Is Our Immigration System Crazy?
President Donald Trump has done a lot to scare high-skilled immigrants away from the U.S. He has made it harder for them to get green cards. He has blocked some foreign students from entering and discouraged others from working during school. He is considering banning the spouses of H-1b visa holders from working in the country at all. The harassment campaign appears to be working. H-1b immigration applications are down, as is the number of visas being issued to overseas students:
It’s hard to see what this accomplishes other than whipping up enthusiasm from Trump’s anti-immigrant base. It stifles the flow of foreign students to the research universities that are the best hope for an economic revival in declining regions. It starves the tech industry of talented workers. It hurts native-born workers: Evidence suggests that skilled immigration actually raises wages for Americans of all skill levels, by strengthening the local tech industry. It drains government coffers, because skilled immigrants pay much more in taxes than they use in government benefits.
In 2017 immigrants made up nearly 14 percent of the U.S. population, a sharp increase from historically low rates of the 1960s and 1970s, but a level commonly reached in the 19th century. Given native-born Americans’ relatively low birth rates, immigrants and their children now provide essentially all the net prime-age population growth in the United States.
These basic facts suggest that immigrants are taking on a larger role in the U.S. economy. This role is not precisely the same as that of native-born Americans: immigrants tend to work in different jobs with different skill levels. However, despite the size of the foreign-born population, immigrants tend to have relatively small impacts on the wages of native-born workers. At the same time, immigrants generally have positive impacts on both government finances and the innovation that leads to productivity growth.
Immigration policy is often hotly debated for a variety of reasons that have little to do with a careful assessment of the evidence. We at The Hamilton Project put forward this set of facts to help provide an evidence base for policy discussions that is derived from data and research.
It’s hard to see what this accomplishes other than whipping up enthusiasm from Trump’s anti-immigrant base. It stifles the flow of foreign students to the research universities that are the best hope for an economic revival in declining regions. It starves the tech industry of talented workers. It hurts native-born workers: Evidence suggests that skilled immigration actually raises wages for Americans of all skill levels, by strengthening the local tech industry. It drains government coffers, because skilled immigrants pay much more in taxes than they use in government benefits.
In 2017 immigrants made up nearly 14 percent of the U.S. population, a sharp increase from historically low rates of the 1960s and 1970s, but a level commonly reached in the 19th century. Given native-born Americans’ relatively low birth rates, immigrants and their children now provide essentially all the net prime-age population growth in the United States.
These basic facts suggest that immigrants are taking on a larger role in the U.S. economy. This role is not precisely the same as that of native-born Americans: immigrants tend to work in different jobs with different skill levels. However, despite the size of the foreign-born population, immigrants tend to have relatively small impacts on the wages of native-born workers. At the same time, immigrants generally have positive impacts on both government finances and the innovation that leads to productivity growth.
Immigration policy is often hotly debated for a variety of reasons that have little to do with a careful assessment of the evidence. We at The Hamilton Project put forward this set of facts to help provide an evidence base for policy discussions that is derived from data and research.
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