Houston: The number of illegal immigrants working in the US is rising while more American-born people are facing unemployment, according to a new study.
An influx of immigrants has intensified competition for jobs hurting American-born workers, said the research by the Centre for Immigration Studies, which favours tighter restrictions on immigration.
Based on the data from the US Census, the report by the Washington-based group found that the number of workers born in America who have a high school diploma or less declined from 45.6 million in March 2000 to 42.4 million in March 2005.
In contrast, the number of working immigrants with the same education level increased from 9.4 million to 10.9 million during the same period.
At least half the job growth was fuelled by illegal immigrants, Steve Camarota, the author of the study, said, referring to census and government data.
Camarota said the illegal immigrants are gaining jobs in the competitive low-skilled labour markets that Americans aren't. "The people taking it on the chin are the people at the bottom."
The study comes amidst US President George W Bush's call for civility over immigration debate beginning from next week in Congress. The debate would include ways to address the estimated 11.5 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the country.
The argument by immigrant advocates that there are no Americans to fill low-wage jobs that require relatively little education doesn't line up with the government's own data. The study calls into question the theory that America is desperately short of under-skilled workers, Camarota said.
More importantly, he said, the research concluded that illegal immigration had a direct effect on job loss for native-born workers.
Employers who hire from the vast pool of illegal immigrants avoid paying workers' compensation, health benefits, social security and a whole slew of labor law requirements, the author said.
Many business groups and employers contend that they can't find enough workers to fill low-wage jobs in industries such as food services and hospitality. And critics of the report say it doesn't factor in the overall US population shift from American-born to immigrants in the past two decades.
Critics noted that the study fails to consider factors outside immigration, including overall demographic changes. Between 2000 and 2004, the foreign-born represented 74 per cent of the 4.3 million growth in the US population, said Rakesh Kochhar, Associate Director for research at the Pew Hispanic Centre.
"How much of this is competition from the foreign-born, how much of this is demographics, how much is this the native-born getting more educated, and so on," he said.
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