Does Immigration Cause Youth Unemployment?
Most Canadians are aware that Canada’s youth (secondary as well as post-secondary graduates) are finding it very difficult to find jobs. Officially, youth unemployment in Canada stands at above 14%. Unofficially, it is probably around 20 to 25%. Yet Ottawa continues to allow around 250,000 immigrants to enter Canada every year and another 250,000 Temporary Foreign Workers to work here. Most logical people would say it makes no sense to force our young people to compete with so many immigrants and Temporary Foreign workers at such a time. In fact, most logical people would say that the practice of offering humans as sacrifices to the gods is alive and well in Ottawa and among its supporters. The only difference is that those sacrificed are now Canadian youth and the gods are now Diversity, Multiculturalism and the immigrant vote.
Although similar things are occurring in the UK and US, this should not be an excuse for Ottawa to cut the throats of its own youth.
Our bulletin this week is a copy of a press release from Migration Watch UK. It states that a rise in UK’s youth unemployment and a rise in immigration from Eastern Europe are not just coincidences.
We also include a link to a long study done by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. It concluded that immigration has caused a long-term decline in summer employment for U.S.-born youth.
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Youth Unemployment and Immigration: More than a Coincidence, Says Report
Migration Watch UK
9 January, 2012
A new report has highlighted the ‘remarkable coincidence’ between the rise in youth unemployment in the UK and the huge surge in immigration from Eastern Europe over the last eight years.
The report by think-tank Migration Watch UK shows that there is an apparent correlation between this surge and the surge in UK youth unemployment that followed.
Between the first quarter of 2004 and the third quarter of 2011, employment of workers born in the so called A8 (eight former Soviet-bloc countries in Eastern Europe ) increased by over 600,000. Over the same period the number of unemployed young people in the UK almost doubled, from 575,000 to just over a million.
‘As our report makes clear, measuring the effect of the recent unprecedented immigration levels on youth unemployment is not an exact science – and many attempts to do so have been criticised,’ said Sir Andrew Green, Migration Watch chairman.
‘Correlation is not causation but when the two statistics are placed side by side, most objective people would consider it a very remarkable coincidence if there was no link at all between them, especially as migrants from the A8 have tended to be disproportionately young, well-educated, prepared to work for low wages and imbued with a strong work ethic,’ he said.
Such studies as have been undertaken have had greater success with gauging the impact on wage levels of migration into the UK, which – for the lowest 15 per cent of earners – have been adversely impacted.
The accession of eight former Soviet-bloc countries in Eastern Europe to the European Union from May 2004, led to a very substantial migration from these countries to the UK. Around 1.6 million workers from the A8 came to the UK during the seven year transition period and the number of people from these countries working in the UK increased by 600,000. The impact on the UK labour market has been significant – for example, in 2006-07 alone almost 223,000 Polish migrants registered in the UK to work. However, a study by the NIESR in April 2011 of the economic impact of this EU enlargement found that “the long run impact on [UK] GDP per capita can be expected to be negligible”
Sir Andrew said that while the economic downturn has undoubtedly had a major impact on youth unemployment the fact that so many migrants have found work in such difficult employment conditions demonstrates that there are jobs there to be had – although large numbers of them are going to foreign born workers.
Said Sir Andrew: ‘It is implausible and counter-intuitive to suggest – as the previous Government and some economists have done – that A8 migration has had virtually no impact on UK youth unemployment in this period.
‘Accurate estimation of the size of the impact is beset with problems of statistical ‘noise’ and more research is needed to assess the true scale of the impact. We hear a great deal from employers about the value of immigrant labour, especially from Eastern Europe, but there are also costs some of which have undoubtedly fallen on young British-born workers’, he said
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A drought of Summer Jobs : Immigration And The Long-Term Decline in Employment Among U.S.-Born Teenagers
