Among other findings in the new report:

• The poverty rate for persons living in immigrant households grew dramatically from 15.5 percent in 1979, to 18.8 percent in 1989, to 21.8 percent in 1997. Over the same period the poverty rate for persons in native households stayed almost constant at roughly 12 percent. As a result, the gap between immigrant and native poverty has almost tripled in 20 years.
• The gap between the poverty rates for persons in immigrant and native households widened in every region of the country and in almost every major metropolitan area during the 1990s.
• The higher poverty rate associated with immigrants is primarily explained by their lower levels of education, higher unemployment, and larger family size.

Factors Not Contributing to Immigrant Poverty

• The denial of benefits to many legal immigrants enacted as part of the 1996 welfare reform legislation does not seem to have caused the rise in immigrant poverty. Immigrant poverty was increasing well before 1996 and the gap between immigrants and natives has actually narrowed slightly since welfare reform was enacted.
• Although their poverty rate is high, illegal aliens comprise only an estimated 22.5 percent of persons in poverty living in immigrant households.

Who Cares?

By dramatically increasing poverty, current immigration policy has profound long-term consequences for the quality of life in the United States and kind of society we live in. In concrete terms, increasing the number of the poor through immigration makes it more difficult to the help the poor already here, while at the same time negatively affecting the tax base.

What's more, children who grow up in poverty are more likely to be involved in illicit activity, have higher teenage pregnancy rates, exhibit lower academic achievement, and suffer from a host of other social problems. More subtly, social science research indicates that with more poverty comes less trust, greater suspicion of others, and more social distance.

Policy Implications

If current immigration policy remains in place, an estimated 10 million new immigrants are likely to settle permanently in the United States in the next decade alone, and the number of persons in immigrant households in poverty will grow 40 percent to reach 11 million by 2010.

To prevent this situation from continuing into the indefinite future, the United States requires an immigration policy which admits far fewer unskilled immigrants and an immigrant policy which actively seeks to help immigrants already here to escape the poverty so many find themselves in.