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By Steven A. Camarota What is Poverty? Most examinations of poverty in the United States have typically focused either on how broad economic trends and social welfare policy affect the size of the population living in poverty or the socio-demographic characteristics of those in poverty. Almost no research has examined immigration's impact on the incidence of poverty in the United States. This report looks at the composition of persons living in poverty in 1979, 1989, and 1997 in order to evaluate the effect of immigration policy on the size and growth of the poor population (poor and poverty are used synonymously). The findings indicate that despite a strong economy over much of this period, the poverty rate for persons in immigrant-headed households not only has remained high, but actually has increased significantly in the last two decades. As a result, immigration has become a major factor in the size and growth of poverty. Findings
Why Care About Immigration's Impact on Poverty? Impact on the Poor Already Here. Probably the most obvious reason for concern about immigration's impact on the incidence of poverty in the United States is the effect on the poor already here, both native and immigrant. The cost of means-tested programs designed to help the poor depends in large part on the number of people who are eligible to receive benefits and services. If immigration increases the number of people who are in need of assistance, then this can only raise the cost of such efforts and undermine political support for programs that already are unpopular. Alternately, if overall government expenditures on programs for the poor are kept constant, each recipient's benefit must be reduced so that all can be covered. Therefore, if one is concerned about the poor already here, increasing the number of people in or near poverty through immigration is clearly counter-productive. Effect on the Tax Base. Because of their very low incomes and the progressive nature of most taxes, individuals in poverty pay very little in taxes. Not surprisingly, they also tend to use a great deal of services provided by the government, especially means-tested programs. As a result, they are, almost without exception, a net drain on public coffers. If immigration increases the size of the poor population, then this is very likely to have a negative effect on the tax base, particularly in those cities and states where most immigrants settle.
Impact on Political and Social Stability. As well-known political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset has observed, democracies can only really work in societies that are not beset by large-scale poverty and deprivation. Widespread poverty makes it much more difficult to engage in the kind of give and take that is an integral part of the democratic process. Social science research also indicates that the distribution of income has an impact on how people view one another: with more poverty comes less trust and greater suspicion of others. Great disparities in income cannot help but create greater social distance between members of a community and this in turn is likely to have a negative impact on political and social harmony. Moreover, it is well established that children who grow up in poverty are more likely to be involved in illicit activity, have higher teenage pregnancy rates, exhibit lower academic achievement, and suffer from a host of other social problems that are much less common among children who do not grow up poor. The poverty that the children of immigrants experience today is likely to have long-term consequences for them and our nation. Implications for Immigrant and Immigration Policy. In addition to the impact on American society in general, looking at poverty among immigrants is also important because it is one way of evaluating the consequences of current immigration policy. It also gives us a good idea of how immigrants admitted in the future are likely to fare if current policy remains in place. This is particularly important because, without a change in immigration policy, 10 million new immigrants likely will settle permanently in the United States in just the next decade. The success, or lack thereof, of past immigrants is probably the best means we have of predicting how tomorrow's immigrants will do if the same selection criteria continue to be used. In addition to immigration policy, which is concerned with who may come and how many, there is immigrant policy, which deals with how we treat the foreign-born living in the United States. Looking at poverty among immigrants is necessary, whatever immigration policy is adopted in the future, because a large percentage of immigrants and their children already here are living in poverty. Our immigrant policy as well as our anti-poverty efforts must take into account this new reality.
What's Different About Poverty Caused by Immigration? In any discussion of poverty resulting from immigration, it is important to remember that immigration is a discretionary policy of the federal government. The federal government determines the size, growth, and characteristics of the foreign-born population by setting the level of legal immigration and by the amount of resources it devotes to controlling illegal immigration. While the government can certainly do things to ameliorate poverty caused by such factors as changes in family structures or the economy, these things are complex social phenomena and are not the direct result of a specific federal policy. In contrast, the poverty that results from immigration is avoidable in a way that is not the case for poverty caused by domestic conditions. Data Sources and Methods Data Sources. The data in this study come primarily from the 1980 and 1990 censuses and the March 1998 Current Population Survey (CPS). The censuses and the CPS are used because they are the best sources of information on persons born outside of the United States — referred to as foreign-born by the Census Bureau. For the purposes of this report, foreign-born and immigrant are used synonymously.
Methods. The CPS and censuses ask respondents about their income for the previous year. Therefore, as is the case with poverty statistics published by the government, the figures in this analysis from the March 1998 CPS are for 1997 and the figures from the 1980 and 1990 censuses are for 1979 and 1989 respectively. This report examines poverty for persons living in immigrant- and native-headed households. For the purposes of this report, a household is defined in the following manner: Individuals related to the household head by blood, marriage, or adoption, regardless of their own nativity, are considered to be in an immigrant or native household based on whether the head of the household is an immigrant or a native. Individuals unrelated to the head are considered immigrant or native based on their own nativity. Defined in this way, 92.2 percent of the people living in immigrant-headed households were immigrants themselves (67.4 percent) or the native-born child under age 21 (24.8 percent) of an immigrant father or mother in 1998. Therefore, this approach primarily measures poverty for immigrants and their children. Since a child's standard of living is a function of his or her parents' income, this method captures the full effect of immigration on the incidence of poverty in the United States. Policy Implications Knowing that our immigration policy is causing poverty to grow significantly does not tell us what we should do about this situation. The negative implications for immigrants and their children and society in general make it clear that we cannot continue to ignore this problem. Two sets of policy options should be implemented to deal with this problem. First, immigration policy should be changed with the intent of reducing the flow of immigrants likely to end up in poverty. As has already been pointed out, without a change in immigration policy, an estimated 10 million new immigrants will arrive in just the next decade. A large percentage of these immigrants and their young children will end up in or near poverty if we continue to select immigrants in the same manner as in the past. The second set of policy options to deal with this problem would involve the development and implementation of policies that address the needs of immigrant households already here. This would have to be done in the context of existing anti-poverty programs and with the intent of meeting the specific needs of immigrant households in poverty.
Changing Legal Immigration Policy. Because low educational attainment is one of the primary reasons for the high poverty rate associated with immigrants, selecting a larger proportion of immigrants based on their skills would reduce poverty among immigrants who arrive in the future. In most years, 65 to 70 percent of visas are allotted to the family members of U.S. citizens and Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs). By limiting which relatives are eligible for admission, the number of immigrants who are admitted without regard to their skills or ability to compete in the modern American economy could be reduced. The Commission on Immigration Reform chaired by the late Barbara Jordan suggested limiting family immigration to the spouses, minor children, and parents of citizens and the spouses and minor children of LPRs. This would eliminate the preferences now in the law for the siblings and adult children (over age 21) of citizens and LPRs. The preference for the spouses and children of non-citizens should also probably be eliminated, since these provisions apply to family members acquired after the alien has received a green card, but before he or she has become a citizen. If the parents of citizens were also eliminated as a category, family immigration would be lowered to roughly 300,000 per year, and the number would likely fall to 200,000 in a few years. Humanitarian immigration should also undergo some changes. A greater effort should be made to limit asylum and refugee status to those who are genuinely in need of permanent resettlement because of political persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution. The expansion of asylum grounds to groups not originally intended is likely to undermine public support for this small but needed category of admission. Abuse of the asylum law also encourages illegal immigration by allowing those who make it into the United States to claim asylum on specious grounds in an effort to forestall deportation. As for refugees, the system must continue to remain flexible and in some years it may need to expand well beyond the 50,000 originally intended by the Refugee Act of 1980. Limiting resettlement to 50,000, however, would still allow the United States to take in all of the persons identified by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees as needing permanent resettlement. The Jordan Commission also suggested eliminating the visa lottery. While the lottery represents only 6 to 8 percent of the legal immigrant flow, it makes little sense to admit immigrants based on luck. Restricting family immigration to only the spouses and minor children of U.S. Citizens, rationalizing humanitarian immigration, and ending the lottery would significantly reduce the number of legal immigrants admitted each year without regard to their ability to compete in the U.S. economy. This would ensure that immigration does not continue to cause a substantial increase in poverty into the indefinite future.
Reducing Illegal Immigration. While the overwhelming majority of people in poverty living in immigrant households are legal immigrants or the U.S.-born children of immigrants, reducing illegal immigration would still be helpful because illegal immigrants tend to be very low-skilled. Among those who study the issue, there is broad agreement that cutting off illegal aliens from jobs offers the best hope of reducing illegal immigration. There are three steps that are needed to make worksite enforcement more effective. First, a national computerized system that allows employers to quickly verify that persons are legally entitled to work in the United States needs to be implemented. Tests of such systems have generally been well received by employers. Second, the INS must significantly increase worksite enforcement efforts. Congress has repeatedly failed to increase funding for enforcement, even though the INS continues to ask for more agents. Third, despite increases in funding over the last few years more could be done at the border. Controlling the border with Mexico would require perhaps 20,000 agents and the development of a system of formidable fences and other barriers. The cuts in legal immigration proposed earlier would also go a long way toward reducing illegal immigration in the long run because the current system creates a strong incentive to come illegally. There are approximately 4 million people qualified for immigration to the United States but who are waiting their turn to receive the limited number of visas available each year in the various family categories. Such a system encourages those who have been selected, but have to wait, to simply come to the United States and settle illegally in anticipation of the day their visa is issued. Eliminating the sibling and adult children categories would alleviate this situation by doing away with the huge waiting lists. Cutting legal immigration would also be very helpful in controlling illegal immigration because communities of recent immigrants serve as magnets for illegal immigration, providing housing, jobs, and entree to America for illegal aliens. The changes in legal and illegal immigration policy outlined above would, after a few years, restore immigration levels to their historical average of about 300,000 to 400,000 annually. Even with these changes, however, the United States would continue to accept more than twice as many immigrants as any other country.
Reducing Poverty Among Immigrants Already in the Country. While decreasing the number of less-skilled legal and illegal immigrants would ensure that fewer immigrants admitted in the future end up in poverty, it would not lift immigrants and their children already in the country out of poverty. The most direct way to reduce poverty for immigrants is to increase the dollar value of means-tested cash programs designed to assist persons in or near poverty. The primary disadvantage of this approach is the cost. Expenditures on means-tested cash assistance programs total $86 billion a year. The fiscal costs associated with a dramatic increase in spending on cash assistance programs creates political obstacles that seem insurmountable at present. While increases in such programs seem unlikely, it may be possible to further restore immigrant eligibility for welfare programs beyond what has already been done. However, further restoration of benefits to immigrants that were cut as part of welfare reform should be done as a matter of fairness. It should not be seen as a way of significantly reducing immigrant poverty because, as already noted, welfare reform did not increase immigrant-related poverty. Because one has to work to receive benefits, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is one means-tested income transfer program that has considerable political support. Increasing the value of this program would certainly be helpful to the nearly 5 million persons who are poor and live in an immigrant household where at least one person works. Of course, this program is also costly — $22 billion annually. Moreover, the EITC would not help the 2.7 million persons living in immigrant households where no one works. Another area where new initiatives may be possible is job retraining, which also tends to be more popular than income redistribution. Since the low skill level associated with immigrants is one of the primary reasons so many are in poverty, increasing their ability to compete in the labor market would certainly help reduce their poverty rates. Ideally, new programs specifically designed to help immigrants adjust to life in their new country should also be developed. This may include adult English-language instruction and new efforts to make immigrants better able to access both the U.S. job market and services available from government and private sources. Reducing the flow of less-skilled immigrants who enter each year would also have the desirable effect of reducing job competition between more established immigrants and new arrivals for low-wage jobs. Reducing the supply of this kind of labor would create upward pressure on wages and benefits for the working poor, including immigrants already in the country. Over time this should reduce poverty among immigrants who work.
ConclusionThe findings of this study indicate that poverty in America is increasingly being driven by immigration policy. With immigrant households now accounting for more than one-fifth of the poor, and one-fourth of child poverty, immigration policy should become an integral part of any discussion of poverty in America. In fact, it is not too much to say that an understanding of immigration has become essential to understanding the cause of poverty in America. Why Has This Problem Largely Been Ignored? Part of the reason immigrant-related poverty has not attracted the attention it should is that until relatively recently immigrants and their children did not account for a large proportion of the poor. Policy makers and researchers concerned about poverty have generally focused on other issues such as wages for less-skilled workers, changing family structure, discrimination, and the level of government benefits. Moreover, immigrants are not politically influential. Many are not citizens and therefore cannot vote or afford to make campaign contributions. Also, as already mentioned, immigration is a discretionary policy of federal government. Elected officials in Washington may be reluctant to call attention to the fact that they have either supported — or at least not opposed — policies that have led to enormous growth in the poor population. Another reason the dramatic growth in immigrant-related poverty largely has been ignored stems from the dual role immigrant advocates often play. Most are also advocates for the current high level of immigration. These advocacy groups may be hesitant to call attention to immigrant-related poverty because to do so would highlight a fundamental problem with the very policy they work so hard to keep in place. Costly new income support programs and efforts to increase the skills of immigrants so they can better compete in the labor market would undermine one of the arguments most often made by supporters of high immigration, namely that it is an economic and fiscal benefit to the country. In a very real sense, there is a conflict of interest between being an advocate for immigrants and being an advocate for mass immigration. As a result, those who are supposed to speak for immigrants do not call for the kind of large-scale effort needed to help the millions of immigrants and their children who languish in poverty.
Immigrant Poverty Cannot Be Ignored. While some may be tempted to ignore immigrant-related poverty at a time of relative prosperity, this seems very unwise. In just the last eight years the size of the poor population increased by three million as a direct result of the growth in poverty among persons in immigrant households. If current trends continue, by the end of the next decade, 11 million people residing in immigrant households will live in poverty, accounting for perhaps 30 percent of the nation's total poor. The implications of this situation for the immigrants themselves, their children, and American society in general must be acknowledged eventually. If we wish to continue to admit the vast majority of immigrants without regard to their skills or ability to compete in the U.S. labor market, then new programs must be developed to deal with the poverty that will inevitably result from such a system. To do otherwise is not in the best interests of either the United States or the immigrants themselves.
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