Immigration Research Archives

Immigration Is No Fix for an Aging Society

By Steven Camarota

Its effects on programs like Social Security are tiny.

We hear it all the time. During the recent primary debate, Joe Biden said illegal immigrants “increased the lifespan of Social Security.” America must have large numbers of immigrants to “rebuild the demographic pyramid,” in the words of Jeb Bush.

To be sure, Americans have had small families for quite some time, and life expediency has increased. Our population is aging. But there is a significant amount of research on how much immigration can offset population aging in low-fertility countries such as the United States, and the answer is clear — not much.

In a 1992 article in Demography, economist Carl Schmertmann explained that, mathematically, “Constant inflows of immigrants, even at relatively young ages, do not necessarily rejuvenate low-fertility populations. In fact, immigration may even contribute to population aging.” After reviewing population projections, the former chair of Princeton’s sociology department and the director of its graduate population-studies program, Thomas Espenshade, observed:

It becomes apparent that the effect of alternative immigration levels on population age structure is small, unless we are willing to entertain a volume of U.S. immigration of historic proportion. . . . Immigration is a clumsy and unrealistic policy alternative to offset a shortage of domestic labor or to correct a perceived imbalance in the pensioner/worker ratio in the United States.

After looking at all the population projections prepared by the United Nations, Oxford demographer David Coleman has concluded, “There are no feasible migration solutions to the age-structure change and its effects on social security.” Coleman and others have pointed out that immigration can prevent population decline — that is, it can add a lot of people to the country — but it does not significantly change the age structure in the way that many immigration advocates seem to imagine. If we wanted to use immigration to offset population aging, the level necessary would have to be truly enormous.

A recent paper I coauthored based on the most recent Census Bureau population projections examined the impact of immigration on the nation’s age structure. Assuming current levels of immigration continue, the latest projections indicate that the total U.S. population will reach 404 million in 2060 — 79 million larger than in 2017. Future immigrants and their descendants account for nearly all (75 million) of the increase. Under this scenario, 59 percent of the population will be working-age (16 to 64). By contrast, in a zero-immigration scenario, 57 percent of the population would be working-age in 2060. More realistically, if immigration were limited to half of the expected level, 58 percent would be working age…

Read the rest here.

Record $120 billion sent home to 3 top nations flooding US with illegal immigrants

Washington Examiner

March 20, 2019

 

Image: Washington Examiner

“The so-called “remittances” have been in the focus of some immigration reform advocates who want to tax the transfers. Proponents said that a tax on the money, some of which is collected under the table and outside payroll taxes, could help pay for President Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico.

Under one proposal that failed to pass Congress, remittances would be taxed 7 percent. Pew Research Center revealed in January that immigrants in the United States sent home $138 billion in 2016 alone. A 7 percent tax would raise nearly $10 billion, enough to fund building the wall in three years.”

“These huge numbers also suggest that the United States should follow the lead of Oklahoma, and start collecting a share of the remittances to help mitigate the costs of illegal immigration. You could build a wall with some of that money, compensate victims of illegal immigration, and much more – and Congress should do it,” said immigration expert Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Money immigrants send home is a huge part of the economy of those three nations, reaching over 20 percent in El Salvador and Honduras. Over 90 percent of the remittances come from immigrants inside the United States, though a United Nations group said that the money comes from a total of over 100 countries. Read more here.

Boston Herald.com

February 9, 2019

Froma Harrop

No lack of skilled American tech workers

Americans don’t usually think of technical professionals as “guest workers,” yet at any one time, there are more than a half-million foreigners holding tech jobs in the U.S. They are here thanks to the H-1B visa program. H-1B, so the official spiel goes, addresses an alleged shortage of “highly skilled” Americans to fill jobs “requiring specialized knowledge.”

Growing evidence, however, points to companies using the program to replace perfectly qualified American workers with cheaper ones from elsewhere. A new report published by the Atlantic Council documents the abuses. The authors are Ron Hira, a political scientist at Howard University, and Bharath Gopalaswamy, director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.

Among their criticisms:

• Virtually any white-collar job can be taken by an H-1B visa holder. About 70 percent of them are held not by what we consider tech workers but by teachers, accountants and salespeople, among others.

“By every objective measure,” Hira and Gopalaswamy write, “most H-1B workers have no more than ordinary skills, skills that are abundantly available in the U.S. labor market.”

U.S. colleges graduate 50 percent more students in engineering and in computer and information science than are hired in those fields every year, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.

Cutting labor costs is clearly the paramount “need.” In Silicon Valley, computer systems analysts make on average just over $116,000 a year. But companies can hire H-1B workers at a lower skill level, paying them only about $77,000 a year to do the same work, the report says.

And it’s not unheard-of for companies to ask American workers to train the H-1B workers taking their jobs. “60 Minutes” featured Robert Harrison, a senior telecom engineer at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Asked whether training his replacement felt like digging his own grave, Harrison responded:

Why does this program continue without serious reform? Mainly because its big boosters include such marquee tech names as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg and Eric Schmidt. Big Tech has showered think tanks with funding to brainwash Americans into believing that their country is starving for tech expertise. Read the rest here.