Report: Immigrants Responsible for Jobs Gains in Last Decade

With immigration reform still being debated on Capitol Hill, a new report shows that all of the job gains in the U.S. labor market over the last 13 years have gone to immigrants, both legal and illegal.

The report by the Center for Immigration Studies, which was released Wednesday, also showed that from the first quarter of 2000 to the first quarter of 2013, the number of natives working actually fell by 1.3 million, from 114.8 million to 113.5 million.

Over the same period, the number of immigrants working increased to 22.4 million, up by 5.3 million, the CIS found.

In addition, the total number of American-born people of working-age not working, was nearly 59 million in the first quarter of this year, a figure that has changed little in the last three years and is nearly 18 million larger than in 2000.

Referring to the bipartisan immigration bill that passed the Senate last week, the authors of the report, Seven Camarota and Karen Zeigler, wrote, "Aside from the legalization provisions, one of the main justifications for the large increases in permanent immigration and guest workers in the Schumer-Rubio bill is that the nation does not have enough workers," adding, "But the data do not support this conclusion."

"A second argument for the bill is that immigration always creates jobs for natives. But over the last 13 years nearly 16 million new immigrants arrived, 5.4 million since 2008," they continued.

"The last 13 years or even the last five years make clear that large-scale immigration can go hand in hand with weak job growth and persistently high rates of joblessness among the native-born."

Just one amendment on the Senate floor dealt with potential competition for jobs, a minor measure to require states to certify that employers are actively trying to recruit American workers before they can try to recruit seasonal workers, reports the Washington Times, noting that it passed by voice vote.