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Experts Untie the Immigration and Unemployment Knot

Research Reveals Disconnect Along Geographic, Ethnic, and Racial Lines

May 19, 2009

Washington, DC – Today, the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) released two installments of a three-partreport, Untying the Knot, which seeks to debunk the frequently misrepresented relationship betweenimmigration and unemployment. The reports, prepared by Rob Paral and Associates, examined data fromthe Census Bureau and found that there is no apparent relationship between the number of recentimmigrants in a particular locale and the unemployment rate among native-born whites, blacks, Latinos,or Asians. Even now, at a time of economic recession and high unemployment, there is no correlationbetween the number of recent immigrant workers in a given state, county, or city and the unemploymentrate among native-born workers.

“We commissioned this report in order to take a serious look at whether or not immigration is in factimpacting unemployment among the native-born and what we have found is that scary rhetoric is nosubstitute for good data. These findings are in line with other long-term studies conducted around theworld which have shown that immigration has very little impact on native unemployment,” said BenJohnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Law Foundation. “In order to have a seriouspolicy debate we need good, honest numbers and that is what we believe we have provided in thesereports.”

Dan Siciliano, Senior Research Fellow at the Immigration Policy Center and Executive Director of theProgram in Law, Economics, and Business at Stanford Law School, also discussed the exploitation ofU.S. unemployment levels to promote a political agenda: “The level of unemployment in the U.S. ispainful, scary and difficult—so we shouldn’t belittle it. However, the very notion that immigration hasanything to do with unemployment does just that. It belittles the challenge of unemployment,” saysSiciliano.

Rob Paral, also a Senior Research Fellow at the Immigration Policy Center and principle of Rob Paral andAssociates, further pointed out that, “on the question of race we find that there’s just no connectionbetween immigration and unemployment. The culprit when it comes to unemployment is notimmigration.”

For more information read:

• Untying the Knot (Part I of III): The Unemployment and Immigration Disconnect
• Untying the Knot (Part II of III): Immigration and Native-Born Unemployment Across Racial/Ethnic Groups