Answer:
1. “Immigrants will take American jobs, lower our wages, and especially hurt the poor.”
This is the most common argument and also the one with the greatest amount of evidence rebutting it. First, the displacement effect is small if it even affects natives at all. Immigrants are typically attracted to growing regions and they increase the supply and demand sides of the economy once they are there, expanding employment opportunities. Second, the debate over immigrant impacts on American wages is confined to the lower single digits—immigrants may increase the relative wages for some Americans by a tiny amount and decrease them by a larger amount for the few Americans who directly compete against them. Immigrants likely compete most directly against other immigrants so the effects on less‐skilled native‐born Americans might be very small or even positive.
New research by Harvard professor George Borjas on the effect of the Mariel Boatlift—a giant shock to Miami’s labor market that increased the size of its population by 7 percent in 42 days—finds large negative wage effects concentrated on Americans with less than a high school degree. To put the scale of that shock to Miami in context, it would be as if 22.4 million immigrants moved to America in a six‐week period—which will not happen. Some doubt Borjas’s finding and Borjas’s response. Even if the Mariel Boatlift had such a large and negative effect on the wages of native‐born high‐school dropouts in Miami, it had a large positive impact on the wages of natives with only a high school education, to such a degree that the wages of lower‐skilled Miamians actually increased. The rapid recovery of Hispanic wages in Miami also produces some doubt as to Mariel’s effect on native wages as Hispanics were the most likely to suffer wage declines from competition with the new Cuban immigrants. Economists Michael Clemens and Jennifer Hunt have the most devastating response to Borjas: His response was due entirely to a different sample collected in Miami over the years where he observed the wage decline. Thus, the data collectors made Mariel look like it had a large negative wage effect by changing whom they surveyed.
Although some doubt Borjas’s finding regarding Mariel, it is not in doubt that immigration has overall increased the wages and income of Americans. The smallest estimated immigration surplus, as it is called, is equal to about 0.24 percent of GDP—which excludes the gains to immigrants and just focuses on those of native‐born Americans.
2. “Immigrants abuse the welfare state.”
Most legal immigrants do not have access to means‐tested welfare for their first five years here with few exceptions that are mostly determined on the state level and funded with state taxes. Illegal immigrants don’t have access at all—except for emergency Medicaid.
Immigrants are less likely to use means‐tested welfare benefits than similar native‐born Americans. When they do use welfare, the dollar value of benefits consumed is smaller. If poor native‐born Americans used Medicaid at the same rate and consumed the same value of benefits as poor immigrants, the program would be 42 percent smaller.
Immigrants also make large net contributions to Medicare and Social Security, the largest portions of the welfare state, because of their ages, ineligibility, and their greater likelihood of retiring in other countries. Far from draining the welfare state, immigrants have given the entitlement portions a few more years of operation before bankruptcy. If you’re still worried about foreign‐born consumption of welfare benefits, as I am, then it is far easier and cheaper to build a higher wall around the welfare state, instead of around the country.
