One need not search hard to find disturbing evidence that recent immigrants may exert negative effects on sectors of the U.S. labor market. But how convincing is the evidence?
Social scientists require stronger proof than mere correlation between arriving numbers of immigrants and deteriorating job market conditions for natives. After all, the last four decades of U.S. history have encompassed a host of socioeconomic changes, each of which offers an alternative explanation for the deteriorating economic circumstances of lower skilled black workers. The specifics of the alternatives make the conjecture especially salient for young black males. No remotely credible argument blames immigration for the large and near steady reduction in blue-collar jobs in the U.S. which began during the 1950s. Nor did immigration cause the weakening of labor unions, automation, growth of the computerized information economy, or deteriorating U.S. import-export balances that suck up good paying. And, indeed, social scientists‘ rigorous statistical analyses initially stood upon its head the common sense of straightforward supply and demand theory. Until well into the 1990s, the great preponderance of rigorously designed and executed studies of immigration‘s effects on the economic position of U.S. citizens concluded that the effects were either ambiguous and in any case negligible or that immigrants in fact had a positive effect on the employment and wages of natives. These results held for both skilled and unskilled native-born workers and for women, minorities, and whites. The one demographic group providing an exception to the findings of no negative effects was recent Latino immigrants, who were found to be hurt by those who arrived behind them.The counterintuitive results of this research were explained in the following terms. The job skills brought into the country by less-educated immigrants were complementary to the skills of higher educated and trained natives; therefore immigrants did not compete for natives‘ jobs. On the contrary, the rising supply of immigrant workers ready and able to work hard for low wages is said to spur the expansion of many existing firms and the growth of new firms able to profit from the low wages. The expanding firms based on low wage immigrant labor also hired more skilled native labor as their revenues grew. Janitorial services, car washes, landscapers, and poultry processing plants with growing numbers of employees require more supervisors, clerical workers, accountants, etc. Using this literature, proponents of immigration argued that immigrants in fact improved the working position of natives.
