Employment and Wages
At a time when anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies seem to be growing, immigrants in the United States continue to do what they have done for over a century—bring unique and vital experiences to the country that support our economy and society. States in the Rust Belt region of the United States, for example, owe much […]
With Hurricanes Irma and Harvey ravaging much of Florida and Texas, the states will soon begin a substantial, years-long rebuilding process. The aftermath of previous natural disasters has shown that much of that rebuilding process was carried out by immigrants, many of whom were undocumented. But relying on foreign-born labor to reconstruct Florida and Texas’ […]
Industries across the nation may find themselves in dangerously short supply of workers if no solution is found for the 800,000 young immigrants now at risk of deportation due to the termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. One industry, however, may be struck particularly and immediately hard: health care. The Trump […]
America’s farmers have been acutely aware of the consequences of restrictive immigration policies for some time. When migration levels drop or restrictive policies drive migrants out of the state or country, farmers feel the pinch first, as their crops are left to rot in the fields due to the shortage of available workers. Since a […]
Refugee resettlement has long been a cornerstone of United States foreign policy, but in the first weeks of the Trump administration, the president attempted to suspend the decades-long program in favor of a more isolationist approach. One reason the president gave for wanting to temporarily bar the world’s refugees was their supposed financial burden—but a […]
Immigrants and their descendants make valuable contributions to the U.S. economy, according to a new report just released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine entitled, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. The exhaustive report is written by a nationally recognized panel of experts. It takes a comprehensive look at the fiscal […]
Serious economists know that immigrant and native-born workers cannot simply be swapped for one another like batteries. On average, immigrants and the native-born differ in terms of formal education, job experience, and English-language skills. As a result, immigrants and the native-born tend to “complement” each other rather than directly compete. Even among workers with the […]
Over the years, more and more economists have come to the conclusion that immigrant workers “complement” the native-born majority of the labor force by bringing different sets of skills and different demographic profiles with them, both of which enhance and expand the economy as a whole. Immigration restrictionists, in defiance of this growing body of […]
New population projections from the University of Virginia’s Demographics Research Group show that in many states in the Northeast and Midwest, growth of the working-age population is slowing due to aging, lower fertility rates, and people moving out of the state. The aging of the workforce in the working-age population can mean shrinking workforces and […]
Note: Today’s blog features the oral testimony of Benjamin Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Read his full written testimony here. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the American Immigration Council. […]
