IMMIGRATION AND JOBS: THE PROCESS OF DISPLACEMENT

Donald L. Huddle
May 1, 1992
Forum Papers
Forum Paper
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IMMIGRATION AND JOBS: THE PROCESS OF DISPLACEMENT
An NPG Forum Paper
by Donald Huddle
May 1992

In the preceding NPG FORUM, Dr. Huddle examined the conclusions — and the pitfalls — in econometric models that purport to show the impact of immigration on U.S. labor. The nation would probably understand the problem better if more time were spent on the ground, studying the impact, rather than preparing elaborate models. In this issue, he reports the result of his own extended observation of the displacement process in Houston. Dr. Huddle is a Professor of Economics at Rice University.

-Lindsey Grant, Editor

In this paper, I attempt to measure the displacement of American labor by illegal aliens. As a first step, I analyze a 1982 experiment by the Immigration and Naturalization Service which tried to provide jobs for American citizens and legal residents by deporting illegal aliens who held relatively high-paying jobs in nine major U.S. cities. Second, I describe my own practical on-the-ground measurement, correcting for false “displacement” of Americans and legal residents not actually looking for work.

In this second project, we completed three separate field surveys during different phases of the business cycle in the 1980’s, each of which gave a more serious picture of the displace-ment problem than did the econometric models in my earlier Ni-XJ PURIM article. Moreover, the flew surveys showed ale process whereby illegal immigrants undercut the legitimate job market and create an underground economy serving unscrupu-lous employers.

It is particularly important during this technological era in which unskilled jobs at livable wages are drying up to understand how the process of displacement squeezes the poor and the minorities — who are the beneficiaries of massive government spending programs—out of the opportunity to join the economic mainstream.

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