Yesterday, Commissioner Kirsanow sent a letter to President Obama counseling against issuing an executive order granting legal status to illegal immigrants. As he has in the past, Commissioner Kirsanow warned of the deleterious effects such grant of legal status would have on the employment prospects of low-skilled American workers, especially low-skilled black Americans and teens. He writes:

Illegal immigration has a disparate impact on African-American men because these men are disproportionately represented in the low-skilled labor force. The Census Bureau released a new report on educational attainment after the Commission issued its report. This report, released in February 2012, found that 50.9 percent of native-born blacks had not continued their education beyond high school. The same report found that 75.5 percent of foreign-born Hispanics had not been educated beyond high school, although it does not disaggregate foreign-born Hispanics who are legal immigrants from those who are illegal immigrants.However, Professor Briggs estimated that illegal immigrants or former illegal immigrants who received amnesty constitute a third to over a half of the total foreign-born population. Foreign-born Hispanics who are in the United States illegally are disproportionately male. African-Americans who have not pursued education beyond high school are also disproportionately male. These poor educational attainment levels usually relegate both African-American men and illegal immigrant men to the same low-skilled labor market, where they must compete against each other for work.

Your proposed executive order will also have a negative effect on young African-Americans at the outset of their working lives. Young, low-skilled workers are facing enormous difficulties in this economy. A recent study from the Brookings Institution found, “Only about half of high school graduates not enrolled in post-secondary education and less than 30 percent of high school dropouts worked in a given month in 2011.” Black teens had the highest labor underutilization rate (defined as encompassing the unemployed, the unemployed who desire employment but are not actively looking, and the underemployed) of any ethnic group – 60 percent. Furthermore, “Several variables were negatively associated with teen employment rates in a given metropolitan area. … [including] the presence of immigrants with less than a bachelor’s degree.”  This will affect young people for the rest of their lives, as those who work during their teenage years have more successful careers than those who did not. [citations omitted]

Read the whole thing here: Letter to President Obama Regarding Proposed Illegal Immigration Executive Order