In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

>> 43 3 Empirical Data on Immigration America’s immigration system is outdated, unsuited to the needs of our economy and to the values of our country. We should not be content with laws that punish hard-working people and deny businesses willing workers and invite chaos at our border. —President George W. Bush, February 2, 2005 [I] believe our immigration policy should be driven by our best judgment of what is in the economic interest of the United States and what is in the best interest of the American worker. . . . [I, as president of the United States,] recognize that an orderly controlled border and an immigration system designed to meet our economic needs are important pillars of a healthy and robust economy. —President Barack Obama, January 10, 2010 Perhaps no issue related to the immigration debate is touted more as fact than the so-called economic consequences of undocumented immigration . Time and time again politicians, news pundits, and the occasional academic advance arguments concerning the negative impact of undocumented immigrants on our economy. With often little more than conjecture or individualized anecdotes to support their sweeping conclusions, commentators weigh in on the presumed consequences 44 > 45 that the maximum number in that period could reach 200 million people.”3 Claims like these are not only unsupported by the facts, but also contrary to logic. For one, the entire population of Mexico is about 115 million .4 In order for 200 million people to immigrate to the United States, the entire population of Mexico and Central America would have to relocate.5 In fact, Rector’s estimates were criticized by prominent demographers as well as by the Congressional Budget Office, which “estimated that the [proposed Kennedy-McCain] bill would have resulted in 8 million people entering the country legally over 20 years.”6 In the 1990s the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that has undertaken numerous studies on immigration, reported that immigrant population statistics, in terms of real numbers, were in no way approaching what the alarmists have described as an explosion, as shown in the charts reproduced here in figures 3.1 and 3.2. According to the Cato report, The numbers of aliens illegally residing and working in the United States at present (the “stock” of nondocumented persons) as well as the number by which the stock is increased each year (the net “flow” of nondocumented persons) enter importantly into the discussion of immigration. In the past when there was slight knowledge of these subjects, huge numbers were bandied about; for example, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has publicized estimates as high as 12 million residents. By now, however, demographers have a rather solid understanding of how many illegals are in the United States and have now reached reasonable consensus . (Some of the major methods include analyses of death registrations, census data, Mexican census data, and surveys of Mexican villages.) . . . According to an authoritative recent review, the net flow “is 200,000 to 300,000 a year” (Fix and Passel 1994, 4). This estimate is of the same order (though perhaps a bit lower) than the 305,000 net annual addition that was estimated for 1989 to 1992 by Robert Warren of the INS (another main long-time student of the subject), a number which itself reflects a “modest drop” from the 334,000 estimated for the period 1982–1988 46 > 47 rhetoric: “Although the absolute number of current immigrants rivals the peak levels at the beginning of the twentieth century, expressed relative to the size of the existing U.S. population, current immigration is far more modest.”8 Another chapter in the NRC report reaches similar conclusions: “Immigrant flows were larger in the past.”9 To put the current immigration flows into proper perspective . . . [o]ur calculations reveal that, in proportionate terms, the current inflow of immigrants is rather modest. . . . If we look only at the “regular” immigrants —that is, exclusive of those admitted under the IRCA—then the current inflows approximate those in the very slowest years from the period between 1840 and the onset of World War I. . . . Only the disruptions of 1830 1920 1910 1900 1890 1880 1870 1860 1850 1840 1970 1960 1950 1940 1930 1990 1980 1.2% 1.0% .8% .6% .4% .2% 1.4% Figure 3.2. Ten-year moving average rate of immigration, 1830–1993. This graph shows the 10-year moving average of the number of new immigrants relative to the size of the population. The rate of...

Share