Report calls for curbs in U.S. immigration

WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- The economic downturn and war on terror did little to stem the high rate of immigration to the United States over the past two years, according to a recent paper from the conservative Center for Immigration Studies.

"Since the economic slowdown or since Sept. 11, the number of people settling in the United States has not slowed," Steven Camarota, director of research at CIS and author of the report, told United Press International.

But other immigration policy analysts were highly critical of the subtext in Camarota's report -- "Immigrants in the United States -- 2002: A Snapshot of America's Foreign-Born Population" -- which is that immigration should be lowered to reflect the low education level of most immigrants and the resulting low wages they earn.

Camarota says this aspect of the new immigrant population drives high poverty rates and a disproportionate use of welfare and other government social programs by the newcomers. Other analysts take issue with the high numbers cited by Camarota and with the political agenda that they feel drives his research.

"Clearly the report wants us to think that immigration will continue at significant levels, but that is not necessarily bad for the country," said Demetrios Papademetriou, co-director of the more liberal Migration Policy Institute. "This fundamental perspective comes from a particular point of view that permeates the conclusions of the study."

By comparing the data in the Current Population Survey, or CPS, collected in March 2002 by the U.S. Census Bureau, with the findings of the 2000 Census, Camarota concluded that more than 3.3 million legal and illegal immigrants had entered the United States between January 2000 and March 2002.

He said this represents an increase of 2 million immigrants since the 2000 census.

Overall, he said, there are 33.1 million legal and illegal immigrants living in the United States, making up 11.5 percent of the U.S. population. This is the highest percentage in 70 years.

He also found that that if current trends continue, by the end of the decade the number of immigrants will surpass the all-time high of 14.8 percent of the population, reached in 1890.

Audrey Singer, a visiting fellow at the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the more liberal Brookings Institution, said that Camarota's findings are questionable because the CPS and Census data cannot be accurately combined to demonstrate changes in immigration levels.

"I think it is somewhat dishonest to add numbers from the CPS to the census and claim them as net figures," said Singer. "It is misleading to make these numbers additive. Most people (demographers) would not do this."

She said the reason the two sets of data are not traditionally combined for analysis is that they are based upon surveys of two separate populations and developed with different and somewhat incompatible methodologies. For instance, the federal Census conducted in 2000 is a massive nationwide survey, while the CPS is taken from a much smaller population of around 64,000 people.

"I don't disagree that immigration hasn't stopped, but we (immigration policy experts) don't expect it to," she said, adding that they also don't anticipate levels as high as Camarota has found.

Although it is built around this finding of elevated immigration rates, the CIS report is primarily a demographic profile -- accurate, according to Singer and Papademetriou -- of the foreign-born population in the United States.

Among the statistics cited by the report is that immigrants are three-and-one-half times more likely than native-born citizens to have not finished high school: 30 percent of them do not have a high school diploma.

Since 1990, says the report, immigration has increased the number of high school dropouts in the labor force by 21 percent, while increasing the supply of workers with higher levels of education by only 5 percent.

At 17.6 percent, the poverty rate for immigrants and their U.S.-born children is reportedly two-thirds higher than among native citizens.

In addition, one-third of all immigrants do not have health insurance (which is more than twice the rate of native-born U.S. citizens), and they account for 95 percent of the increase since 1989 in those without health insurance, the report says.

Unlike some other analysts, Camarota sees these demographic characteristics as a warning about the dangers of continuing immigration policies that allow so many immigrants with little education to enter the country.

Singer noted that although rapid increases in the immigrant population over the last decade, particularly in the south, have resulted in some social costs or conflict and strained local governments, these immigrant populations have also brought benefits.

For example, she said that immigrants typically add culturally to the national fabric and also do jobs that many native citizens don't want, especially in the service and hospitality sectors.

She added that immigration has become important in offsetting middle-class flight in cities with declining populations, such as Baltimore.

Camarota said that despite these positive elements, from a purely economic standpoint a significant portion of immigrants bring little benefit, given the high levels of poverty in that population.

In addition, he said that the high immigration rate has a negative impact on labor markets by preventing wages at the low end of the pay scale from rising, which hurts poorer Americans.

"You need to let in people who pay lots of taxes and use few services, for real positive (economic) impact," he said.