So lay off of them...it's not their fault..

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/280855_immig11.html

Americans' job prospects not hurt by immigrants, research finds

Friday, August 11, 2006

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON -- Big increases in immigration since 1990 have not hurt employment prospects for American workers, says a study released Thursday.

The report comes as Congress and much of the nation are debating immigration policy, a big issue in this fall's midterm congressional elections.

The Pew Hispanic Center found no evidence that increases in immigration led to higher unemployment among Americans, said Rakesh Kochhar, who wrote the study.

Kochhar said other factors, such as economic growth, played a larger role than immigration in setting the job market for Americans.

Kochhar cautioned that immigration could affect job markets in some local areas, but the study found no national trends supporting a link. States with big increases in immigration were just as likely to have low unemployment as states with little immigration, he said.

"We cannot say with certainty that the growth in the foreign-born population has either hurt or helped" the job market, Kochhar said.

The study, however, did not look at whether wages were affected by immigration. Advocates for tighter immigration policies argue that immigrant workers depress wages for American workers, especially those with few skills and little education.

Immigration supporters argue that foreign workers often take jobs that Americans don't want and won't take.

The Pew Hispanic Center is a non-partisan research organization that does not advocate policy positions. The center studied census data on the increase in immigrants from 1990 to 2000, and from 2000 to 2004, for each state. It matched those figures with state employment rates, unemployment rates and participation in the labor force among native-born Americans.

The U.S. had 28 million immigrants -- legal and illegal -- age 16 and older in 2000, an increase of 61 percent from 1990. By 2004, there were 32 million.

Among the study's findings:


Twenty-two states had immigration levels above the national average from 1990 to 2000. Among them, 14 had employment rates for native-born workers above the national average in 2000, and eight had employment rates below the national average.


Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia had immigration levels below the national average from 1990 to 2000. Among them, 16 had above average employment rates for native-born workers in 2000, and 13 had below average employment rates.


Twenty-four states had immigration levels above the national average from 2000 to 2004. Among them, 13 states had employment rates for native-born Americans above the national average in 2004, and 11 had employment rates below the national average.


Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia had immigration levels below the national average from 2000 to 2004. Among them, 12 had employment rates for native-born Americans above the national average, and 15 had employment rates below the national average.

Immigrants tend to be younger and have less education than American workers. The study, however, found "no apparent relationship between the growth of foreign workers with less education and the employment outcome of native workers with the same low level of education."

However, Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, said his research shows that many young workers with little education are hurt by competition from immigrants.

"Employment for less-educated natives has declined, and their wages have declined," said Camarota, who advocates stricter immigration policies.

"There is no shortage of less-educated workers in the United States."

© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

So, one man's statistics say that immigrants, including illegal ones, probably don't take jobs from citizens, except those who are so low on the educational level that there's little likelihood they'd get a job or stay employed.

I'm not sure the Pew research group is totally unbiased, okay? But there's their report. What I haven't noticed in Pew Research reports is the inflammatory, Hispanic-hating, racist, Mexican-bashing, bigoted remarks we see here on this forum.

Jesus loves the little Mexicans, all the aliens in the USA; black and yellow, red and white....Jesus loves them, this I know, for the Bible tells me so...."by this shall men know that you are disciples, if you have love, one for another."

What an idiotic article. For the slower members of the group, the above statements directly contradict each other. MARK

One thing is certain, the illegals have depressed the WAGE LEVELS of unskilled labor. And lots of Americans do unskilled labor ...

Agree with you. Any excess of anything be it a commodity or labor will drive prices down.

Unless, of course, he was trying to say that the evidence isn't conclusive in either direction. And thus, it doesn't have a large effect on the job market.

They conveninetly overlook the tax support housing industry in this. When was the last time you saw an American crew putting up frames for these cheaply made and over-priced housing additions? I haven't heard English spoken by housing construction workers NOR lawncare services in years!!!

Making the statement-
"job prospects not hurt by immigrants, research finds"
FALSE! MARK

Uhhhh, no.

If you are looking for a statistical correlation between illegal immigration numbers and job availability, but there is no correlation, then the conclusion to be drawn is that immigration has no effect on job availability. It's pretty simple.

Laredo, do you mean the subsidized housing for poor people, paid by the govt, or just home construction in general? Sure enough, especially in Laredo, Texas, you wouldn't hear much English. My twins who live in Brownsville can't speak Spanish, though. And when I speak Mexican (Castillian or chilango) Spanish in Brownsville, the locals don't understand me well.

Perhaps you made the point of the article, Laredo: Spanish speaking workers have, indeed, taken a lot of the lower-paying, unskilled jobs that poorly skilled, US-born citizens don't want or can't keep.

The more ambitious of my twins is a waitress, competing with illegals and Tex-Mex "townies." She's lucky to make $8 per hour.

Nooo, the conclusion to be drawn is "We cannot say with certainty that the growth in the foreign-born population has either hurt or helped" the job market. MARK

and if immigration would have been affecting the job market negatively, there would have been a correlation there. But there wasn't. So apparently it isn't.

Ignorant assumption from a simpleton who knows nothing of statistics and causation. A more likely assumption would be that Illegal immigrants go where the jobs are as opposed to where the jobs are not.
MARK

Awww, is that cute?? Mark hurling insults when he doesn't know what he's talking about....awwwwwwwwww, it's adorable.....

I shouldn't feel the need to explain myself. I know, as does pretty much everyone here, that I'm much more educated than you, and have actually taken a statistics class, so I already know about t-square and chi-square analysis, whereas you are going to Google it, and then cut-and-paste an article so you sound like you know what you're talking about. Not to mention that I work with statistical correlation at my job, and create best-fit-lines every single day. Certainly my background has taught me more about the subject then the woodworking class you excelled at in high school, or your GED classes, when you couldn't cut it in any other subjects....

Awww, isn't that cute??? awwwwwwwwwwwww....

Notice how I include relevent comments along with my insults. You might give it a try. I would love to see your t-square and chi-square analysis that supports the conclusions that "job prospects not hurt by immigrants".
Too bad your education failed in teaching you the meaning of the statistics because you and the AP writer seem to have an incredibly uneducated understanding. MARK

They dont want them because they are "lower-paying". They continue to be "lower-paying" because there is a steady stream of illegals to fill those positions at those payrates. Take away the illegals and pay rates for these jobs will increase until available positions are filled, automated or done without. MARK

The following anecdote comes from Newsweek, so it may not be reliable. Remember Clinton boasting that the new law had done away with welfare as we knew it, and created workfare? A reporter interviewed some state-run employment agencies who were trying to get welfare recipients off the dole and into meaningful work. Most of the recipients who were ordered to attend an orientation class never even showed up. Or, they didn't finish the class, or find work, or keep working. They're not workers.

Yeah, I feel sorry for the poor Whites, poor Blacks, poor Hispanic citizens, who try to find work and can't find decent jobs that can support them. The study we are discussing admits that those poor, untrained citizens have trouble finding work. But what is this, the right wingers trying to be conservatively compassionate for the poor people? Good.

Nope. Just disputing the claim that Immigration of Illegals doesnt hurt job prospects, used by the whiney liberals in support of immigration. MARK

Logic and statistics are two entirely different fields though...you really can't compare them. Logic is not math, but statistics is. The point of correlation studies are to see if there is an appreciable correlation (well, duh). When a correlation is not statistically evident, essentially what it is saying is that during any one day, immigration can have a negative effect on the job market, and on another day, it could have a positive effect, but neither one is dominant. If immigration had a negative effect on the market, there should be a linear relationship, wherein as immigration levels go up, unemployment (or whatever other parameter) goes up similarly...and thus one parameter and it's level could predict the other.

Your point is right, in that an upward trend could be noticed, but the variance from the slope is too strong, and thus the right correlation coefficient level is not achieved, and thus no official correlation is had. Of course, the same could be said for a negative trend. Then again, with proper sampling techniques and high numbers, this should be a non-factor.

Essentially, there is probably as good of a chance that it is affected negatively as much as positively. My opinion of this is that even though immigrants are occupying some jobs, it is canceled out by trickle-down economics: higher profit margins due to lower immigrant wages, allows for more money being thrown into the economy, and more jobs are created that way.

And now lets here your statistical analysis that takes the above observation and leads to

"the conclusion to be drawn is that immigration has no effect on job availability."
or
"Americans' job prospects not hurt by immigrants".
You should probably stick to gathering the statistics and leave the analysis to others. MARK

When I spin around in a circle 5 times before flipping a coin, there is just as good a chance that it will land on heads as it will on tails.

The spinning around has no net effect on the outcome, since there is as good a chance that the end result will be negative (let's say that that's Heads) as it will be positive (Tails). There is no net effect.

With increasing levels of immigration, no correlation has been found in either direction.

Therefore, depending on the level of specificity with their correlation coefficients (achieving a correlation of 0.995 is much, much more difficult than obtaining one at 0.95), no correlation, in all likelihood, means that there is basically as good a chance that high immigration leads to a booming job market as it does a busted job market.

Therefore, immigration has no net effect in either direction (be it, positive or negative). That's not to say that it has no effect whatsoever, just that according to the numbers, immigration is not leading in one direction. So therefore, in the long run, immigration isn't leading towards a poor job market. Depending on the specificity of the correlation and the numbers obtained, there may be as good a chance that it has a positive impact as a negative one, but in all likelihood, it apparently has little impact. If an appreciable impact was made, a correlation could be made, with great impact resulting from higher immigration levels.

Got it now, captain?

If I cared, I could read the study, find out exactly what testing they used, the correlation coefficiant, the kind of numbers they got, etc. But when it comes down to it, I really don't care that much. Either way, my life remains unaffected.

Heads or tails is a random event. Where an immigrant decides to live and work is not. MARK

I didn't take a statistics course, and that's what Mr. Left is arguing, and dixon is merely disputing without using stat. terms, so I'll leave this fruitless discussion. Good luck.

But apparently, their affect on the job market is pretty random.


And around and around we go....

According to the Pew research the "affect" is unknown
"We cannot say with certainty that the growth in the foreign-born population has either hurt or helped" the job market".
You just dont understand the difference between a correlation and a cause, or the significance of a lack of correlation.
Like I said, a much more likely explanation is that Immigrants tend to go where the jobs are, and avoid going where they are not. Implicit in your conclusions is the assumption that they do not. MARK

Im not disputing the statistics einstein. I am disputing the conclusions Mr left and the AP are drawing from the statistics. His rants on statistics is just his way of avoiding that dispute.
Just put "Statistics" and "Causation" into google. First two look to be on point
"Misuse and Misconception of Statistical Facts"
" Statistics 2 - Correlation does not equal causation"
The unemployment rate of any given are is caused by 100s of factors. Certainly the number of immigrants would be one of those factors. Because it is only one of 99 factors, you wouldnt even expect to see a direct correlation between # of immigrants in an area and the unemployment rate of that area.
There is a DIRECT correlation between the size of a childs foot and their ability to spell. Doesnt mean one causes the other. MARK

Has not hurt nor helped - i.e. the effect is pretty random

Just like spinning around in circles doesn't hurt or help the outcome of flipping coins. The end effect is that it is still random.

But we already talked about this.

Yay, let's run around in circles!! wooohooo!!!!!

"We cannot say with certainty that the growth in the foreign-born population has either hurt or helped"
from the people who wrote the report. Add a little lefty reasoning and logic to conclude that immigration "Has not hurt nor helped". Your understanding borders on moronic. MARK

If the conclusion of a statistical study, especially one that seems to be this simple, is that the study didn't conclude anything, then the only logical conclusion is that the study concluded nothing. You cannot conclude that immigration doesn't hurt job prospects.

For example, if a more refined study, one that controlled some other possible mitigating factors, were performed, you might see a direct correlation.

Out of the two fields, logic is the better over statistics. Logic is clear and obvious, where as statistics are often used to meddle the truth. For instance, did you know that people who drink Pepsi are more likely to have lung cancer? Statistics suggests that Pepsi causes lung cancer, but this wasn't logical. Logic demanded more tests, and eventually found out that people who drink Pepsi are also more likely to smoke.

This is what Dixon means when he says that correlation does not imply causation.

It is these mitigating factors that make the articles conclusion illogical. What if the states where immigration was high also had some other policies in place that helped employment relative to the other states?

I suggest you use your logical facilities instead of your statistical ones. Ask yourself this question. If a large group of equally-qualified people were willing to do your job for half of what you'd do it for, who do you think would get hired first? Furthermore, would this not lower the average salary? Would the average worker make more or less than before?

The idea that a large influx of cheaper labor wouldn’t suppress wages isn’t logical.