The Numbers Game

For the first time in recent memory, three immigration studies made front-page news. Each crunched the same primary data, special census extracts called “Public Use Samples.” Each highlighted Mexican and Central American immigrants and California. Yet, their messages were dramatically different.

A report published last week by Rand, a Santa Monica think tank, was cautionary and concerned. A Pepperdine study last fall was far more upbeat. And a landmark National Research Council report released last May was surprisingly nonchalant.

How can virtually identical data produce such strikingly different perspectives?

Despite claims of “objectivity,” policy studies are profoundly shaped by their researchers’ beliefs about the world. Their hidden assumptions lead to different interpretations of the same data. And because value judgments inevitably creep into the analyses, such studies can justify only the broadest social policies.

Rand’s study of foreign migration to California, however, contemplates a much more intrusive approach. Its key findings are that poorer Mexicans and Central Americans make up a growing share of California immigration. Unlike immigrants from other countries, the new Latino citizens do not improve their education and income relative to others after they arrive.

The Rand report argues that education is crucial for economic success because low-skill jobs are vanishing from modern California. Poorly educated Latino immigrants increasingly cannot find work; it’s likely their children will also be ill-trained for the future. To avoid such problems, the Rand study urges stepped-up immigrant education and social programs, and new laws to restrict less-educated immigrants’ entry as demand for their labor falls.

Superficially appealing, at least two questionable assumptions undermine the study’s logic. The first is the study’s belief that low-skill jobs for less-educated immigrants are becoming a thing of the past. It’s fashionable to herald the new “information age,” when a PhD is required to grill a hamburger. Yet, the most serious complaint about the current U.S. economic expansion--and especially California’s recovery--is that only low-wage, low-skill jobs are being created. The Rand study offers little data, and almost none from the state’s post-recession period, addressing this view.

The belief that immigrants are increasingly mismatched with contemporary economic needs also seems to contradict the fact that the states absorbing the most Latinos--Texas, Florida, and California--are America’s premier job creators, not industrial basket cases. In the last year alone, the three states produced nearly 1 million jobs, 32% of the U.S. total. Since 1994, unemployment has fallen in all high-immigration states, and has declined so rapidly in California that industries that depend on less-skilled immigrant workers, like garment, are suffering critical labor shortages.

Equally shaky is the assumption that if first-generation Latino-immigrant income and education levels are low, their children and grandchildren will be similarly disadvantaged. The report provides little evidence one way or another, but other sources, including previous Rand studies, suggest that by the third or fourth generation, U.S.-born children of Mexican and Central American immigrants do achieve economic parity with others. If so, education programs and immigrant-screening laws to promote Latino social advancement may be unnecessary, if not misguided.

These sorts of concerns led Pepperdine University researcher Gregory Rodriquez to examine immigrant census data from a different perspective. Heavily influenced by his religious studies at UC Berkeley, and by UCLA sociologist David E. Hayes-Bautista and Nobel laureate economist Gary S. Becker, who contend that families and similar groups play key roles in social mobility, Rodriquez explored whether Latino immigrants demonstrate the kinds of mutual commitment and shared sacrifice that compensate for individual disadvantage.

Focused on Southern California, the Pepperdine study found that they did. Foreign-born Latinos in the region--overwhelmingly first-generation Mexican and Central American immigrants--typically have the highest work-participation rates, form households with the largest number of wage earners and maintain the most stable families of any ethnic group. Even the poorest immigrants combine their earnings in highly functional, enduring households to build for the future.

The Pepperdine report also showed that, despite their persistently lagging education achievements, successive Latino generations are dramatically advancing socially. While foreign-born Latino median household incomes remain substantially lower than other groups, U.S.-born Latino households--the children of immigrants--have median incomes nearly the same as white and Asian households, and much higher than black households. Fifty-two percent of U.S.-born Latino households own their own homes, compared with 62% of white, 55% of Asian, and 38% of black households.

By shifting attention from individuals to households, a perspective that more accurately reflects how Latino immigrants actually organize their lives, and by looking at intergenerational data, the Pepperdine study documents that Mexican and Central American immigrants are creating a new middle class in Southern California, albeit without reliance on education. It does not prove that past patterns of Latino social advancement will continue. But it does suggest that, more than education, immigration policy might focus on sustaining Latino family integrity, expanding industries in which immigrants work and assuring that the burgeoning Latino middle class not become politically, ethnically or socially isolated.

The Washington-based National Research Council’s immigration report provides an important supplement to the Rand and Pepperdine studies. National in scope, the NRC study used census data to illustrate highly technical economic models of immigration and its effects on overall U.S. economic and social development.

Declining to speculate whether present trends might persist in the future, the NRC focused on, and largely dismissed, such hotly debated issues as whether U.S.-born workers are hurt by immigrants, or if immigrants cause crime. Its most widely reported finding--that immigrants add from $1 billion-$10 billion to the $7-trillion U.S. economy--is remarkable because it suggests immigration is far less important than many think, especially when compared with other, less explosive but far more substantial issues such as national savings rates.

The NRC concedes, however, that regions where younger, less-educated immigrants cluster likely bear a disproportionately large share of national immigration costs. It estimates that U.S.-born California households, for example, pay $20 billion for immigrant schooling and other social benefits that are not recouped from the federal government. While this is still small compared with the state’s nearly $1-trillion economy, it is one reason why immigration concerns are more keenly felt in California than elsewhere. By implication, the NRC suggests the importance of spreading the costs of national immigration policies more fairly among high- and low-immigration regions.

Can any conclusions be drawn from the three, conflicting immigration reports? The most important may be to decline invitations to socially engineer immigration results with policies like education screening. All the studies suggest that broad goals like gaining control of legal immigration, barring entry to known criminals, setting clear numerical standards and rules, and harmonizing local, state and federal immigration burdens are essential to rebuild public confidence and reduce localized anomalies such as in California.

It is far less clear that immigration policy ought to be micro-managed to reduce perceived social burdens that particular groups are thought to import. As the Pepperdine study shows, we actually know far less about which groups will succeed, and how they might go about doing so, than may at first appear.

The kind of highly refined immigration screening that the Rand study advocates is also troublesome because it makes a selective appraisal of the costs and benefits that potential immigrant groups may bring. Poorly educated Latino immigrants may well burden certain social services, but they also form the most stable, work-oriented, enduring families and households in the country. Many may value such contributions to American society more than the education or welfare costs that trouble the Rand researchers.

Finally, if a highly tailored, cost-benefit analysis makes sense for Latino immigration policy, why not apply it more widely? Let’s screen immigrants for obesity, smoking, propensity to save, monogamy or preference for fuel-efficient cars--all of which, like education, determine how much they will cost after arrival. Why not apply all domestic tax, trade or zoning laws to reduce public budgets--the Rand study’s principal criteria--and encourage only those citizens who use public services the least?

It’s a safe bet that few Americans would want to suffer judgment by social science in this way. Indeed, the plurality of studies about immigration strongly counsels caution and prudence. If nothing else is clear, it makes little sense to socially engineer when we have no blueprints.*