Economics of Immigration

Foreign-born workers do not substitute perfectly for, and therefore do not compete with, most native-born workers. Rather, the complementary nature of the skills, occupations, and abilities of foreign-born workers increases the productivity of natives, stimulates investment, and enhances the choices available to consumers.

Published On: Mon, Mar 13, 2006 | Download File

Despite the important role that immigrants play in the U.S. economy, they disproportionately lack health insurance and receive fewer health services than native-born Americans. Some policymakers have called for limits on immigrants' access to health insurance, particularly Medicaid, which are even more stringent than those already in place. However, policies that restrict immigrants' access to some health care services lead to the inefficient and costly use of other services (such as emergency room care) and negatively impact public health.

Published On: Mon, Jun 05, 2006 | Download File

One question that recently received heightened attention from lawmakers is whether or not immigrants should be admitted to the United States less on the basis of family ties and more on the basis of the skills they can contribute to the U.S. economy. Although some of the practices associated with a point-based immigration system might benefit the U.S. economy, policymakers should be careful not to assume that such a system would be a panacea for the widespread dysfunction of U.S. immigration policies.

Published On: Tue, Dec 05, 2006 | Download File

A crucial question in the current debate over immigration is what impact immigrants have on the wages of native-born workers. At first glance, it might seem that the simple economics of supply and demand provides the answer: immigrants increase the supply of labor; hence they should decrease the wages of native workers. However, the issue is more complicated than this for two reasons that have been largely overlooked.

Published On: Sun, Oct 01, 2006 | Download File

Despite the U.S.’s huge and flexible labor market and its abundance of leading-edge multinational corporations and world-class universities, it faces growing competition for skilled labor from other countries. This situation underscores the need to revamp U.S. immigration policies to make them more responsive to the demands of an increasingly competitive global economy. One possibility is to replace the H1-B visa program for highly skilled foreign professionals with a quality-selective regime like the point-based systems in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Published On: Wed, Jan 03, 2007 | Download File

New legislative proposals to drastically restrict family-based immigration practically ignore the social and economic benefits of the family-based admissions system for both immigrants and the native-born. Read more...

Published On: Tue, May 01, 2007 | Download File

A recent report from the Heritage Foundation is one in a long line of deeply flawed economic analyses which claim to estimate the contributions and "costs" of workers based solely on the amount of taxes they pay and the value of the public services they utilize.

Published On: Wed, May 02, 2007 | Download File

The temporary worker program now taking shape in Congress is unlikely to provide the U.S. economy with the numbers or kinds of workers that U.S. industries need.

Published On: Thu, Jun 07, 2007 | Download File

Since the mid-1980s, the federal government has tried repeatedly, without success, to stem the flow of undocumented immigrants to the United States with immigration-enforcement initiatives: deploying more agents, fences, flood lights, aircraft, cameras, and sensors along the southwest border with Mexico; increasing the number of worksite raids and arrests conducted throughout the country; expanding detention facilities to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants apprehended each year; and creating new bureaucratic procedures to expedite the return of detained immigrants to their home countries.  At the same time, the economic integration of North America, the western hemisphere, and the world has accelerated, facilitating the rapid movement of goods, services, capital, information, and people across international borders.  Moreover, the U.S. economy demands more workers at both the high-skilled and less-skilled ends of the occupational spectrum than the rapidly aging, native-born population provides.  The U.S. government’s enforcement-without-reform approach to undocumented immigration has created an unsustainable contradiction between U.S. immigration policy and the U.S. economy.  So far, the economy is winning.

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Published On: Wed, May 21, 2008 | Download File

A fact sheet that describes the costs associated with local anti-immigrant ordinances.

Published On: Mon, Oct 01, 2007 | Download File