One of the obvious questions about immigration, legal and otherwise, is whether immigrants add to or subtract from the economy: do they make the U.S. richer or poorer? Now I find it hard to believe that immigration can lead to a net loss for the economy as a whole. People flow across borders because they can get more on the other side than where they started; that is the supply side. The demand side is that they offer something (labor) cheaper than it is available without them. Just as the U.S. cannot but benefit it finds a supply of cheaper oil, it cannot but benefit if it finds a supply of cheaper labor.
My knee-jerk conservative reaction is probably correct. See this article by Karl Zinsmeister and Edward Lazearat Real Clear Politics:
The classic study on the costs and benefits of immigration was produced by a team of prominent economists and demographers for the National Research Council. Those researchers concluded that the long-run cost to all government treasuries of an immigrant with less than a high school degree is around $17,000 (in 2006 dollars). Meanwhile, an immigrant with more than a high school degree produces a surplus of $253,000, and the average for all immigrants was $102,000 more in taxes paid than benefits received.
But that just weighs benefits received against taxes and fees paid. Immigrants also buy food, cars, and washing machines. They rent and buy housing.
A 2006 report from the UNC-Chapel Hill business school found that Hispanics in North Carolina contributed more than $9 billion to their state economy as a whole. Another 2006 study, by the Texas comptroller, concluded that 1.4 million immigrants living in Texas increased the size of that state's economy by $18 billion. The benefits from this growth go to the native-born population as well as to the immigrants themselves.
Immigrants enrich our private economy in a variety of ways. Their contributions make viable certain businesses that would otherwise move overseas. They have a stimulative effect as consumers--in a typical county today, 28% of population growth comes from immigration. They increase productivity by adding labor that is mostly complementary to native workers. This is why a recent study of California by U.C.-Davis economist Giovanni Peri found that immigration between 1990 and 2004 "induced a 4% real wage increase for the average native worker."
Immigrants are surely an economic benefit to the economy as a whole, though there are just as surely some native born Americans who do not benefit.
But economic benefits are not the only relevant consideration. There is also the matter of citizenship. Those who are citizens now have a right to decide to whom citizenship will be extended. The real reason the current immigration legislation is so unpopular is that this question has not been taken seriously. Many business lobbies want the flow of cheap labor to continue. Many democrats want the flow of Hispanics to continue, on the assumption that they will mean future democratic voters. Most Americans want to have some say over who is eligible to join the ranks of American voters. Until that problem is solved, rational immigration reform will probably not be possible.
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