What does that inscription on the Statue of Liberty say? “Give me your tired, your poor…our economy├óΓé¼Γäós gone down the toilet so for the love of God send us immigrants.├óΓé¼┬¥
Or something like that.
A new study conducted by the San Fransisco Fed found that immigration actually improves employment, wages, and productivity.
According to the study, states with a higher population of immigrants produce more, hire more, and pay workers more than states without as many foreign-born workers. In fact, every one percent increase in employment from immigration causes a .4 to .5 percent increase in income per worker.
The common perception is that immigrants crowd out American workers, but this study found that economies actually expand to absorb the workers. This is in part due to many immigrant workers taking different, more manual-intensive jobs than native-born American workers.
The study gives an example of how this works:
“As young immigrants with low schooling levels take manually intensive construction jobs, the construction companies that employ them have opportunities to expand. This increases the demand for construction supervisors, coordinators, designers, and so on. Those are occupations with greater communication intensity and are typically staffed by U.S.-born workers who have moved away from manual construction jobs. This complementary task specialization typically pushes U.S.-born workers toward better-paying jobs, enhances the efficiency of production, and creates jobs.”
While this issue is complicated, it seems as though allowing immigrants to continue to come in is the smarter choice economically. It├óΓé¼Γäós good to remember that America has always been country of immigrants — it├óΓé¼Γäós just that when it was first founded the people moving in came from Europe instead of the South America.
Also, where would America be if immigrants didn’t move here and introduce us to the wonders of tacos and salsa? That would be a sad, sad world.
[Image via WENN.]