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Report Showing Immigration’s Impact on Long Island To Be Released Today

Posted November 17, 2010 by Ted Hesson
Categories: Reports

A report being released today will examine the effects of immigration on the Long Island economy and workforce. Researched by the New York City-based Fiscal Policy Institute, the report will focus on how immigration impacts US-born workers.

The report, entitled “The Changing Profile of Long Island’s Economy: How U.S.-born workers have fared as immigration has grown,” will be released at 2pm today at Hofstra University, and the release will be coupled with a panel discussion on immigration and the Long Island economy. For more details, see the media advisory below.

Newsday, which had access to the report prior to its official release, published an article about it in this morning’s paper:

Immigrants on Long Island add needed workers to the local labor force, creating new businesses and joining a wider variety of occupations than generally recognized, a new study finds.

The Manhattan-based Fiscal Policy Institute, which will release the study results today, analyzed census data during three boom years - 1990, 2000 and 2007 - and concluded immigrants on Long Island fit into the local economy without displacing U.S.-born workers.

It found unemployment rates for most U.S.-born workers remained stable or fell only slightly in each of the boom periods. The exception, the report found, was for African-American men with a high school education or less. Their unemployment rate rose 2 percentage points between 1990 and 2000, before dipping slightly by 2007.

David Dyssegaard Kallick, the report’s lead author, said the report focused on Long Island because it is “a hot spot” in the immigration debate. “We felt like much of the discussion was done in the absence of any real analysis of the role immigrants are playing.”

Economists, immigrant advocates and others welcomed the yearlong research; others criticized it. “It seems to me that it is in tougher economic times that we are better able to determine the overall impact of newcomers on native-born residents,” said Seth Forman, chief planner with the Long Island Regional Planning Council. The institute plans to analyze the effect of the current recession on U.S. and foreign-born workers in a future report.

Pearl Kamer, chief economist for the Long Island Association, the region’s largest business group, called it “a seminal study,” adding that research of this type has never before been conducted on Long Island.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, a frequent critic of illegal immigration, said the report “blurs the line between legal and illegal immigration and fails to account for the drain that illegal immigration has been on our health care, educational and corrections institutions.”

Here’s info about the report from the media advisory:

MEDIA ADVISORY

Long Island’s waves of new immigration recently have generated passionate public debate over immigration’s effects on local jobs, incomes, housing and economic activity.

At 2 pm on Wednesday, Hofstra University will host the release of an important new research report at a public forum. The forum is being organized by the Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy and the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra.

WHAT
Public forum- Immigration’s Impacts on Long Island: New Findings from a Major Research Study

Release of a major new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute- The Changing Profile of Long Island’s Economy: How U.S.-born workers have fared as immigration has grown

WHEN
November 17, 2010
2pm

WHO
Author of report- David Dyssegaard Kallick, Director of the Immigration Research Initiative at the Fiscal Policy Institute

Panel discussants-
Patrick Duggan, former Nassau County Deputy Executive
Pearl Kamer, Chief Economist, Long Island Association
Omar Angel Perez, Executive Director, The Workplace Project

Moderator-
Gregory DeFreitas, Professor of Economics and Director of Labor Studies, Hofstra University

WHERE
Hofstra University, Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater
Located at the center of the campus on the first floor of the Axinn Library Complex

Directions-
Hofstra is located on Long Island in Hempstead, New York, about an hour train or car ride from central Manhattan. For directions, click here.

Tags : economy, fiscal policy institute, jobs, long island, nassau, reports, research, suffolk

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