Importing Poverty

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Importing Poverty

By Robert Rector

Heritage Foundation | October 26, 2006

Introduction

In 1963, President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty with the goal of eliminating poverty in the United States. Since that time, the U.S. has spent over $11 trillion on anti-poverty programs, providing cash, food, housing, medical care, and services to the poor and near poor. Today, government provides a generous system of benefits and services to both the working and non-working poor. While government continues its massive efforts to reduce poverty, immigration policy in the U.S. has come to operate in the opposite direction, increasing rather than decreasing poverty. Immigrants with low skill levels have a high probability of both poverty and receipt of welfare benefits and services.[1]

Since the immigration reforms of the 1960s, the U.S. has imported poverty through immigration policies that per­mitted and encouraged the entry and residence of millions of low-skill immigrants into the nation. Low-skill immi­grants tend to be poor and to have children who, in turn, add to America’s poverty problem, driving up governmental welfare, social service, and education costs.

Today’s immigrants differ greatly from historic immigrant populations. Prior to 1960, immigrants to the U.S. had education levels that were similar to those of the non-immigrant workforce and earned wages that were, on aver­age, higher than those of non-immigrant workers. Since the mid-1960s, however, the education levels of new immigrants have plunged relative to non-immigrants; consequently, the average wages of immigrants are now well below those of the non-immigrant population. Recent immigrants increasingly occupy the low end of the U.S. socio-economic spectrum.[2]

The current influx of poorly educated immigrants is the result of two factors: first, a legal immigration system that favors kinship ties over skills and education; and second, a permissive attitude toward illegal immigration that has led to lax border enforcement and non-enforcement of the laws that prohibit the employment of illegal immigrants. In recent years, these factors have produced an inflow of some ten and a half million immigrants who lack a high school education. In terms of increased poverty and expanded government expenditure, this importation of poorly educated immigrants has had roughly the same effect as the addition of ten and a half million native-born high school drop-outs.

As a result of this dramatic inflow of low-skill immigrants,

One-third of all immigrants live in families in which the head of the household lacks a high school edu­cation; and

First-generation immigrants and their families, who are one-sixth of the U.S. population, comprise one-fourth of all poor persons in the U.S.

Immigration also plays a large role in child poverty:

Some 38 percent of immigrant children live in families headed by persons who lack a high school edu­cation;

Minor children of first-generation immigrants comprise 26 percent of poor children in the U.S.; and

One out of six poor children in the U.S. is the offspring of first-generation immigrant parents who lack a high school diploma.

Hispanic immigrants (both legal and illegal) comprise half of all first-generation immigrants and their families. Pov­erty is especially prevalent among this group. Hispanic immigrants have particularly low levels of education; more than half live in families headed by persons who lack a high school diploma. Family formation is also weak among Hispanic immigrants; fully 42 percent of the children of Hispanic immigrants are born out of wedlock. Hispanic immigrants thus make up a disproportionate share of the nation’s poor:

First-generation Hispanic immigrants and their families now comprise 9 percent of the U.S. population but 17 percent of all poor persons in the U.S.; and

Children in Hispanic immigrant families now comprise 11.7 percent of all children in the U.S. but 22 percent of all poor children in the U.S.

Massive low-skill immigration works to counteract government anti-poverty efforts. While government works to reduce the number of poor persons, low-skill immigration pushes the poverty numbers up. In addition, low-skill immigration siphons off government anti-poverty funding and makes government efforts to shrink poverty less effective.

Low-skill immigrants pay little in taxes and receive high levels of government benefits and services. The National Academy of Sciences has estimated that each immigrant without a high school degree will cost U.S. taxpayers, on average, $89,000 over the course of his or her lifetime.[3] This is a net cost above the value of any taxes the immi­grant will pay and does not include the cost of educating the immigrant’s children, which U.S. taxpayers would also heavily subsidize.

In this way, the roughly six million legal immigrants without a high school diploma will impose a net cost of around a half-trillion dollars on U.S. taxpayers over their lifetimes. The roughly five million illegal immigrants without a high school diploma will cost taxpayers somewhat less because illegal immigrants are eligible for fewer government benefits. However, if these illegal immigrants were granted amnesty and citizenship, as proposed by the Bush Administration and legislated in a recent Senate-passed immigration bill (S. 2611), they could cost tax­payers an additional half-trillion dollars. In total, all immigrants without a high school education could impose a net cost on U.S. taxpayers of around one trillion dollars or more. If the cost of educating the immigrants’ children is included, that figure could reach two trillion dollars.[4]

The poverty and other problems associated with mass low-skill immigration would be of less concern if they could be expected to quickly vanish in the next generation. Unfortunately, the evidence indicates that this will not occur. For example, the low levels of education, high levels of poverty, and high levels of out-of-wedlock childbearing found among Hispanic immigrants since 1970 persist among native-born Hispanics in the U.S. to a considerable degree.[5]

These data indicate that the current influx of low-skill immigrants will raise poverty in the U.S. not merely at the present time, but for generations to come. Current low-skill immigrants will raise both the absolute number of poor persons and the poverty rate in the U.S. for the foreseeable future. The greater the inflow of low-skill immi­grants, the greater the long-term increase in poverty will be.

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