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来源类型 | Testimony |
规范类型 | 其他 |
Securing the border: Defining the current population living in the shadows and addressing future flows | |
Madeline Zavodny | |
发表日期 | 2015-03-26 |
出版年 | 2015 |
语种 | 英语 |
摘要 | Chairman Johnson, Senator Carper, and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to appear here today to discuss unauthorized immigration to the United States and guest worker programs. In the testimony that follows, I will first discuss why people become unauthorized immigrants. I will then discuss what we know about unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. labor market. At the end, I will discuss how future guest worker programs can affect immigration flows and the U.S. economy. Estimates suggest there are 11-plus million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. About 8.5 million of them are in the workforce, accounting for about 5 percent of all workers. Most of these immigrants crossed the border unlawfully, but a sizable share entered with a valid visa and have since overstayed that visa or violated its terms, such as working while on a nonwork visa. The most important fact to understand about unauthorized immigrants is that almost none of them want to be unauthorized—they either have no way to attain legal status, or the pathway to legal status is so onerous that they believe they are better off remaining unauthorized. This is due to the many complexities—and the many failures—of U.S. immigration policy. Simply put, our current immigration system results in large numbers of unauthorized immigrants because, although there is a large, broad-based demand for these workers, it is extremely hard for most people to receive a visa to live and work in the United States legally. People who are not the immediate relative of a U.S. citizen and who are not highly skilled face a long wait for legal permanent residency if they can find an eligible U.S. relative or a U.S. employer willing to sponsor them. Meanwhile, the H-2A and H-2B temporary foreign worker programs are cumbersome and costly for employers to use and, in the case of the H-2B program, capped at 66,000 visas per year. As a result, most employers hire unauthorized immigrants instead of using those programs: The number of workers hired through the H-2A and H-2B programs annually is equivalent to about 1.3 percent of the unauthorized immigrant workforce in the United States. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the combination of strong demand for immigrant workers, a ready supply of people who wanted to work in the United States, even illegally, fairly lax workplace enforcement and a restrictive system for temporary and permanent visas resulted in a surge in the unauthorized immigrant workforce. The unauthorized population peaked in 2007, and then shrank slightly during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. It has since resumed growing, but at a much slower pace than before the recession. Most unauthorized immigrants are relatively low skilled. Unauthorized immigrants are usually not able to access high-skilled jobs, so there is little incentive for high-skilled foreigners to become unauthorized immigrants. In addition, the vast majority of unauthorized immigrants are from Mexico and Central America, a region with lower average education levels than the United States. The wage gains to immigrant workers are considerable, and the unauthorized are no exception. Although research suggests that unauthorized immigrants earn less than they would if they had legal status, unauthorized immigrants earn far more than they would in their origin country.1 Michael Clemens, Claudio E. Montenegro and Lant Pritchett show that the average Mexican worker who migrates to the United States earns about 2.5 times as much as he would in Mexico, taking into account differences in the cost of living.2 This is equivalent to an annual income gain of about $9200. For workers from Guatemala, wages are 2.9 times higher in the United States; Panama, 3.4 times; and Nicaragua, 3.5 times. Gordon Hanson estimates that in 2000 the average hourly wage for a male with nine years of education was $2.40 in Mexico, compared with $8.70 for recent Mexican immigrants in the United States (adjusting for differences in the cost of living).3 Working 35 hours a week, this would amount to an annual income gain of more than $11,000. Wage gains are, of course, not the only motivation behind unauthorized immigration. Desire to live with family members or to provide their children with a better education or a safer community also motivate unauthorized immigrants to come here. In addition, experience and skills gained while working in the United States can lead to higher earnings if immigrants return home. Among Mexicans who return after migrating to the United States, the labor market experience they acquired in the United States is worth twice as much as the experience they would have acquired in Mexico had they not migrated.4 It is worth noting that historically many unauthorized immigrants did not settle permanently in the United States. Instead, they worked here temporarily, saved some money and returned home; many repeated this on a seasonal basis for years but ultimately retired at home, where their family members had remained. Since the 1980s, however, there has been a gradual shift toward unauthorized immigrants settling in the United States and reuniting with family members here. One reason for this was the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) legalization program, which enabled some 2.7 million unauthorized immigrants to receive permanent legal status.5 Another reason is the increased difficulty in crossing the U.S.-Mexico border due to tighter border security. As it has become harder to re-enter the United States, unauthorized immigrants have increased their length of stay here.6 Download the PDF to read more of the testimony. 1 Studies suggest wage gains of about 6-13% from acquiring legal status, suggesting a wage penalty for lacking legal status. The studies include Rivera-Batiz, F.L. (1999), “Undocumented Workers in the Labor Market: An Analysis of the Earnings of Legal and Illegal Mexican Immigrants in the United States,” Journal of Population Economics 12: 91-116; Kossoudji, S. A., and Cobb-Clark, D. A. (2002), “Coming out of the Shadows: Learning about Legal Status and Wages from the Legalized Population,” Journal of Labor Economics 20: 598-628. 2 Clemens, M., Montenegro, C., and Pritchett, L. (2009), “The Place Premium: Wage Differences for Identical Workers across the US Border,” Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP09-004. 3 Hanson, G.H. (2006), “Illegal Migration from Mexico to the United States,” Journal of Economic Literature 44: 869-924. 4 Reinhold, S., and Thom, K. (2013), “Migration Experience and Earnings in the Mexican Labor Market,” Journal of Human Resources 48: 768-820. 5 Reyes, B.I. (2001), “Immigrant Trip Duration: The Case of Immigrants from Western Mexico,” International Migration Review 35: 1185–1204. 6 Angelucci, M. (2012), “U.S. Border Enforcement and the Net Inflow of Mexican Illegal Migration,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 60: 311–357; Reyes, B.I. (2004), “Changes in Trip Duration for Mexican Immigrants to the United States.” Population Research and Policy Review 23: 235–257. |
主题 | Defense ; Economics ; Immigration ; Latin America |
标签 | border control ; Congressional testimony ; Immigration ; US labor market ; US workforce |
URL | https://www.aei.org/research-products/testimony/securing-the-border-defining-the-current-population-living-in-the-shadows-and-addressing-future-flows/ |
来源智库 | American Enterprise Institute (United States) |
资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/209836 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Madeline Zavodny. Securing the border: Defining the current population living in the shadows and addressing future flows. 2015. |
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