Is Recession Causing A Migrant Exodus Or Influx?

By Marcela Sanchez
The Tampa Tribune, December 20, 2008

Taken together, two reports from the Department of Labor suggested that immigrants were needed to fill the coming worker shortage. The Report on the American Workforce predicted that by 2008 there would be 155 million workers in the United States. The other, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, projected there would be 161 million jobs.

Not surprisingly Labor Secretary Elaine Chao warned of the "Incredible Shrinking Workforce" and explained that, among other things, the U.S. would need to fill the gap by helping immigrants come to "the land of opportunity for a new start and a brighter future."

Those were the early days of the Bush administration: Chao had just taken office and her department was trying to determine what labor challenges the U.S. would face in the early 21st century. Unemployment had reached a 30-year low by 1999, and immigrants were entering the country in record numbers.

That was before the attacks of Sept. 11 triggered one recession and undermined immigration reform. Now, in late 2008, the U.S. is in the midst of another recession that threatens to last for some time, and unemployment rates are climbing.

Where does the migrant labor force that was once so in demand stand today?

While the U.S. government is not in the business of projecting shortages, the fact remains that the U.S. labor force is aging. Today 42 percent is 45 or older, forming a mass of workers that Chao's phrase in 2001 still aptly captures. While many may choose to retire later or even take on a second job, nothing will make them younger. Immigrant workers appear to remain essential - to a degree.

The Bush administration saw fit just last week to issue new visa rules to facilitate hiring foreign temporary farm workers. Even when employment prospects look bleak, history has shown, as it did in the late 1990s in California's Central Valley, that immigrant farm workers are nearly impossible to replace with U.S. workers.

It isn't about "Miguel competing with Michael for a job," as Craig Regelbrugge, American Nursery & Landscape Association vice president, put it. Eighty percent of U.S. farm workers are immigrants. Without the Miguels, many U.S. workers would lose their livelihood.

"The existence of that job supports three jobs in the surrounding economy," said Regelbrugge.

In the past year Latino immigrants found 75,000 new jobs in agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining. Other sectors such as repair and maintenance, and education services presented them more than 100,000 new job opportunities, according to a new report released this week by the Pew Hispanic Center.

In other sectors demand for immigrants is down. In construction, ground zero of the current meltdown, Latino immigrants lost 96,000 jobs last year, an amount surpassed only by the 120,000 jobs lost in wholesale and retail trade.

These types of loses seem to have affected the migration flows into the country. Several recent studies have found evidence that the recession, combined with increased enforcement at the border, is slowing the pace of immigration.

The Pew report also found that for the first time since 2003, a "significant" share of Hispanic immigrants has withdrawn from the U.S. labor force altogether. The study's author, Rakesh Kochhar, said that among working age Hispanic immigrants who came between 1990 and 1999, 234,000 are no longer working or seeking jobs. This 4-percent reduction, too high to be due solely to deaths, suggests that some migrants are leaving the country.

Interestingly, this departure may have less to do with the state of the economy than a pattern of reverse migration, according to Manuel Orozco, remittance expert at Inter American Dialogue. Traditionally around seven percent of immigrants return to their countries after being here for 17 years. They were already preparing to go when the recession hit, he said.

A recession instead is more likely to put immigrants on the road within the country. The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute has found, in a study to be released next month, that immigrants will work in other sectors of the economy and will move to other parts of the country to do so, rather than participate in a mass exodus.

After all, in a recession not all economic sectors loose jobs. Instead millions of jobs are lost and millions are gained, said Kochhar.

Immigrants are well suited to the challenge. For a typical U.S. worker the decision to pick up and leave is understandably tempered by the difficulty of leaving family behind or relocating it without any assurance of success. The day immigrants become immigrants, that decision has already been made.

Marcela Sanchez has been a Washington-based journalist since the early 1990s and a syndicated columnist for more than six years. This column was distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.