America has become less of a middle-class nation because of the quadrupling of immigration since 1965. And it has become more of a society of wide economic disparities.

Virtually all studies of this phenomenon have concluded that the greatest harm is to those American workers who already are the most vulnerable: those without high school degrees, those with lower intrinsic intelligence, those with fewer skills. The harm also is disproportionately felt by native-born minorities, especially Hispanics and Blacks, and by recent immigrants. For instance, a study by Harvard professor Dr. George J. Borjas finds that, by increasing the supply of labor, immigration between 1980 and 2000 cost native-born American men an average $1,700 in annual wages by the year 2000. However, the effects of immigration on wages were most profoundly felt by native-born black and Hispanic Americans who suffered 4.5-5% wage reductions as compared with the 3.5% wage loss felt by native-born white Americans.

For these reasons, the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late Barbara Jordan, concluded that present immigration numbers are a source of economic injustice in this country. The Commission recommended lowering immigration numbers significantly.

"Since 1970, immigration has increased the number of unskilled job applicants faster than the number of skilled job applicants. First-year economics predicts that increasing the relative number of unskilled workers will depress their wages, because employers will not need to raise wages to attract applicants for unskilled jobs. Nonetheless, those who favor an expansive immigration policy often deny that the increase in the number of unskilled job applicants depresses wages for unskilled work, arguing that unskilled immigrants take jobs that natives do not want. This is sometimes true. But we still have to ask why natives do not want these jobs. The reason is not that natives reject demeaning or dangerous work. Almost every job that immigrants do in Los Angeles or New York is done by natives in Detroit and Philadelphia. When natives turn down such jobs in New York or Los Angeles, the reason is that by local standards the wages are abysmal. Far from proving that immigrants have no impact on natives, the fact that American-born workers sometimes reject jobs that immigrants accept reinforces the claim that immigration has depressed wages for unskilled work." - Christopher Jencks, Who Should Get In?

"Between 1890 and 1915 wages grew more slowly in those American cities where the proportion of immigrants grew fastest." - Claudia Goldin, an economic historian at Harvard