What's US economy's future? Ask illegal immigrants.
The rise and fall of border crossings foretells economic change, researchers say.
from the May 2, 2007 edition
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Since the end of 2005, however, apprehensions have fallen again. By April of last year, the trend was firmly established and indicated to her that the economy would slow down this year. Indeed, the Department of Commerce reported on Friday that the economy grew only 1.3 percent for the first quarter of this year, the worst performance in four years. One key reason: a slump in the housing market, which is the biggest employer for foreign-born Hispanic workers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.
Through 2006, the numbers of Hispanic foreign-born workers employed in the construction industry continued to grow, with the number of recently arrived immigrants employed in the industry nearly doubling last year, according to a Pew Center report.
McLaren and her colleagues now use the numbers of apprehensions as one tool in their matrix of indicators to predict where the economy is headed.
"Generally, there does seem to be some relationship between economic conditions in the US and the number of foreign-born workers here," says Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center.
Of course, border security still affects the numbers of illegal immigrants entering the country. McLaren argues that the two are inextricably linked. Because they won't chance coming to the US unless they have solid employment prospects, a change in their numbers is the first ripple of any change that ripples through the economy, she says.
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