A Drought of Reason and Investigation
An Examination and Critique of the Center for Immigration Studies’ “A Drought of Summer Jobs”
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The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) produces a wide body of work intended to convince policy makers and the American public of the necessity of curtailing immigration, both legal and illegal. Their reports criticize immigration along cultural, economic, and political lines. On the economic front, their recent report, “A Drought of Summer Jobs: Immigration and the Long-Term Decline in Employment Among U.S.-Born Teenagers,” concludes that low-skilled immigrants force native-born teenagers out of the labor market. This claim is not supported by the facts. Fundamentally, the report is plagued by sloppy research, data misrepresentations, and a poor grasp of the scholarly literature on immigration and its effects on the labor market.