MORE ON IMMIGRATION

Immigration costs U.S. men
By Julia Malone 5/4/04
COX NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON - Two decades' growth in the supply of immigrant workers cost native-born American men an average $1,700 in annual wages by the year 2000, a top economist has concluded.

Hispanic and black Americans were hurt most by the influx of foreign-born workers, says a new report by Harvard University's George J. Borjas, considered a leading authority on the impact of immigration.

"What past immigration has done - and what the temporary worker program will continue to do on a potentially larger scale - is to depress wages and increase profits of the firms that employ the immigrants," Borjas said.

"The reduction in earnings occurs regardless of whether the immigrants are legal or illegal, permanent or temporary," said Borjas. "It is the presence of additional workers that reduces wages, not their legal status."

The Borjas study concluded that U.S.-born high school dropouts suffered the most - a 7.4 percent drop in annual wages by the year 2000.

For high school graduates and workers with some college, the loss was a little more than 2 percent. And for college graduates, wages were held back an average 3.6 percent.

Borjas found that U.S.-born Hispanic workers saw their wages reduced by an average 5 percent, and U.S.-born blacks experienced a 4.5 percent drop. These two groups faced the most direct competition from foreign-born workers, he said.

Borjas, himself an immigrant from Cuba, said the data show that Mexican immigration "accounts for virtually the entire adverse impact" on wages lost by American-born high school dropouts. Workers with only a high school diploma would have lost less than 1 percent of their 2000 wages, he said.