Let Them In by Jason L. Riley

Author:Jason L. Riley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

AMERICA’S HARDEST WORKERS

The journalist Tamar Jacoby once wrote that “most foreigners, whether they arrive legally or illegally, come to the United States to work. Most do not come in the expectation of living on welfare.” After all, says Jacoby, “if you’re going to be unemployed, it’s much better to be unemployed at home than in the United States. It’s usually warmer at home and less expensive to live, and you are likely to be surrounded by a network of supportive family and friends.”

Jacoby is spot-on, according to the economic data used to gauge an immigrant’s intentions. The labor force participation rate, which measures the percent of the working-age population that is employed or seeking employment, is the strongest indication that immigrants come here to work and not to idle. Among foreign nationals generally, labor participation rates are higher than that of natives (69 percent versus 66 percent in 2006) and jobless rates are lower (4.0 percent versus 4.7 percent in 2006). This disparity only increases with respect to Hispanic males, who boast the highest labor-participation rate of any group in the country. Recent census figures put it at 88 percent for Mexican-born males, against 83 percent for their native counterparts. What about all those supposedly shiftless illegals who come here to “assimilate to welfare”? They have a labor force participation rate of 94 percent, and that’s not a typo.

The Pew Hispanic Center published a study in 2006 that tracked migration flows back to 1990. The biggest factor affecting the rise and fall of border crossings was the state of the U.S. economy. Interestingly, the longer those immigrants are here, the harder they work. The unemployment rate for illegal aliens who arrived between 2000 and 2005 was 5.8 percent, compared with 4.1 percent for those arriving prior to 2000.

Among natives, low-skill black males have by far the lowest labor participation rates, and some opponents of immigration are quick to blame Latinos. There’s no doubt some correlation, since it’s these blacks who are most likely to compete for jobs with Mexicans. But given that black alienation from the workforce has not ebbed and flowed with Hispanic migration patterns but remained stubbornly consistent for decades, there’s probably more to the story. When William Julius Wilson was writing about black nonattachment to the labor force twenty years ago, immigration was scarcely mentioned. He was primarily concerned with the deindustrialization of the U.S. economy, the lack of job training for blacks, and a hellish, self-perpetuating ghetto culture that encouraged criminal behavior and left too many black men not simply unemployed but unemployable.

The 1980s and 1990s saw two of the longest periods of sustained economic growth in U.S. history, yet the labor-force participation rates of less-educated young black men actually declined over that stretch. Black unemployment is nearly double the white rate and well above that of Hispanics, even though English-language skills alone should theoretically give blacks a major advantage with employers over Latino new arrivals. Nevertheless, those Latinos have displayed a greater willingness to accept and greater ability to retain low-skill jobs.

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