Unending supply of illegal workers undermines labor laws, unemployment, Social Security systems

December 5, 2006

Low-skilled, young, U.S.-born workers are the economic victims of unlimited illegal immigration, said a recent study by Northeastern University. The segment of the U.S. labor force that has been most affected by the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the United States over the past five years are low-skilled, young native-born workers, according to a recent study issued by the University's Center for Labor Market Studies. “The negative impacts tended to be larger for in-school youth compared to out-of-school youth, and for native-born black and Hispanic males compared to their white counterparts,” said the two economists who authored the study.

“It appears that employers are substituting new immigrant workers for young native-born workers.”

The uncontrolled rise in employment, especially by illegal workers over the past decade, has also contributed to a breakdown in the U.S.’s labor laws and labor standards, and has undermined the unemployment insurance and Social Security systems that had evolved over the past century, the authors said.

Market forces lead employers to pay for labor at the lowest possible rate, and if a large number of workers are willing to work below the minimum wage or in environments that violate labor laws that the government is not enforcing, many employers will hire those workers. Those who want work with government-mandated conditions are left out.

The federal government’s Current Population and Current Employment surveys over the past few years also bear this trend out, they said. The number of people reporting themselves as employed has been growing much faster than the number companies are reporting. Illegal immigration, they added, is creating a growing dark side of the labor market where employers operate outside the market’s legal framework.

Real wages for the lowest-paid American workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have been stagnant or declining for years, and both houses of Congress have been working on an immigration-reform plan.