Mass Immigration vs. Black America

May 9, 2007 Statement of T. Willard Fair
President and CEO, Urban League of Greater Miami
Center for Immigration Studies Board Member

Before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Committee on the Judiciary - U.S. House of Representatives

Impact of Immigration Policy on Black Americans

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to address this panel.

I have devoted much of my adult life to one of the most important challenges facing our country: How to help young black men build constructive lives as fathers and breadwinners. The size of the problem was outlined in a recent book published by the National Urban League entitled The State of Black America 2007: Portrait of the Black Male -- black men are much more likely to be unemployed than white men, more likely to be dropouts, in prison, in poverty, or dead.

There are many reasons for grim statistics like this, including the continuing effects of slavery and Jim Crow; the shift in the economy away from manufacturing; broken schools in our big cities; the glorification of self-destructive behavior by popular culture.

But one factor is too often ignored -- mass immigration.

There was little immigration when the struggle for civil rights began to achieve success in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, the 1965 immigration law that started today's mass immigration was itself seen as a civil rights measure, intended to clean out rules that favored immigrants from some countries over others. Sen. Edward Kennedy, then, as now, chairman of the Senate immigration subcommittee, said "The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not cause American Workers to lose their jobs"

So much for predictions.

Since 1965, nearly 30 million legal immigrants have come here, plus millions of illegal aliens. The results have been devastating for those Americans -- black or white -- who compete for jobs with this immigrant tide. George Borjas of Harvard has shown that immigration has cut the wages of American men without a high school degree by $1,800 a year. Economists at Northeastern University have found that businesses are substituting immigrants for young American workers, especially for young black men. In fact, scholars estimate that immigration is the reason for one-third of the drop in employment among black men, and even some of the increase in incarceration.

Of course, none of that means that individual immigrants -- or particular immigrant groups -- can be blamed for the difficulties facing black men. Being pro-Me should never make me anti-You. Nor can we use immigration as a crutch, blaming it for all our problems. The reality is that less-educated black men in America today have a variety of problems -- high rates of crime and drug use, for example, and poor performance at work and school -- that are caused by factors unrelated to level of immigration.

But if cutting immigration and enforcing the law wouldn't be a cure-all, it sure would make my job easier. Take employment -- immigration isn't the whole reason for the drop in employment of black men; it's not even half the reason. But it is the largest single reason, and it's something we can fix relatively easily.

Think about it this way: If there's a young black man in Liberty City, where I live, who's good with his hands and wants to become a carpenter, which is more likely to help him achieve that goal -- amnesty and more immigration, or enforcement and less immigration?

Which is more likely to help an ex-convict or recovering addict get hired at an entry-level job and start the climb back to a decent life -- amnesty and more immigration, or enforcement and less immigration?

Which is more likely to persuade a teenager in the inner city to reject the lure of gang life and instead stick with honest employment -- amnesty and more immigration, or enforcement and less immigration?

And it's not just a matter of jobs. Whatever your views on government social programs, everyone can agree that resources are not infinite -- there's only so much social spending to go around. And since immigrants have relatively low skills and low incomes, they use a lot of social services and pay little in taxes, cutting into the spending on America's own poor. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that illegal aliens alone cost federal taxpayers $10 billion more a year in services than they pay in taxes -- that's $10 billion that's not being spent on disadvantaged Americans, not counting the much larger deficits at the state and local level, where most social services are provided.

Likewise with the schools. This is an issue close to my heart, since I co-founded Florida's first charter school and was recently confirmed as chairman of the statewide Board of Education. We must offer the best education possible to all our children, for their own good and for the good of our country. But as budgets have tightened, school enrollment has surged, and all of the growth in the nation's school-age population -- 100 percent -- comes from immigrant families. This surge in enrolment has led to school overcrowding and has diverted resources that would otherwise have been devoted to at-risk students.

Solutions to the challenges facing black Americans have to come from both private efforts and government initiative -- but regardless of the specific approach, flooding the job market and overwhelming the public schools and other government services undermines all our efforts. The interests of black Americans are clear: No amnesty, no guestworkers, enforce the immigration law.

SOURCE: Center for Immigration Studies

Noteworthy News

The Rainbow Coalition Evaporates
The City Journal via FrontPageMagazine.com; January 28, 2008
"Though blacks have long worried that the country’s growing foreign-born population, especially its swelling rolls of illegal immigrants, harmed their economic prospects, they have also followed their political leadership in backing liberal immigration policies. Now, however, as new waves of immigration inundate historically African-American neighborhoods, black opinion is hardening against the influx..."

Tancredo wins applause at NAACP
The Boston Globe; July 12, 2007
"Tancredo said he gets 'insulted' every time he hears that illegal immigrants are working jobs American citizens won't take. 'I've done those jobs, you've done those jobs, our kids have done those jobs,' he said."

Immigration hurts blacks
Chicago Sun-Times; June 3, 2007
"[A]ccording to a revised report released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Using data from the 1960-2000 U.S. Census reports, researchers discovered 'a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates...'"

Santa, the Tooth Fairy and Maxine Waters
The Signal (Calif.); May 7, 2007
"Recent events have jolted some traditionally liberal-leaning groups on the subject of illegal immigration. Akin to looking in the closet and finding Santa's beard, the black community has begun to discover that the 'truths' told to them over the years by the Democratic Party and liberals were misrepresentations of the true impact that illegal immigration was having on the average black person in the United States..."

Colleges' Immigrant Numbers Raise Concerns for Black Students
The Associated Press; April 30, 2007
"Among students at 28 top U.S. universities, the representation of black students of first- and second-generation immigrant origin (27 percent) was about twice their representation in the national population of blacks their age (13 percent). Within the Ivy League, immigrant-origin students made up 41 percent of black freshmen..."

Black civil rights activist opposes push for immigration amnesty
Bradenton Herald; April 26, 2007
T. Willard Fair, president of the Urban League of Greater Miami, is appearing in ads in The Washington Post and RollCall, a Capitol Hill newspaper, saying that "to black Americans, amnesty is an immoral seizure of our jobs..."

Armstong Williams: Are We Ready to Get Tough on Immigration?
The Hill; April 24, 2007
"Illegal immigration has caused enormous job displacement for American workers, infiltration of schools by non-English-speaking students, increased crime and other severe problems. Apparently our immigration system does not work. We should send all illegal immigrants back to where they came from because this is an explosive situation just waiting to detonate..."

In Diversity Push, Top Universities Enrolling More Black Immigrants
The Washington Post; March 6, 2007
"Black American scholars such as Henry Louis Gates and Lani Guinier, two Harvard University professors, have said that white educators are skirting long-held missions to resolve historic wrongs against native black Americans by enrolling immigrants who look like them..."

An immigration raid aids blacks for a time
The Wall Street Journal via Pittsburgh Post Gazette; January 17, 2007
"For the first time since significant numbers of Latinos began arriving in Stillmore in the late 1990s, the plant's processing lines were made up predominantly of African-Americans..."

Piercing black silence on immigration
The Los Angeles Times; January 17, 2007
"Last year's discussion of immigration rights borrowed generously from the civil rights movement, but it had little space for a black position on immigration..."

MLK Day to focus on immigration issues
The Daily Herald (Wash.); January 10 , 2007
"'King shouldn't be posthumously attached to a cause that could encourage illegal immigration, said Shawna Forde, a member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, a volunteer border patrol group. Members of Forde's group plan to attend the forum to make sure that information presented there is accurate. 'We have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King Jr., and we don't like how (the holiday) is being spun this way,' she said..."

Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities: The Response of Wages, Employment, and Incarceration to Labor Supply Shocks
National Bureau of Economic Research; September 2006
"The employment rate of black men, and particularly of low-skill black men, fell precipitously from 1960 to 2000. At the same time, the incarceration rate of black men rose markedly. This paper examines the relation between immigration and these trends in black employment and incarceration. Using data drawn from the 1960-2000 U.S. Censuses, we find a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates..."

Rebuilding the Gulf Coast Must Mean Employing Local Resident in Reconstruction, Declares Coalition of Black Leaders
Choose Black America; August 25, 2006
"On the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, many Gulf Coast residents who lost their homes and their jobs to the storm are being victimized a second time by contractors who hire illegal workers and government policies that turn a blind eye to the practice, contends Choose Black America (CBA), a coalition of black leaders..."

Blacks Applaud House Leadership for Stopping Senate Immigration Bill
Jim Kouri; June 27, 2006
"While most civil-rights leaders, including Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, support illegal aliens and amnesty, many African-Americans believe they do so as partisan Democrats and not in the best interests of blacks in America..."

An Interview with Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson of BOND
Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy; June 27, 2006
"[Black Americans] don't necessarily agree on a whole lot of other issues because some of them are liberal Democrats. But on this one issue of illegal immigration -- immigration, period -- we definitely agree on it, because we see the devastation that it's causing within the black community. These are ministers and heads of organizations around the country, and we have united together for this common cause..."

Some blacks say Latino immigrants taking their jobs
The Seattle Times; June 12, 2006
"'This issue is not new; this preference for immigrant workers over native African-American workers is historical,' said Frank Morris, a former associate dean at the University of Maryland, College Park. Morris was also president of the Tacoma branch of the NAACP during the 1960s..."

Black leaders oppose alien 'amnesty' plan
The Washington Times; May 24, 2006
"'It just infuriates me that our children's education has to be shortchanged for a subculture that in many instances doesn't want to assimilate,' said the Northwest resident, who is in her 60s and has watched the D.C. landscape change for more than 30 years. 'We are being pushed out of the way because there is a push to legalize an illegal act,' she said..."

Amnesty Will Hurt All Americans and Blacks the Most, Contends New Coalition Choose Black America
Choose Black America; May 23, 2006
"'Mass illegal immigration has been a major impediment to black advancement in this country over the past 25 years,' declared Dr. Frank Morris Sr., chairman of Choose Black America 'All Americans are harmed by rampant illegal immigration, but it is blacks, in particular, who have lost economic opportunities, watched their kids' schools flood with non-English speaking students, and felt the direct impact in countless ways. Our government has failed us, our elected officials have failed us, and now they are prepared to compound the damage with an amnesty and guest worker program that will set black Americans back a hundred years...'"

Are black Americans being blackmailed to support illegal aliens' false civil rights claims?
RenewAmerica.com; May 22, 2006
"The civil rights which each black family earned generation by generation, struggling as citizens under threat of lynching, under threat of fire bombings, under threat of murder... but as citizens is being compared to illegal aliens who want "civil rights" that are not only not earned but they aren't warranted without citizenship..."

Blacks slam immigration bias
The Washington Times; May 4, 2006
"Black leaders say Mexicans and other Hispanic nationals are getting preferential immigration treatment, as the U.S. systematically turns away people from countries with largely African-descended populations, such as Jamaica and the Dominican Republic..."

Black Activists Say Immigration Shortcuts are Not a Civil Right Issue
Project 21/National Center for Public Policy; May 1, 2006
"'The amnesty issue is being distorted. This is not about the rights of people here legally or of equal rights - it is about people who are here illegally wanting everyone to ignore the fact that they broke the law to get into this country,' said Project 21 member Geoffrey Moore. 'The civil rights movement was about some American citizens being treated worse than others. The rallies happening now are about lawbreaking non-citizens wanting to be given the same rights and benefits of those who came to America through the proper immigration channels..."

Silicon Ceiling 6: 70,000 blacks out of work in computer, technology industries
Coalition for Fair Employment in High Technology via BlackMoney.com; October 31, 2005
"Experienced African-American workers are twice as likely to be unemployed in the computer and technology industries as the general labor force, according to Silicon Ceiling 6, a report by the Coalition for Fair Employment in High Technology..."