A 2006 Pew Hispanic Center study, "Growth in the Foreign-Born Workforce and Employment of the Native Born," found no evidence that the large increases in immigration since 1990 have led to higher unemployment among native Americans.
The center examined census data on the increase in immigrants in each of the 50 states, comparing those figures to state jobless rates and participation in the labor force by the native born.
Although immigrants tended to be younger and less educated than native workers, the report found "no apparent relationship between the growth of foreign workers with less education and the employment outcome of native workers with the same level of education."
These findings were in line with those of most economists, who have failed to find a link between immigration and job loss.
"The big message here," said University of California economist Giovanni Peri, who conducted a similar study in California, "is there is no job loss from immigration."
As a general rule, the federal government reaps a net benefit from illegal immigrants in the form of Social Security payments that the workers are never able to collect because they are not citizens; it is the states, in terms of social services, education and medical services, that pay the bulk of costs associated with supporting the undocumented population.
A senior colleague at the Manhattan Institute, Tamar Jacoby, told the conservative National Review that while individuals might receive more in services than they paid in taxes, "they are growing the [overall economic] pie so significantly that that cost pales in comparison."
Jacoby cited a recent study of immigrants in North Carolina that reported that over the prior 10 years, Latino immigrants had cost the state $61 million in a variety of benefits, but were responsible for more than $9 billion in state economic growth.
The same point was made in a 1997 National Academy of Sciences study that found "the less-educated immigrants who impose a fiscal burden are the very same immigrants who provide the economic benefit reported."
A major survey of the net effects of immigration, published in 2006 in The New York Times Magazine, cited only one economist, George Borjas of Harvard, claiming a negative net effect. Many other economists disputed Borjas.
"If Mexicans were taller and whiter," University of California, Berkeley, professor David Card told the magazine, "it would probably be a lot easier" for the public to accept the majority view of economists that the net effects of immigration, which is now predominantly Latino, are positive.
