There are an estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Some 7.2 million of them are employed about 5 percent of the U.S. labor force according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization. The illegal workers are mostly men and are heavily concentrated in construction, agriculture and cleaning jobs, Pew says. Those jobs tend to be low skill or unskilled manual labor, economists said. In recent years, more than 1 million people a year have immigrated to the U.S., a level not seen since before the Great Depression. This boom is most apparent in the urban areas where immigrants tend to cluster. Given their numbers, these newly arrived residents must have some effect on local labor markets. Yet economists have been puzzled by the evidence that immigration has little impact on the wages and employment of native-born workers. So how great is immigration's impact on local labor markets? Is it limited to markets where immigrants settle, or is it spread across the country? (Ethier, Wilfred J.)
Since the 1960s, the number of foreign-born people living in the U.S. has risen rapidly. At present, over 1 million people immigrate to the U.S. each year (both legally and illegally), a level not seen since before the Great Depression. This boom is most apparent in the urban areas where immigrants tend to cluster: Foreign-born residents now make up 60 percent of the population of Miami and large pluralities of the population of other major gateway destinations such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. There are at least some immigrants in all parts of the U.S., however. In the Third Federal Reserve District, Philadelphia is the top destination for the foreign-born, followed by Trenton, Wilmington, Atlantic City, and Allentown.......
