Study: State immigrants don't hurt wages for U.S. workers

[Kadie]

Study: State immigrants don't hurt wages for U.S. workers
Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, February 27, 2007


(02-27) 16:33 PST -- Immigrants in California do not compete with U.S.-born workers for jobs or depress their wages, though they do push down the wages of previously-arrived immigrants, a new study by the Public Policy Institute of California found.

The study comes amid a volatile national debate over immigration and the question of whether and how much the influx of immigrant workers has affected wages and employment for people already in the United States.

Some past analyses found that less educated American workers, particularly high school dropout, suffer from at least modest wage and job competition with immigrant workers. But UC Davis economist Giovanni Peri, who completed the study released today, determined that in California immigrants' presence has not affected high school dropouts and that U.S.-born workers on average experienced a 4 percent wage boost between 1990 and 2004 from immigration.

What has happened in part is that the state's economic pie has grown -- in some measure due to the immigrants' own role as consumers, Peri said.

But native and foreign-born workers have tended to fill complementary niches in the labor market rather than compete for the same jobs, he said.

more...
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/27/BAGHROC7E68.DTL

[Sapere aude]

1. This is the second study that has this finding. Better not tell the xenophobes.

[RB TexLa]

2. They will just say the study was done by "corporatists" and accuse anyone of reading them

of being a Republican.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

3. But..but..we woulda' been millionaire lettuce pickers if those durn immigrants

hadn't taken all the good jobs!!