New CBO Immigration Study - 12% of Population Foreign Born, 4% Here Illegally

The United States Population has the largest percentage of foreign born since 1920, including 10.8 million illegal immigrants and the Supreme Court is taking 'em on. SCOTUS just ruled the lower courts must re-examine their ruling on Hazelton Pennsylvania's laws to verify renters and workers are there legally. This basically voids the earlier ruling against the city of Hazelton.

 

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The US Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal appeals court to reexamine whether Hazleton, Pa., can restrict illegal immigrants' ability to work and rent housing.

A federal judge and a panel of the Third US Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia had blocked the local laws, saying they clash with the careful balance struck by Congress in federal immigration statutes.

On Monday, the Supreme Court, in a summary order, vacated the Third Circuit’s September 2010 decision and remanded the case for further consideration in light of the high court’s May 26 opinion upholding a similar law in Arizona that punishes companies that employ illegal immigrants.

Earlier the Supreme court ruled in Arizona's favor, they can punish employers who use illegal labor.

The above graph is from the Congressional Budget Office and shows the total foreign born for each state. This includes permanent residents, foreign guest workers, U.S. citizens and illegal aliens. The CBO has a new report analysis on the foreign born in the United States. The results are shocking. California's population is 26.6% foreign born. New York is over 21.5% and New Jersey, 21.3%. This is the largest percentage of foreign born since 1920 in the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security estimates there are 10.8 million illegal immigrants in the United States, or roughly 4% of the total U.S. population. . Additionally they are concentrated in just a few states, California, Texas, Arizona and Nevada.

 

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In 2009, unauthorized residents made up about 10 percent of the population of Nevada and about 7 percent of the population of California, Texas, and Arizona. Almost half of all unauthorized residents lived in those four states.

Read it and weep people who like to claim any discussion of this is racist. 62% of illegal immigrants are from Mexico.

 

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Of the foreign born, 29% have less than a high school education with 56% of those coming from Mexico and Central America having less than high school. The numbers appear to be skewed from other countries, for unfortunately they are counting the European and Asian Masters degree equivalent to a U.S. Masters degree. It's not, the credit hours are more equal to a U.S. Bachelors degree and the Asian and European Bachelors degree is more like trade school, or an associates degree. Unfortunately the U.S. education system, due to a never ending supply of cheap students and high tuition, has devalued the U.S. degrees in order to make these other nations more than happy to supply a never ending stream of foreign students. Literally American universities are not making college more affordable for Americans, instead, we have a new industry recruiting foreign students.

SCOTUS also weighed in instate tuition for illegals. Surprising SCOTUS would reject this case while ruling for enforcement on others, but regardless, if you are here illegally but meet other requirements, you can get instate tuition rates in 9 states by promising to obtain U.S. citizenship down the road.

The justices refused to hear an appeal by group of out-of-state U.S. citizens after the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law and dismissed their lawsuit.

The 2001 law provides that any student who attends a California high school for three years and graduates can get in-state college and university tuition. Illegal immigrants who qualify must swear they will seek to become U.S. citizens.

Nine other states, including New York, Texas and Illinois, have adopted similar laws. Opponents said California unlawfully discriminated against U.S. citizens in favor of illegal immigrants and said the case involved a question of great national importance.

Attorneys for the students who pay higher out-of-state rates said about 25,000 illegal immigrants receive the tuition breaks every year. The state put the number at 6,500 students.

California, which faces a worsening budget crisis, spends more than $200 million each year subsidizing the tuition of illegal immigrants, attorneys for the out-of-state students said.

They said the California measure was trumped by a 1996 federal law barring any state from providing illegal immigrants any higher education benefits based on residency unless U.S. citizens were eligible for the same benefit.

The California Supreme Court ruled the state law was based on attending high school in the state, it says nothing about state residency and it does not violate federal law.

While the focus is on illegals for instate tuition, consider the percentages of foreigners in our higher education system. Where is the outrage for not putting all Americans first for educational opportunities in the United States, foreign born, legal or not? The reality is more and more Americans cannot even get into college or if they can, they assuredly cannot afford it. Bear in mind public higher education is taxpayer subsidized.

Remember that concept of workplace diversity? It appears from these 2009 statistics, the U.S. labor force is more stratified than ever. Certain occupations are dominated by illegals and others with H-1B Indian workers. In some occupations, there are more foreign born working in them than Americans. Additionally some occupations have country of origin specific dominance. Clearly certain occupations have been targeted for labor arbitrage by manipulation of U.S. immigration, in order to flood the labor market in those sectors. Yes Virginia, whether one has a PhD or no high school at all, the laws of supply and demand in labor markets still apply. Too many workers available for a job, wages will decline and worker displacement will shoot up.

 

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Literally the foreign born employed in technical fields is greater than Americans. This is not due to Americans being unskilled or any shortage. Age discrimination in this occupation is extreme, often starting at age 35. Sex discrimination is horrific, with 52% of women in these fields dropping out of their careers in 10 years. This is due to the never ending use of foreign guest worker Visas and our university system. That all would be good if H-1B, L-1 and other manipulations of the U.S. immigration system didn't enable U.S. worker displacement and global labor arbitrage.

Another shocking statistic is those living in poverty. While 14% of Americans live in poverty, 25% of the foreign born, who are not U.S. citizens, live in poverty. Those who obtain citizenship are the lowest poverty rate group, 11%.

While various special interest groups try to spin immigration topics, especially when it comes to labor markets and arbitrage, these estimates from the CBO and DHS look fairly solid and also imply the United States labor markets are literally saturated.

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Comments

Expect Policymakers Will Ignore This

Wonderful writeup.

I wish to God the people in charge were listening.

I expect though that the ethnic lobbies and the Democrats who love them will ignore this, since it's reliable information that's detrimental to their cause.

It will only confirm to the cheap labor lobby that they are succeeding without any effective counterforce against them.

In the meantime, average Americans will suffer.

People in Mexico will suffer too as all the PR efforts go to make life easier for those who managed to make it here. The ones left behind in Mexico get no attention at all from their own people here. Why doesn't anybody picket all those Mexican consultates for Mexico's rich to pay their fair share of taxes as well as better schools and more jobs at home?

Funny how that works out, isn't it?

I would hate to be Mexican

First, what the hell with so many people not having a high school education? I guess that's what happens with education isn't a government mandate.

But the drug cartels in Mexico make Iraq and Afghanistan look like a resort town in the Mediterranean. Who can live with that going on?

Seriously, it's something like 30,000 gruesome murders and so on, which I believe is way rivals the death toll of two war zones.

But bottom line, there is incredible spin out there, by the special interest groups that unlimited migration or excessive immigration "helps the economy". It's crap.

there is another that claims "only immigrants" innovate and so on, also crap. We have about 13 different visas for the world's geniuses, but people fail to remember the U.S. had incredibly strict immigration policies and a host of innovations happened at that time. Innovation has much more to do with social and government supports, such as cheap, quality education, corporations who fully support R&D, universities which support research and cultures which enable it's citizens.

That's the difference, not flooding a nation with "immigrants". I mean why do they think Tesla came to the U.S. in the first place? It as the culture, the environment is why he did.

Agree mostly ... but not 100%

62% should not be confused with 100%.

The issue is immigration, but migration across our southern border should be given more slack than other immigration - because of the historical and cultural factors that bridge that border and always have and always do.

I don't think that it is 'racist' to demand that immigration must be restrained in periods of high unemployment. None other than Cesar Chavez - veteran of the U.S. Navy and organizer of the United Farm Workers - objected to unrestrained immigration as an anti-labor policy.

Canada, Europe, Australia and many others have implemented immigration policy on the basis of due consideration for unemployment for many, many years.

We should never allow ourselves to be presented as basing our policy proposals on anything other than common sense regard for a full employment policy. I don't think that we should allow ourselves to be seen as treating Mexico and Mexicans as the great culprits, when Mexican people, after all, have been crossing the border for hundreds of years.

I once met a man in Los Angeles who had been born in a wagon crossing the desert sometime around 1900 - he sincerely had no idea whether he had been born in the U.S. or in Mexico. There were no clear border demarcations.

We cannot justly or sanely imagine that our border with Mexico is anything like a clearly demarcated natural or cultural frontier.

Our policy with Mexico should be based on more consistent regard for our erstwhile 'Good Neighbor' policy. Mexicans should be honored as neighbors, exactly as should Canadians. Why not?

because they are not acting as good neighbors

It's not the same as Canada due to the numbers, the low skills levels and using America to shutter off their labor oversupply. That's not good and it's clearly lowering wages for U.S. unskilled labor by these numbers.

So, sure some slack but if it was at the level of Canada slack. This is a flood and just out of control and negatively impacting our economy.

Still no 100% - and who fails to act as good neighbors?

Sure the situations are different (realities of migration across our northern border versus migration across our southern border) but the principle is the SAME.

Do we supporters of enforcement of labor laws and proponents of a return to full employment policies really care about the sources of illegal immigration that negatively impacts employment in the U.S.? Findamentally, I don't, and I don't think Mexicans or Mexico is the issue. I hope that we do not need to lower our conversation to level of a mob to call ourselves populist!

Or have things turned so sour that we can no longer afford to think in terms of principle? Where is the consistency of law? What should a Mexican think, seeing that immigrants from Cuba are showered with government benefits, while Mexicans are often trucked like cattle back across the border with little regard for humanitarian principles such as splitting up of families?

As noted recently by some leaders of the current Arizona legislature, there is nothing unusual, racist or anti-Mexican in the Arizona statute that has come under so much scrutiny and condemnation. States are inherently authorized to enforce federal law when state and federal law are specifically aligned for that purpose. Enforcement of labor law should not need to be defended as some kind of emergency legislation!

Immigration of workers negatively impacting U.S. economy and working conditions IS one of many "out of control" realities or factors today, but immigration of workers negatively impacting U.S. economy and working conditions is hardly limited to Mexican illegal immigrants.

This is another global systemic problem, not really a U.S. problem specific to one other nation (that is an ally). Look at the flood coming across the Mediterranean from Africa. The problem really is what we are all supposed to deny -- global over-population trends (in some areas much more than in others).

BY THE WAY: Friends of mine recently returning from Guadalajara (NOT big spenders who live behind security fences) report that much of Mexico is still peaceful, friendly ... and QUITE AFFORDABLE for visitors from the U.S.! My friends lived, not in some plush walled resort, but among Mexican residents, and they found themselves to be surrounded by GOOD neighbors.

which is why I did the overview on the entire report

We don't do ethic based special interests on EP. The reality of the statistics are Mexicans are 62% of all national origins of illegals, which means 2.5% of the U.S. population are illegals from Mexico. EOM. This is an economics site and I'm not going to bring over here the never ending dribble on how some special ethnicity agenda is an except to the law of supply and demand or any of it. Not here but we're not going to deny the realities of global migration agendas of cheap labor market MNCs and other special interest groups or claim that magically the laws of labor economics and how they interact with migration are magically turned upside down.

Agreed

Did not dispute your numbers. Just reacting to "I would hate to be a Mexican".

I don't intend to bring ethnic stuff onto EP. That was my point - Arizona law not about ethnicity.

Immigration law enforcement not about ethnicity - about citizenship, legal entry and lawful employment practice.

Ah, well,

I was surprised by these statistics thinking surely Mexico had a free public K12 going on. That's really pretty horrific and why I said it. Although in the U.S., these days I am so glad I'm not a kid in public schools. It was a sewer when I went through.

Very good point about K-12: a case

I was volunteering to teach a free ESL group, and I met a student who had come from Mexico to work at construction labor (probably paid under the table). A serious working man, his thing was to try to send as much money to his extended family back home to be able to pay for as many kids to go to school as possible.

He explained it this way: it wasn't that he really preferred to be in the U.S. or that he could not survive in Mexico. It was just that the tuition for even one kid in Mexico was greater than what a man could conceivably earn there. He himself could barely read Spanish, let alone English. All he had ever done was hard work.

I don't know if he was legal or not. Never asked.

We could probably try to give enough money to Mexico that at least their K-6 or K-8 would be free ... but would that money ever filter down to the ground where people live? Anyway, what that would cost the taxpayer would probably be less than the costs associated with illegal immigration.

Thank you, Bob Oak, you're

Thank you, Bob Oak, you're about the only one who gets it about women, tech fields, and current policies.

women in tech, STEM

Pretty astounding isn't it? Women need to stand up, call out this bullshit as pure discrimination, just like other women did in the Medical fields, the legal fields and Wall Street, finance.

That is one unreal statistic and it gets no press. See that statistic in something like teaching or health care and the entire country would be up in arms.

Lobbying for more H-1Bs while laying off Americans

Great write up. All I can add is that a Fortune 500 company that I worked for was part of groups lobbying Congress for more H-1B visas while, at the same time, they were laying off over 100 engineers. It's all about cheap labor and American workers are paying the price.

We wuz scammed

Weren't we told that the inevitable result of the globalization thing would be the economic well-being of everyone, in all countries, would improve?

We wuz scammed.