worse because the rules favored agribusiness which had its eyes on Mexican markets and land. While we kept our agricultural subsidies, Mexico had to eliminate theirs. They did so in 1996, and prices paid to Mexican corn farmers fell by 70%. Corn rotted in the fields while cheaper subsidized US corn exports quadrupled. The results: Mexican poverty shot up from half to two-thirds of the population and almost one and one-half million peasants left the land.

These displaced peasants went to Mexico’s huge cities, flooding the informal [temp] economies of already overcrowded shantytowns; to the maquiladoras where real wages were actually falling; or to the other side. Many families in the maquilas have sent someone to the US to work. These migrant workers are subsidizing the low wages paid to Mexican workers by Delphi, Caterpillar, Panasonic, LGE (Zenith), Levi Strauss, Motorola, and their subcontractors. It’s the multinationals who benefit most from this system.

By making the flow of workers illegal while opening up trade and investment, they can get the best of both worlds: cheap labor and free entry into poor countries and cheap, undocumented, or guest labor in the US. On both sides, the utter denial to workers of the right to organize relegates them to a status of unfree in a world of free trade. It has the added benefit of stigmatizing them as illegal rather than the proper term: refugees of the global economy.

The problem of immigration won’t be solved here in the US. We can make the system more just by giving people a path to citizenship and the right to organize, but the real causes will only be addressed through the growing international movement against neoliberal globalization whose slogan is “Another world is possible.”

By the way, Mexican workers and citizens are far more active in trying to change their government than are Americans. When workers in the maquiladoras organize, they don’t just face the corporation, but also the government and their corrupt unions. Their courage and persistence needs our support. Indigenous people in Chiapas have been in open rebellion against the government since NAFTA went into effect. They face death squads and military attack. Also keep in mind that every time Mexicans rise up for economic justice they get invaded by the United States. The same is true for Central American countries.