Buried within the General Accounting Office's report on the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act were the results of a "hiring audit" carried out in two cities--Chicago and San Diego--with results more ominous for this country than those related to worker-eligibility procedures.
The audit reveals striking differences in the experiences of Anglo and Latino job applicants that put young Latinos at a severe disadvantage. Anglo applicants received 52% more job offers than Latino ones, who were three times more likely to receive unfavorable treatment than the Anglos. The majority of Latino applicants who received unfavorable treatment were dropped out of the hiring process just after filling out an application. Thus, the greatest barrier the Latinos faced was just getting in the door for an interview.
Even when applicants reached the same stage in the hiring process, Latinos were sometimes treated differently. In one case, the Latino was given a job as a busboy, while the Anglo was "steered" to a better job tending bar. The implications of these findings, to the extent that they reflect conditions in the whole country, are disturbing--especially at a time when many people think that gross discrimination faded out with the Vietnam War.
The visionaries who in the 1950s and 1960s set us on a course to eliminate discrimination undoubtedly anticipated that we would enter the 21st Century with reasonable prospects for equal opportunity in job and housing markets. This study's findings imply that we are far from that vision.
Just how far we are from the reality of equal job opportunity has yet to be established. This is the first time that researchers have been able to directly observe and measure differences in hiring practices in a scientific manner. But the approach, developed by the Urban Institute and the GAO specifically to study discrimination related to employer sanctions can be used to expand our knowledge of the prevalence and character of hiring discrimination against other racial and ethnic groups.
The method used was based on an approach successfully applied to housing discrimination. Researchers trained eight pairs of similarly qualified job applicants who represented young men starting out their careers. One of each pair was Anglo and the other was of Latino origin with a very slight accent. Both were U.S. citizens. The applicant pairs were trained to answer interview questions in a similar manner and to have the same telephone demeanor. Researchers modified the applicants' personal histories so that their work experience, education, career goals, hobbies, etc., were nearly identical; the only difference was their ethnic origin. These evenly matched pairs applied for entry-level jobs from 360 randomly selected employers. This number of jobs was more than enough for statistically valid results.
