Does Immigration Harm Working Americans?

The job news is increasingly good: 321,000 jobs
created in November. Yet the national economic
mood remains grimly bleak.
Many Americans feel a sharp distinction between
what’s said about “the” economy and what they
experience in “their” economy. At the top of the
income distribution, wages are rising. In the middle
and bottom, wages stagnate. Jobs are created, yes—
but native-born Americans are not hired for them.
Last month, the Center for Immigration Studies
released its latest jobs study . CIS, a research
organization that tends to favor tight immigration
policies, found that even now, almost seven years
after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, 1.5 million
fewer native-born Americans are working than in
November 2007, the peak of the prior economic cycle.
Balancing the 1.5 million fewer native-born
Americans at work, there are 2 million more
immigrants—legal and illegal—working in the United
States today than in November 2007. All the net new
jobs created since November 2007 have gone to
immigrants. Meanwhile, millions of native-born
Americans, especially men, have abandoned the job
market altogether. The percentage of men aged 25 to
54 who are working or looking for work has dropped
to the lowest point in recorded history.
Labor Force Participation Rate Among Men
Aged 25 to 54, 2004-2014
Bureau of Labor Statistics
It's said again and again that immigrants do not take
jobs from natives. Here’s National Journal, reporting
just last year, under the headline "Left and Right
Agree: Immigrants Don't Take American Jobs":
That immigrants take the jobs of American-
born citizens is “something that virtually no
learned person believes in,” Alex Nowrasteh,
an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato
Institute, said at a Thursday panel. “It’s sort
of a silly thing.”
Most economists don’t find immigrants
driving down wages or jobs, the Brookings
Institution’s Michael Greenstone and Adam
Looney wrote in May. In fact, “on average,
immigrant workers increase the opportunities
and incomes of Americans,” they write.
Foreign-born workers don’t affect the
employment rate positively or negatively,
according to a 2011 analysis from the
conservative American Enterprise Institute.
And a study released Wednesday by the
liberal Center for American Progress suggests
that granting legal status to undocumented
workers might even create jobs.
So there you have it. Experts say it’s impossible.
Can’t be happening. And if actual observed data
from the real economy seem to suggest that the
impossible is happening—well, Albert Einstein
himself answered that one. If the material universe
doesn’t support the theory: “Then I’d feel sorry for
the good Lord. The theory is correct."