WASHINGTON—Workplace raids throughout the United States resulted in the arrest and deportation of close to 5,000 illegal immigrants in 2007, up from 500 in 2002. This is a mere fraction of the 7 million to 8 million illegal immigrants working in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a not-for-profit think tank.
The majority (75 percent) of Hispanics oppose workplace raids geared toward finding foreign workers illegally in the country.
On the other hand, about 51 percent of non-Hispanics believe such raids to be an effective preventive measure against job losses to illegal aliens, according to the December 2007 Pew survey titled, "2007 National Survey of Latinos: As Illegal Immigration Issue Heats Up, Hispanics Feel a Chill."
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency issued a new policy in 2007 that would penalize employers for not checking employees' Social Security information thoroughly. The policy has not gone into effect due to legal actions taken by the American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
More than half of the Latinos surveyed claimed that discrimination prevented them from being hired or promoted in the work place.
"By a ratio of more than two-to-one, Hispanics believe that the growing number of illegal immigrants has been a positive, not a negative, development for Latinos in the United States," said the researchers in the Pew report.
The U.S. Hispanic Workforce
Hispanics, the leading minority group in the United States, make up about 15.5 percent or around 47 million of approximately 303 million people living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
By December 2007, 32 million Latinos were employed in the United States, not including government workers. That's an increase of over 1.3 million from December 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The Latino workforce will be 16.4 percent in 2016 and 23 percent in 2050 of the total U.S. workforce, according to the most recent BLS estimates.
The U.S. government increased its hiring of Hispanics by 8.6 percent in 2007 to a total of 130,224 Hispanics, according to the December 2007 report, "Seventh Annual Report to the President on Hispanic Employment in the Federal Government."
"There has been a clear upward trend in Hispanic representation in the permanent Federal workforce. This year's data shows increases in Hispanic representation in 58 percent of agencies' workforces," said Linda M. Springer, Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in her December 2007 letter to President George Bush.
The Department of Defense employs by far the most Hispanics in the federal workforce, with 38,012 employees, followed by Homeland Security with 27,535 employees. The Department of Education appears to have hired the fewest Hispanics, with a total of 153 employees, followed closely by OPM, with only 224 Hispanic employees.
The U.S. government was mandated to proactively recruit individuals with Hispanic ancestry. Outreach programs include advertising in Hispanic newspapers, promoting job opportunities at Hispanic events, holding job fairs on college campuses, earmarking scholarships with the promise of future job opportunities for Hispanic students, and partnering with Hispanic organizations.
Controversy Over Wages
A continuing influx of low-skilled Hispanic immigrants has suppressed wages from 3 percent to 5 percent for those Americans without a high school diploma, according to research results by professors from a number of universities. These results are presented in a recently released study: "The Economic and Social Implications of the Growing Latino Population in South Carolina," by the University of South Carolina.
However, not all academia agrees with the findings. "Increased supply of immigrants [including Hispanics] with low levels of educational attainment does not adversely affect low-skilled native-born workers, either in terms of employment opportunities or wage rates," according to research conducted by David Card, professor at the University of California, Berkley, and included in the study.
Blacks are the most affected in the run on jobs when there is a "large, growing Hispanic" workforce. They either lose their jobs, or their salaries are decreased when large numbers of Hispanics enter the job market. The greatest impact has been found in the construction, animal slaughter, and landscaping industries.
The upside is that blacks, when pushed out of one employment sector, enter other sectors, such as the automotive industry, in larger numbers. At the same time, these displaced workers are found to have higher income potential in the other sectors.
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