Not even near. We have more unskilled worker than ever.
That is not entirely accurate according to your links. You had more people with the same level of skill as before, they just happened to now be looking for unskilled work due to the contraction of other employment due to the recession. In fact, as your second article pretty clearly states and you quote: "
For the first time in a decade, unskilled immigrants are competing with Americans for work. And evidence is emerging that tens of thousands of Hispanic immigrants are withdrawing from the labor market as U.S. workers crowd them out of potential jobs.
At least some of the foreigners are returning home." This actually implies that newly unemployed Americans are in fact decreasing wages for illegal immigrants, not the other way around, and all of it is due to the recessionary climate (with unemployment decreasing, this point is almost entirely moot - once the economy recovers illegal immigrants won't be competing with more skilled US labor than before).
As for your first article, first of all, comes from a website called NUMBERSUSA FOR LOWER IMMIGRATION NUMBERS. Not the most objective source on the matter, but whatever, it is quoting the Borjas study (which I would suggest anyone to read because he's pretty legit, despite the fact I disagree with him:
Center for Immigration Studies). Now, you probably didn't read it, but his study is about
all immigrants. He claims at the very beginning actually, that it makes absolutely no difference whether they are legal and illegal, and is making a blanket statement that ANY immigration reduces wages: "
The reduction in earnings occurs regardless of whether the immigrants are legal or illegal, permanent or temporary. It is the presence of additional workers that reduces wages, not their legal status."
Yet, even some of the most rabid illegal-immigrant haters disagree with this - I've seen the vast majority of them on this very site claiming how "Oh, immigrants who came before came to work! These dirty Mexicans aren't like the other past immigrants (read: my ancestors)! They're not like those people who wait in line to get into this country!" According to Borjas's analysis, ALL those immigrants, legal, illegal, Irish, Italian, etc would have had the same negative impact on native-born wages. Is this true? It may well be true, but Borjas entirely dismisses any of the macro-level benefits of immigration that the vast majority of economists going back to Adam Smith himself have explained. Like everything in economics, there's almost never any entirely positive thing, higher wages does not necessarily mean a good economy or even better living standards.
Just look at the demographic problem occurring in Japan and Eastern Europe (and it would be occurring today in Western Europe, the US and Canada if there hadn't been large influxes of migrants to these areas): In 40 years, their population will have shrunk, retired people's percentage of the population will have surged, and the proportion of workers will be minute compared to today, wages may be very much higher, but the majority of this increase will either way go into taxes to support the retired population and there will be less work either way due to lower population AND much higher wages AND the potential for default or political/social instability if old-age support can't be maintained.
Borjas puts some of this in his study but never really goes in-depth with it: "For example, an influx of foreign-born laborers reduces the economic opportunities for laborers. All laborers now face stiffer competition in the labor market.
At the same time, high-skill natives may gain substantially. They pay less for the services that laborers provide, such as painting the house and mowing the lawn, and natives who hire these laborers can now specialize in producing the goods and services that better suit their skills."
And please get your numbers straight, from your own source:
"The [2004 Bush] plan has three key components: First, it would legalize the status of the
approximately 10 million illegal aliens now present in the United States by creating a new type of temporary worker visa [...]
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, estimates that
there were 4.8 million Mexican illegal aliens present in the country in 2000, making up about half of the 9.2 million Mexican immigrants counted by the 2000 Census." (The figure today is closer to 6.5 million according to the Department of Homeland Security).
"Since 1970, immigration has
increased the number of unskilled job applicants faster than the number of skilled job applicants.
High Immigration Harms Many American Workers | NumbersUSA - For Lower Immigration Levels
U.S. Workers Crowding Out Immigrant Laborers for Unskilled Jobs
U.S. Workers Crowding Out Immigrant Laborers for Unskilled Jobs
