Author Topic: An Abundance of New Academic Studies Find Negative Impacts of Immigration  (Read 237 times)

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An Abundance of New Academic Studies Find Negative Impacts of Immigration
 
By Jason Richwine on June 14, 2019

The economic costs and benefits of immigration are routinely measured, weighed, and debated in academic journals. No fair reading of the literature could conclude that economists believe immigration has only costs or only benefits.

Nevertheless, some immigration advocates claim that their benefits-only narrative is backed by scholarly consensus. Vox once ran this ridiculous headline: "There's no evidence that immigrants hurt any American workers". Reason's Shikha Dalmia has absurdly claimed that George Borjas is "literally the only economist of any repute who questions the economic benefits of immigration". ABC News thought it could dispense with the whole notion that immigrants drive down wages with a single-paragraph "fact-check".

It's not difficult to see that the advocates are wrong. In the fall of 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine published a book-length report on the economics of immigration. Chapters 4 and 5 of that report offer a careful, systematic review of the research, both theoretical and empirical, on immigration's wage and employment effects. Anyone who reads those chapters cannot come away believing that immigration is cost-free. For example, Table 5-2 from the report lists several major studies measuring immigration's impact on wages. Notice the negative values in the "Wage Effect" column:

https://cis.org/Richwine/Abundance-New-Academic-Studies-Find-Negative-Impacts-Immigration