Passel's report dismantled another widely held assumption: Only 3 percent of the undocumented immigrants work in agriculture. The greatest numbers, 33 percent, work in the service industry.
The rest work in construction, production, installation and repair, sales and administration, transportation and material moving, and management and business.
And that's not all, as Pew's press release shows:
Unauthorized workers make up a large share of the workforce in a number of occupations that require neither government licensing nor education credentials. For example, about a quarter of all drywall and ceiling tile installers in the United States are unauthorized migrants, as are about a quarter of all meat and poultry workers and a quarter of all dishwashers.And who do you think, other than whites, make up the gist of construction jobs other than whites, or work in the meat and poultry (definitely in NC) industry, or wash dishes at restaurants?
The answer? Blacks.
Having lived in both urban and surburban Atlanta and lived in rural North Carolina, I always knew these assumptions were always a crock, but the Pew study confirms it. But Pew's most shocking statistic has to be that one out of every 11 Mexican residents are coming to the U.S. Folks, that's an out-right migration, and it will continue to cost jobs for both blacks and entry-level whites in the years ahead.
Chris Kelly over at Michelle Malkin's Immigration Blog links to a CS Monitor article about the other side of immigration, as Indians from as far as 500 miles away are moving into Mexico to help manage the fields that illegal immigrants leave behind. Mark In Mexico, who I've noticed in the last couple of days, has a few words on this as well.
UPDATE: Another thing I wanted to mention in this entry was the illegal immigrant crackdown in New England, where they arrested 187 illegal immigrants in six days; a good number of them on violent crimes charges, including rape, drug trafficking, assault and battery, among other things.
So yeah, some of them are finding other things to do....when they aren't working of course.
Good line by Jay Tea at Wizbang: "But I'm sure these people are just committing the rapes, assaults, and drug crimes that Americans don't want to do."
Ha.