Migration and Human Rights (48): The Arguments Against Immigration, and How They Are Mistaken

I’m going to try to list the most common arguments against immigration, and show how they are devoid of any basis in facts. Since I’m talking facts, I’ll include some handy references to scientific evidence debunking the arguments. (The references will sometimes be found in older blogposts, so you may have to click through a few times. If you feel that I’m shamelessly overlooking some seminal papers, please tell me in comments).

1. The labor cost argument

Claim:

Immigrants are willing to work for low wages, especially the illegal ones. The result is unfair wage competition with natives who will see their wages drop as a result, or who may even be priced out of the labor market altogether. The welfare of native workers requires that we limit immigration.

Facts:

Immigration actually increases native wages because it allows native workers to move up the pay scale, for example as supervisors of the new immigrant workers. Low skilled immigrants also make it possible for natives to spend less time on non-paid, low-skilled activities that they can outsource. As a result, the latter can spend more time on paid activities, which increases their income. The wage competition claim can also be refuted by pointing to the fact that native workers and immigrants tend to take different occupations.

Not only is there a positive wage effect of immigration (with perhaps a small exception for native high school drop outs), but immigration also creates or saves jobs. The easier it is to find cheap immigrant labor at home the less likely that production will relocate offshore. More here.

2. The social safety net argument

Claim:

Immigrants come over just to cash in on unemployment and other benefits, since the income of even the relatively rich people in many poor countries pales in comparison to the welfare benefits in rich countries. This is unsustainable, since welfare benefits have to be financed, and working native populations often have a hard time producing enough tax revenue in order to support native welfare beneficiaries. Allowing immigrants to come but then excluding them from welfare benefits seems harsh and unjust. Hence it’s better not to allow them to come in the first place.

Facts:

Immigrants use welfare at lower rates than natives. The labor force participation rate for illegal immigrants in the US is higher than that of the native-born. In the UK, immigrants represent about 13% of all workers, but only 7% percent of unemployment benefits.

3. The “importing poverty” argument

Claim:

Immigrants are less well off than natives. That’s precisely why they want to migrate. Allowing them in reduces the average wealth of the destination country.

Facts:

Many immigrants are indeed less well off than the native born, even after they’ve immigrated, because they come from poorer countries and because they’re often less skilled than the native born. Hence, an increase in immigration may push up the national poverty rate. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, since the same immigration flow will probably push down the global poverty rate: migrants usually improve their lot by migrating – they probably wouldn’t migrate if that were not the case.

4. The crime argument

Claim:

Immigrants cause an increase in the crime rate. They often come from countries with dysfunctional states and bad enforcement institutions. Hence, they have grown to be more tolerant of violations of the law. The poverty of their countries of origin also pushes them towards more crime. Less crime is a good thing, hence less immigration is also a good thing.

Facts:

Immigration is associated with lower crime rates and lower incarceration rates.

5. The lack of integration argument

Claim:

Immigrants, especially those from other cultures (and that would be most immigrants, since it’s the poor who want to migrate and the poor are almost by definition from outside the West), find it hard to fit in. As a result, there will be frictions between the immigrant population and the original inhabitants. These frictions benefit nobody, hence we should restrict immigration.

Facts:

Natives are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior like bullying, dropping out of school, domestic violence, harassment, vandalism etc. The evidence is here.

6. The cultural argument

Claim:

The local culture will not be able to survive a large influx of high fertility immigrants from completely different cultures. People have a legitimate interest in the preservation of their distinctive cultural identity. Hence immigration should be restricted.

Facts:

A cultural identity is obviously a valuable good. However, it’s not at all clear that immigration threatens the cultures of destinations countries. Those destination countries are multicultural to begin with. Most immigrants are also  willing and able to adapt (see previous point). Moreover, cultural change is not by definition a bad thing, both for those arriving and for those already there. And finally, cultural change is not always likely to happen anyway: throughout history, even those minority cultures living in highly hostile environments where the majority controls the state have been able to survive and flourish. Often a threat to a culture is the cause of increased cultural awareness.

7. The educational argument

Claim:

Immigrant children push down the quality of schools and therefore harm the education of native children. Immigrant children have different types of disadvantages: they speak the local language less well, they have cultural burdens inhibiting education, and perhaps even IQ burdens. The welfare of native children requires that we limit immigration.

Facts:

Higher rates of immigration encourage native children to study harder – to complete high school and to go to university – so that they can avoid competing with immigrant high-school dropouts in the labor market.

Conclusion

All of these claims about immigration are based on supposed harms to the population of the destination country. (There’s one argument I didn’t mention, namely the brain drain argument, that focuses on the effects of migration on origin countries, but that one is just as flawed as the rest). Not only is this a very selfish mode of argument, ignoring the clear benefits for (potential) immigrants, but – as it turns out – also a very misguided one, based on factual errors. However, even if it were the case that immigration imposes some form of financial costs on host countries, then that wouldn’t necessarily be the final argument against immigration, since these cost can be seen as a form of global redistribution and global justice.

More posts in this series are here.

Migration and Human Rights (40): The Economic Efficiency Argument for Open Borders

Immigration restrictions are often defended on the basis of economic arguments. I’ve repeated often enough why these arguments won’t work (see here and here for example). What I want to do now is spell out one of the strongest economic arguments against immigration restrictions and in favor of open borders, and I mean completely open borders (which doesn’t mean that completely open borders are necessarily the right thing to do; there may be other arguments against completely open borders that override the economic ones in favor).

Restraining the movement of people between national territories creates the same inefficiencies as restraining the movement of goods and services. Free international trade in goods and services increases overall wealth and prosperity, as I’ve argued here and here. Trade enhances specialization and the use of comparative advantage. It’s easier to grow bananas in the tropics and then trade them, than to make every country grow its own bananas. Similarly, free movement of people makes it possible to make better use of people’s talents. Just as it was an inefficient waste to relegate women to the household – not to mention a gross violation of their rights – we are now depriving the world of good workers in all fields of life because of immigration restrictions. Potential immigrants have a hard time going to other countries in order to develop their talents, and can’t move freely around the world to use their talents. Those of you who worry about the effects of a so-called brain drain should read this.

More on open borders is here.

Measuring Human Rights (14): Numbers of Illegal Immigrants

Calculating a reliable number for a segment of the population that generally wants to hide from officials is very difficult, but it’s politically very important to know more or less how many illegal immigrants there are, and whether their number is increasing or decreasing. There’s a whole lot of populist rhetoric floating around, especially regarding jobs and crime, and passions are often inflamed. Knowing how many illegal immigrants there are – more or less – allows us to quantify the real effects on employment and crime, and to deflate some of the rhetoric.

Immigration is a human rights issue in several respects. Immigration is often a way for people to escape human rights violations (such as poverty or persecution). And upon arrival, immigrants – especially illegal immigrants – often face other human rights violations (invasion of privacy, searches, labor exploitation etc.). The native population may also fear – rightly or wrongly – that the presence of large groups of immigrants will lower their standard of living or threaten their physical security. Illegal immigrants especially are often accused of pulling down wages and labor conditions and of creating native unemployment. If we want to disprove such accusations, we need data on the numbers of immigrants.

So how do we count the number of illegal immigrants? Obviously there’s nothing in census data. The Census Bureau doesn’t ask people about their immigration status, in part because such questions may drive down overall response rates. Maybe in some cases the census data of other countries can help. Other countries may ask their residents how many family members have gone abroad to find a job.

Another possible source are the numbers of births included in hospital data. If you assume a certain number of births per resident, and compare that to the total number of births, you may be able to deduce the number of births among illegal immigrants (disparagingly called “anchor babies“), which in turn may give you an idea about the total number of illegal immigrants.

Fluctuations in the amounts of remittances – money sent back home by immigrants – may also indicate trends in illegal immigration, although remittances are of course sent by both legal and illegal immigrants. Furthermore, it’s not because remittances go down that immigrants leave. It might just be a temporary drop following an economic recession, and immigrants decide to sweat it out (possibly supported by reverse remittances for the time of the recession). Conversely, an increase in remittances may simply reflect technological improvements in international payment systems.

Perhaps a better indicator are the numbers of apprehensions by border-patrol units. However, fluctuations in these numbers may not be due to fluctuations in immigration. Better or worse performance by border-patrol officers or tighter border security may be the real reasons.

So, it’s really not easy to count illegal immigrants, and that means that all rhetoric about illegal immigration – both positive and negative – should be taken with a grain of salt.

More posts on this series are here.

Migration and Human Rights (35): The Economic Benefits of Immigration, Ctd.

Immigration is supposed to be bad for the economic wellbeing of (parts of) the native population (a claim that’s based on fears about unfair labor competition pushing down wages or pushing natives out of work, and about burdens on social safety nets resulting from so-called “welfare tourism”).

More open borders would be a good thing for the wellbeing of potential immigrants. But it would also be a good thing for the natives of the destination countries: it’s not just that immigration fails to harm the native population, but it actually provides some benefits. And those benefits exist even when we don’t limit immigration to high-skill immigration. That means that immigration restrictions can hurt the destination country.

How does immigration benefit the host country?

• First, low skilled immigrants allow relatively low-skilled native workers to move to higher skilled or more specialized positions, for example as supervisors of the new immigrant workers. And those positions yield higher incomes.
• Secondly, low skilled immigrants make it possible for natives to spend less time on non-paid, low-skilled activities that they can outsource. As a result, the latter can spend more time on paid activities, which increases their income. And even if they don’t (choose to) increase their income they probably increase their wellbeing.
• Thirdly, immigrants produce tax revenues which contribute to social safety nets that benefit everyone.
• And finally, immigrants consume, which creates higher economic growth which in turn benefits everyone. And when we legalize immigrants, they are likely to earn more, pay more taxes and invest, which will increase the productivity of the host economy, again to everyone’s benefit.

There’s some additional evidence in favor of these claims here. In short, this is what it says:

The effects of immigration on the total output and income of the U.S. economy can be studied by comparing output per worker and employment in states that have had large immigrant inflows with data from states that have few new foreign-born workers. Statistical analysis of state-level data shows that immigrants expand the economy’s productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization. This produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker. At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants diminish the employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers.

The anti-immigration claim that immigrant labor competition harms native workers, especially the low-skilled ones, is easily refuted by the simple fact that

U.S.-born workers and immigrants tend to take different occupations. Among less-educated workers, those born in the United States tend to have jobs in manufacturing or mining, while immigrants tend to have jobs in personal services and agriculture. Among more-educated workers, those born in the United States tend to work as managers, teachers, and nurses, while immigrants tend to work as engineers, scientists, and doctors. Second, within industries and specific businesses, immigrants and U.S.-born workers tend to specialize in different job tasks. Because those born in the United States have relatively better English language skills, they tend to specialize in communication tasks. Immigrants tend to specialize in other tasks. (source)

The role of language provides an example of how immigration allows native workers to move to higher skilled or more specialized positions:

in states where immigration has been heavy, U.S.-born workers with less education … have shifted toward more communication-intensive jobs. Figure 3 [below] shows exactly this. The share of immigrants among the less educated is strongly correlated with the extent of U.S.-born worker specialization in communication tasks. Each point in the graph represents a U.S. state in 2005. In states with a heavy concentration of less-educated immigrants, U.S.-born workers have migrated toward more communication-intensive occupations. Those jobs pay higher wages than manual jobs, so such a mechanism has stimulated the productivity of workers born in the United States and generated new employment opportunities. (source)

Therefore, immigration pushes up the income of native workers.

To better understand this mechanism, it is useful to consider the following hypothetical illustration. 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. (source)

Of course, there are bound to be some distribution effects, which means that there will be natives who benefit and other natives who don’t and who may even be harmed by immigration. However, it’s the complete picture that counts.

Migration and Human Rights (34): The “Criminal Immigrant” Stereotype, Ctd.

It’s simply not true that immigration leads to an increase in crime rates. True, immigrants are often – but not always – relatively poor, undereducated and – initially at least – not well adjusted to their host community. But none of that seems to be a sufficient reason for higher crime rates among immigrants.

On the contrary, there’s some evidence here of immigration actually reducing crime rates:

During the 1990s, immigration reached record highs and crime rates fell more precipitously than at any time in U.S. history. And cities with the largest increases in immigration between 1990 and 2000 experienced the largest decreases in rates of homicide and robbery. … Wadsworth contends that looking at crime statistics at a single point in time can’t explain the cause of crime rates.

Using such snapshots in time, Wadsworth finds that cities with larger foreign-born and new-immigrant populations do have higher rates of violent crime. But many factors—including economic conditions—influence crime rates.

If higher rates of immigration were boosting crime rates, one would expect long-term studies to show crime rising and falling over time with the influx and exodus of immigrants. Instead, Wadsworth found the opposite. (source)

There’s yet another study here showing that Hispanic Americans are less violent than whites or blacks.

A simple juxtaposition of immigration trends and crime trends can already make clear how silly it is to claim that higher immigration rates produce higher crime rates.

What could be the explanation? Why does immigration reduce crime rates? Maybe the culture and religion of the immigrants has something to do with it. Or maybe it’s true that people migrate because they want to have a better life, and that engaging in crime is incompatible with this motivation. Or perhaps the fact that immigrants tend to live in extended families and close-knit communities discourages crime.

I’ve said it before: although correlation doesn’t always equal causation, these numbers are compelling, even if we accept some possible caveats (illegal immigrants, when committing a crime, are perhaps more likely to flee abroad and hence not end up in incarceration statistics, and there may be some underreporting of crime in communities with a lot of illegal immigrants). Politicians should therefore stop exploiting irrational fears about immigrant crime for their own partisan gain. You don’t solve the crime problem by closing the border, and certainly not by ignoring overwhelming scientific evidence.

Migration and Human Rights (33): Immigration = Importing Poverty?

Let’s jump to the conclusion: no, immigration is not “the importation of poverty”, at least not in the U.S. and probably not in other developed countries either.

When talking about “importing poverty” we should make the following distinction.

• Immigration can affect a country’s total poverty rate. Many immigrants are less well off than the native born, even after they’ve immigrated, because they come from poorer countries and because they’re usually lower skilled than the native born. Hence, an increase in immigration will push up the national poverty rate. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, since the same immigration flow will probably push down the global poverty rate: migrants usually improve their lot by migrating – they probably wouldn’t migrate if that were not the case (I focus on economic migrants here, not refugees or displaced persons). They are, on average, poor relative to the native population, but they were, in absolute terms, even poorer before they migrated.
• Immigration, however, can also affect, not the total poverty rate of the destination country, but the poverty rate of the native population in the destination country. This supposed effect occurs because immigration is said to alter the levels of supply of workers with different skills. These alterations (or “immigration-induced labor supply shocks”) can, theoretically, have an negative impact on wage levels or employment rates of the native population. This impact of immigrant-native labor market competition can in turn affect native (but also immigrant) poverty levels, since poverty is closely linked to wage evolutions.

It’s this second, supposed effect which of course produces the most political heat, spawning xenophobic political parties or a “push to the right” in existing parties. Here‘s a study disproving this effect:

we find little evidence of an impact of immigration on native poverty through immigrant-native labor market competition. Despite adverse wage effects on high school dropouts and small effects on the poverty rates of members of this group, the effects on native poverty rates are negligible. This latter result is largely driven by the fact that even among native-born poor households, most have at least one working adult with at least a high school education.

Apart from distortions in labor competition, there’s possibly a third effect through which immigration could have an impact on native poverty levels: anti-immigrant propaganda often includes statements about “welfare tourism”, immigrants coming over just to cash in on unemployment and other benefits. In doing so, the claim goes, they sap the country’s economic efficiency because high welfare spending implies high taxes. And an economy that’s weakened because of high taxes can result in more poverty. However, this as well is basically a myth. For the U.S., we have the following numbers disproving those claims:

Those immigrants aren’t coming here to have babies and they aren’t coming here to abuse social services. … [I]mmigrants use welfare at lower rates than natives. I should also add that if your concern is that some immigrants are receiving more in public benefits than they pay in taxes, you should keep in mind that so do 67 percent of Americans. … [T]he labor force participation rate for illegal immigrant males (ages 18 to 64) was 92 percent, compared to a rate of just 83 percent for native-born males. (source)

In the U.S., immigrants are just as likely to be unemployed as native born Americans. However, that’s not the case in all rich countries. In Belgium, for instance, the unemployment rate for immigrants is nearly two and a half times as high as it is for the native-born.

In the U.S., all talk about “welfare tourism” is highly dubious in light of the following:

The contributions by unauthorized immigrants to Social Security … are much larger than previously known… Stephen C. Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration and someone who enjoys bipartisan support for his straightforwardness, said that by 2007, the Social Security trust fund had received a net benefit of somewhere between $120 billion and $240 billion from unauthorized immigrants. The cumulative contribution is surely higher now. Unauthorized immigrants paid a net contribution of $12 billion in 2007 alone… Somebody ought to say thank you. (source, source)

Migration and Human Rights (32): A Human Right to Free Movement and the Common Ownership of the Earth

I’m consistently in favor of increased immigration, and skeptical of the arguments against (such as those based on notions like “importing crime”, “importing poverty” or “watering down culture”).

However, if the arguments against immigration fail, how about the quality of the arguments in favor? Poverty reduction is a strong one: the prosperity of immigrants obviously increases when they are allowed to immigrate, but so does the prosperity of the families left behind (as a result of remittances). But a more interesting argument is based on the concept of the common ownership of the earth. Humanity collectively owns the earth and its resources because the earth is simply there. No one has created it and no one therefore deserves credit for it. Consequently, all individuals have an equal claim to every part of it and collectively own every part of it. (That’s an old idea, going back at least to Kant and Grotius).

Accidents of birth do not destroy this common ownership. They don’t yield private ownership rights to those parts of the earth where they take place. Hence, these accidents should not determine who gets the exclusive usage rights over parts of the earth. Immigration restrictions are morally arbitrary since they differentiate between people based on the lottery of birth. They take the accident of being born somewhere and turn it into a rule to stay there. They are equivalent to other morally arbitrary differentiations, such as those based on race or gender. However, contrary to what happened to those other differentiations, a majority of public opinion has yet to be convinced of the morally arbitrary nature of immigration restrictions.

From the notion of the common ownership of the earth follows that every kind of private property, not only the state as the exclusive property of a part of the earth claimed by the citizens who happen to live in that state, is a privatization of common resources. I think any justification of such a privatization, and therefore any justification of any type of private property, is bound to be difficult.

If the justification of privatization – whether of territory or commodities – does not succeed, then private property and the state are by definition illegitimate. So there’s a lot at stake here. The reason why such a justification is difficult, is that private property is necessarily based on an original theft of common ownership. Even if you cultivate the land you appropriate or privatize (or better steal from the collective of humanity), and even if you incorporate your labor in the product you make based on natural resources (Locke’s justification for private property) and thereby create added value, that doesn’t change the original sin: you’ll still be like the thief who takes care of the car he’s stolen and gives it a new color.

The same is true for a farmer fencing a part of the earth, a state imposing a border and restricting immigration, an oil company extracting the oil and refining and selling it, and a primitive tribe settling down in the jungle somewhere and keeping strangers out. Even nomadic tribes are guilty of the same sin by letting their cattle graze the land and keeping other tribes away.

So this reasoning a priori invalidates all talk about immigration restrictions. But it seems that I have proven too much: all private property, not just private property of land or a country, is, in the words of Proudhon, theft. Yet, private property is extremely important from the point of view of human rights. Private property also seems to be fueling economic efficiency, as the communist experiments have shown, a contrario. Especially private property of land – important in the context of immigration – is important for prosperity. I don’t want a justification of policies removing immigration restrictions that destroys all possible justifications of all forms of private property. Moreover, while I consider existing immigration restrictions unjust, I do recognize the value of some types of restrictions. Some restrictions used by citizens to limit access to a territory that they claim is theirs are legitimate. A state is necessary for democratic self-government and for the legal and judicial protection of human rights, and it would seem impossible to imagine the concept of a state without some immigration restrictions.

These are moral goals – rights, democracy – that are at least equivalent to the moral goal of not stealing and to the moral rights of immigrants. The problem is that stealing – namely stealing a part of the earth from humanity – is precisely what seems to be necessary to achieve these moral goals. So we have a conflict between moral goals. The fact that these moral goals all seem to be equivalent – it’s not obvious that stealing is always more wrong than protecting human rights for instance – indicates that it should be conceivable to violate – or limit the force of – the principle of the common ownership of the earth in order to create private property, both of commodities and land/territory. Hence, immigration restrictions are not necessarily morally wrong, although I would still claim that the existing restrictions of all countries in the world go much too far: they don’t take the moral claim of the common ownership of the earth seriously enough, and they overemphasize the goals of residents over those of immigrants.

So how exactly do we balance these different and equivalent moral goals? For example, a country violating human rights has less rights to impose immigration restrictions because such restrictions will not serve the goal of rights. (Unfortunately, this won’t promote migration since such a country will not attract many immigrants if it winds down its immigration restrictions). A wealthy country – like wealthy people – have less rights to exclude others from a share of their wealth, since their wealth is based on the use of common property. In that case, immigrants can demand entry rights based on common property.

While national borders are drawn in a morally arbitrary way, as argued above, and while immigration restrictions that go together with the drawing of such border are therefore equally arbitrary, they are not morally meaningless. They are a morally arbitrary fact that has acquired moral significance: they have resulted in a tool – the state – that can do morally good, e.g. protect human rights and democracy.

Religion and Human Rights (25): The Eurabia Falacy

If immigration isn’t opposed because of bogus economic reasons or bogus law and order reasons, then it’s opposed on the grounds of equally bogus cultural reasons. Excessive immigration is said to fundamentally change the culture of the destination region: Europe will turn into Eurabia, just like the Protestant U.S. were once believed to be on the verge of a Catholic takeover following Irish and Southern European immigration.

But even limited immigration will not save us given the supposed “high fertility rates” of immigrants:

That Muslims are grinding out babies ready to take over Europe is an outdated canard. The Eurabia authors worry about declining European fertility, but in fact the Muslim decline is much sharper. In 1970, women in Algeria and Tunisia averaged about seven children each. Now, according to the CIA World Factbook, they average fewer than 1.8. The French rate is almost exactly two. Parisian demographers Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd demonstrate in their 2007 book “Le Rendez-vous des Civilisations” that after most men in a country become literate, eventually a majority of women becomes literate, and then fertility plunges. This demographic transition has now happened in most Muslim states. At last count Algerian women living in France averaged an estimated 2.57 children, or only slightly above the French rate. Moreover, the fertility rate of north African women in France has been falling since 1981. Eurabia is not a demographic prospect. …

The other problem with forecasting numbers of European Muslims in 2100 is the presumption that sixth-generation European Muslims will still be a foreign body here: Islam as a bacillus that even secular former Muslims carry around, forever dangerous. This ignores the transition affecting many nominal Muslims in France. …

Although here and there Muslims have made France a little more north African or Islamic, the influence seems to be more the other way: Muslim immigrants are being infected by Frenchness. (source)

Remember also that people in the 1960s were saying that the higher birthrates among Catholics would mean a swift “Catholic takeover” of Europe and the US:

In the United States the lower birth rate of the Anglo-Saxons has lessened their economic and political power; and the higher birth rate of Roman Catholic families suggest that by the year 2000 the Roman Catholic Church will be the dominant force in national as well as in municipal or state governments. A similar process is helping restore Catholicism in France, Switzerland, and Germany; the lands of Voltaire, Calvin, and Luther may soon return to the papal fold. (source)

Now, of course I’m not insensitive to the plight of culture. A national or regional culture is an important source of identity and wellbeing, and I believe the whole world gains when even a small culture is allowed to survive. I have an older post here lambasting the demographic aggression of China in Tibet. My point is not that immigration can never be a cultural problem, but that the size of the problem is systematically inflated, possibly as a cover for outright xenophobia. In this respect, the “problem” resembles the two other “problems” caused by immigration: more poverty and more crime.

Migration and Human Rights (27): The Economic Benefits of Immigration

The prevailing thought in most Western countries is that immigration is a bad thing, and it’s a thought shared by both governments and public opinion. Western countries, it is believed, can only accommodate a limited number of immigrants – a few hand-picked high-skilled ones, some low-skilled ones in very special circumstances for special industries and for a limited amount of time (when local labor can’t or won’t provide), and a few lucky ones who might otherwise face certain death or extreme pain in their country of origin (generously called “asylum seekers”). People merely fleeing the horrors of poverty (“economic migrants”) should think again.

When the numbers of immigrants surpass this threshold, it’s imminent disaster for these proud former rulers of the world with their efficient economies, exemplary political and legal systems and strong moral and religious traditions. Two disasters, to be precise: on the one hand, cultural and religious destruction and, on the other hand, economic destruction. Let’s focus on the latter shall we. (An age-old culture or religion that can’t withstand the onslaught of a few million poverty stricken and low-skilled nannies, builders and factory laborers doesn’t seem to deserve survival).

Immigrants are said to be a burden on social safety nets; and they bring down wages for local workers because they are willing to work for less (especially the illegal immigrants). Never mind that this is completely and utterly wrong.

However, not only are the disadvantages of immigration overstated, the advantages are understated. It turns out that relatively high levels of immigration are beneficial for the receiving economy, at least in the U.S.:

[C]omprehensive immigration reform* would raise wages, increase consumption, create jobs, and generate additional tax revenue. … This is a compelling economic reason to move away from the current “vicious cycle” where enforcement-only policies perpetuate unauthorized migration and exert downward pressure on already low wages, and toward a “virtuous cycle” of worker empowerment in which legal status and labor rights exert upward pressure on wages. …

[L]egalizing the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants through comprehensive immigration reform as well as making future flows more flexible would grow the economy by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. … [I]n the short term (three years) [it would] generate $4.5 to $5.4 billion in additional tax revenue and consumer spending sufficient to support 750,000 to 900,000 jobs. … Conversely, the deportation prescription that is offered by immigration restrictionists would poison the already anemic U.S. economy by draining $2.5 trillion from the economy over 10 years, even before factoring in the costs to deport 12 million people and permanently seal the border. (source)

And this isn’t just left-wing extremism. Here’s another quote, from a right-wing think-tank:

This study finds that increased enforcement [of immigration law] and reduced low-skilled immigration have a significant negative impact on the income of U.S. households. … A policy that reduces the number of low-skilled immigrant workers by 28.6 percent compared to projected levels would reduce U.S. household welfare by about 0.5 percent, or $80 billion. … In contrast, legalization of low-skilled immigrant workers would yield significant income gains for American workers and households. Legalization would eliminate smugglers’ fees and other costs faced by illegal immigrants. It would also allow immigrants to have higher productivity and create more openings for Americans in higher skilled occupations. The positive impact for U.S. households of legalization under an optimal visa tax would be 1.27 percent of GDP or $180 billion. (source)

* legalization of illegal immigrants combined with visa reform

Much of the economically inspired opposition to immigration is about the wellbeing of local low-skilled workers. These people, the narrative goes, are unable to compete with low-skilled immigrants who ask lower wages, especially if they’re illegal (and don’t have to pay taxes, and their employers don’t have to pay taxes for hiring them). In the best case, this competition pushes down the wages of local people; in the worst case it pushes these people into unemployment.

The studies cited above show that such claims aren’t compatible with the facts: low-skilled local workers actually benefit from low-skilled immigration, especially if this is legal (or legalized) immigration, because it allows them to move to higher skilled positions. It also makes it possible for them to spend less time on low-skilled and non-paid activities that they can outsource, and hence they can spend more time on paid activities, which increases their income. And there’s another way in which the indigenous population – including the less wealthy parts – can benefit from immigration: legalization of immigrants pushes their wages up and increases tax revenues. Higher earning immigrants consume and invest more, which creates higher economic growth that benefits everyone. And the taxes that they pay can be used for social safety nets that also benefit everyone.

There’s actually some data showing that immigration doesn’t push down low-skilled wages.

This chart tracks the average median hourly wage for high school drop outs – the very subgroup that immigrations most pressures – in a variety of states. If, as some claim, high levels of immigration exert relentless downward pressure on unskilled native wages, you’d expect states with large immigrant populations to exhibit very low wages for unskilled workers. That doesn’t appear to be the case. … [E]ven George Borjas, the economist most often used by restrictionists, estimates that under realistic assumptions, the drag immigrants exert on native, unskilled wages is about 4 percent. Given the universe of things screwing over the working man, immigration just ain’t that large a player. (source)

And here are some other data confirming that the effect of immigration on the wages of low-skilled workers is negligible:

California may seem the best place to study the impact of illegal immigration on the prospects of American workers. Hordes of immigrants rushed into the state in the last 25 years, competing for jobs with the least educated among the native population. The wages of high school dropouts in California fell 17 percent from 1980 to 2004. But before concluding that immigrants are undercutting the wages of the least fortunate Americans, perhaps one should consider Ohio. Unlike California, Ohio remains mostly free of illegal immigrants. And what happened to the wages of Ohio’s high school dropouts from 1980 to 2004? They fell 31 percent. (source)