A new report from the Congressional Research Service links the increase in immigration in recent decades to the decline of the median income for the bottom 90% of income tax filers. The report, prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, shows that as the percentage of foreign-born residents declined between 1945 and the early-1970s, the median income for middle-class Americans increased. But after the foreign-born percentage began to increase after 1970, middle-class wages stagnated before plummeting after 2000.
The report specifically found that between 1945 and 1970, the foreign-born percentage of the overall population dropped from about 7.7% to about 4.7%, and the median income for the bottom 90% of income tax filers increased by 82.5%. Conversely, as the foreign-born percentage of the population rose to about 13% in 2013, the median income for the bottom 90% of income tax filers dropped by 7.9% -- its lowest point in 40 years.
According to the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics published annually by the Department of Homeland Security, the United States issued 260,000 green cards on average between the years 1945 and 1970. After passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 greatly expanded family-based immigration, the average number of green cards issued by the federal government each year between 1970 and 2013 was 788,500, and the average since 1989 was just over 1 million.
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