DALLAS (Reuters) - Over the past two years, as U.S. unemployment remained near double-digit levels and the economy shed jobs in the wake of the financial crisis, over a million foreign-born arrivals to America found work, many illegally.
Those are among the findings of a review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data conducted exclusively for Reuters by researchers at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.
Often young and unskilled or semi-skilled, immigrants have taken jobs Americans could do in areas like construction, willing to work for less wages. Others land jobs that unemployed Americans turn up their noses at or lack the skills to do.
With a national unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, domestic job creation is at the top of President Barack Obama's agenda and such findings could add to calls to tighten up on illegal immigration. But much of it is Hispanic and the growing Latino vote is a key base for Obama's Democratic Party.
Interesting, NPR says Obama's administration have been limiting most of the legal farmworker visas. I guess they know farmers prefer using illegals that they can bully and short-pay without fear of being turned in.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
