Decades of illegal immigration have set back the economic fortunes of African American men, robbing jobs and wages and even playing a role in low marriage rates and putting more blacks in jail, according to a commissioner with the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

"Illegal immigration has a disproportionately negative effect on the wages and employment levels of blacks, particularly black males," said Peter N. Kirsanow.



In testimony for a Senate hearing on the impact of immigration on the wages and employment of native-born Americans, two other experts said that legal immigration has cost over $500 billion in annual wages to native-borns, and that more than all the job growth in the country since 2007 has gone to immigrants.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and The National Interest, called the hearing to explore the hit legal annual immigration of about one million new permanent residents, 700,000 guest workers, 600,000 students, and approximately 100,000 refugees and asylees has on the U.S. worker.

He has endorsed Republican Donald Trump, who has drawn a hard line against illegal immigrants. Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich have pushed for legalizing undocumented immigrants.

Kirsanow focused on those 15 million illegal immigrants in his prepared testimony. He is a former member of the National Labor Relations Board and a labor lawyer. He said he was testifying "in my personal capacity."

He arrived with shocking statistics based on Civil Rights Commission hearings and other reports.

Among his claims, most illegal immigrants are low skill and compete with black males for jobs. But, he added, "the obvious question is whether there are sufficient jobs in the low skilled labor market for both African Americans and illegal immigrants. The answer is no."

Kirsanow noted that people often say that immigrants, especially illegals, take jobs Americans don't want. He dismissed that. "The problem is that there are thousands of Americas and always will be thousands of Americans, who find that those jobs are the only ones for which they are qualified. How can you better yourself if you cannot even get on the first rung of the employment ladder and find yourself essentially shut out of certain industries," he asked.

He noted that 2016 Bureau of Labor Standards statistics show that only 46 percent of workers over 25 with just a high school education are employed. The Census Bureau said in 2012 that half of blacks did not progress beyond high school in the education.

He also cited reports that illegal immigration cuts wages for blacks, and that makes black men "less appealing" to potential spouses, and one that a 10 percent increase in immigration relates to a 1.3 percent higher incarceration rate for blacks.

"Giving amnesty to illegal immigrants would only exacerbate this problem facing low-skilled men, who are disproportionately African American. The dearth of job opportunities gives these men less confidence in their ability to support a family, and gives women reason to fear that these prospective husbands will only be another mouth to feed," said Kirsanow.

Steven A. Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, provided evidence that immigration results in $531 billion in lost wages, largely by boosting competition for work, driving wages down, a benefit to employers.

He also reviewed years of BLS employment statistics and found that from 2007 to 2015, there were 1.3 million fewer native born workers employed and 1.8 million more immigrant workers. "Over the whole time period all of the net gain in employment 2007 to 2015 went to immigrants," he said.

Harvard University expert George Borjas added that a 10 percent increase in immigrant workers results in a 3 percent cut to wages.

Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com