Immigration and Poverty

Because U.S. immigration policy slants toward admitting relatives rather than immigrants with needed workplace skills, our immigration system literally imports poverty.

Sixteen percent of all immigrant households live below the poverty level, and one out of every five households of non-citizens is poor (versus eleven percent poverty among native households).¹

The median household income for immigrant households is 13 percent lower than that of native households, and, for the households of non-citizens, it is 23 percent lower.

Poverty among immigrant households in not likely to improve, if recent trends are any indication. The median household income for immigrant households dropped 5.3 percent from 2000 to 2001, and, in non-citizen households, it fell 4.2 percent.

Child poverty has been particularly affected. In 2000, one in four poor children had at least one foreign-born parent. Immigrant children themselves are more than twice as likely as native children to be poor (35 percent versus 17 percent). Even when adjusting for other factors, such as single-parenthood, joblessness, and low education, the children of immigrant households still suffer substantially more from poverty.²

Compared to children of natives, children of immigrants are more than four times as likely to live in crowded housing (29 percent versus 7 percent), twice as likely to live with a family paying more than half its income for rent or mortgage (14 percent versus 6 percent), twice as likely to be uninsured (22 percent versus 10 percent), three times as likely to have no usual source of health care (14 percent versus 4 percent), and twice as likely to be in only fair or poor health (9 percent versus 4 percent).³

In immigration-heavy states, the effects are even more pronounced. Nearly three-fifths of all poor children in California are immigrants, and the poverty rate of the state’s immigrant children (29 percent) is significantly higher than that of its native children (17 percent).⁴

Our country could do a better job helping the poor (be they native or immigrant) pull themselves out of poverty. But the war against poverty has been made unwinable by an immigration policy that continually imports yet more poverty, condemning us to be perpetually bailing out a leaking boat. Immigration law should be changed to eliminate preferences for extended family members and instead emphasize education and skills so that there is a better fit between the skills of immigrants and the nation’s needs.

[1] These and subsequent statistics are from the U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, 2002 Annual Demographic Supplement.

[2] Children of Immigrants: A Statistical Profile, September 2002, National Center for Children in Poverty (Columbia University).

[3] Hardship among Children of Immigrants: Findings from the 1999 National Survey of America’s Families, February 2001, Randy Capps, Urban Institute.

[4] The Changing Face of Child Poverty in California, August 2002, National Center for Children in Poverty (Columbia University).

Updated 10/02