Are Immigrants Taking Our Jobs?

Are Immigrants taking our jobs?

No. Not according to the excellent book titled Average is over: Powering America beyond the age of the great stagnation by Tyler Cowen.

In the book the author says:  “It’s also hard to find serious evidence that immigration has hurt American wages in a significant way.  Harvard professor George Borjas, a leading critic of our current immigration policies, has presented evidence that immigrants have lowered the wages of high school dropouts, in the long run, by 4.8 percent. But the wages of many other Americans have risen and some major groups, such as the college educated, have suffered a long-run loss of 0.5 percent in wages, which is close to no effect at all.  And that’s what the major immigration critic finds.  Other estimates of the effects of immigration are considerably more positive in terms of effect on American wages.

Papers by Giovanni Peri, among many others suggesting that immigration boosts real wages for most American workers, look at the wages of immigrants across different American cities.  The low wages show up in the places that don’t attract many immigrants, such as the industrial heartland in the Midwest, a lot of the biggest wage gains come in places that do attract a lot of immigrants such as the coasts. (This positive correlation between immigration and wages seems to hold up even if we adjust for confusing factors such as the fact that the more rapidly growing cities will attract a greater number of immigrants.)  When it comes to wage stagnation, immigration is at most a minor contributing factor.”

Basically, although we are having financial issues in this country, immigrants are helping, not hurting, our country financially.

 

Lawrence Gruner is an immigration attorney, a fiancé visa attorney and a green card attorney with almost 20 years experience handling Immigration cases.  He would be happy to talk to you about your Immigration issues. He may be reached at 888-801-6558