Immigrants aren't the reason wages haven't gone up enough; those decisions are made in the boardrooms that too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When it comes to finances, immigrants are far savvier than native-born Americans. They keep their expenses low. They save their money.
Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers. We are going to have an immigration system that works, but one that works for the American people.
Workers who come to the U.S. see their wages and their standard of living boosted sharply simply by crossing the border. That's a good thing, and one of the best arguments for immigration reform, even if you'll rarely hear a politician make it.
The study titled 'Impact of Immigration on Wages, by Education Level, 1994-2007' found that increased immigration had an effect of lowering wages for earlier immigrants by an average of 4.6 percent. Running counter to popular perception is the finding that for native-born Americans, wages actually increased by 0.6 percent.
If you look at the US economy over the last 15-20 years wages have been stagnating or even declining.
In addition to joblessness, of course, by the working of supply and demand, when you have a larger number of people unemployed, wages do not rise at the normal level, so that we had last year a drop in real wages.
Immigrants have historically been an entrepreneurial bunch.
Because the truth is, today's immigrants, as they have for generation after generation, work the longest hours at the hardest jobs for the lowest pay, jobs that are just about impossible to fill.
Let me respond with a few points, the first being that all immigrants pay taxes, income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, every tax when they make a purchase.
Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.