Con

“While we find that, overall, there are enough out-of-work natives to replace undocumented workers, there is a severe mismatch between the skills of undocumented workers and the natives who would potentially replace them. Moreover… all out-of-work natives would not otherwise find work. Clearly, a certain share of natives are unemployed due to the normal functioning of the labor market (socalled ‘frictional’ unemployment) and will find work regardless of what happens with undocumented workers…

The largest share of out-of-work natives have a high school diploma, where approximately 3.1 million potentially need jobs, 1.2 million more than the number of undocumented workers with a high school diploma. If the undocumented immigrants were removed from the work force, these natives would either remain out-of-work or would need to find jobs requiring lower levels of education… Removing undocumented workers from the economy would not be a panacea for native unemployment.”

March 2006