There were 1.7 million more illegal immigrants in the United States last year than there were unemployed Americans.
In 2014, the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. totaled 11.3 million, while 9.6 million Americans were unemployed, according to data from Pew Research Center and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), reports the Washington Free Beacon.
Pew reported that the "new unauthorized immigrant total includes people who cross the border illegally as well as those who arrive with legal visas and remain in the U.S. after their visas expire."
Of those illegal immigrants, 8.1 million were either working or looking for work in 2012, comprising 5.1 percent of the U.S. labor force, Pew said.
President Obama's November 2014 executive amnesty actions are expected to add millions more illegal immigrants to the work force. The program is currently on hold due to a lawsuit from 26 states who claim that providing deportation relief to immigrants in their states would cause irreparable economic harm.
"The decline in work has particularly affected those under age 29, and the less-educated, who are the most likely to be in competition with immigrants," Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote in The New York Times. "A study by the economist George J. Borjas and others found that immigration reduces the employment of less-educated black men. Another study came to the same conclusion. A recent analysis by Federal Reserve economist Christopher Smith (2012) found that immigration reduces the employment of U.S. teenagers."
He continues: "Despite this, many members of Congress and President Obama support giving work permits to illegal immigrants and increasing legal immigration even further. Once given work authorization, illegal immigrants can compete for better-paying jobs now unavailable to them because they require background checks and valid Social Security numbers - as security guards, interstate truckers, and public sector employees. This despite a record number of adults not working and stagnant wages. Economists debate how much immigration impacts natives, but agree that the data show no labor shortage."
