Immigrants make America stronger and richer

Modern nations cannot – practically or politically – have open borders, allowing anyone who wishes to immigrate.

The good news is that the United States does not have open bordersand there is no significant faction in our politics that says we should have them.

In fact, immigrating legally to the United States is quite difficult.

The bad news is that we have difficulty enforcing immigration rules, largely because the relevant government agencies do not have sufficient resources.

And right now, the reason they don’t have those resources is that many Republicans in Congress, while railing about a crisis at the border, seem determined to do so. deny funding necessary.

Their position is based on extraordinary political cynicism and they don’t even try to hide it:

Donald Trump He has intervened with Republicans to block any immigration deal because he believes chaos at the border will benefit his electoral prospects.

While blatant sabotage explains the current immigration stagnation, there is something else behind it:

Trump and those around him are deeply hostile to immigration in general.

It’s partly about it xenophobiaif not outright racism.

If you repeatedly state, as Trump has, that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” you don’t really care whether they came here legally, but what you’re saying is that what matters is if they are white.

But it’s not just this.

People close to Trump have a vision of zero sum of the economy, in which every job done by someone born outside the United States is a job taken away from someone born here.

In 2020, Stephen Miller, one of the architects of Trump’s immigration policies, told Trump supporters that one of the goals was to “turn off the spigot of new immigrant labor.”

Surprisingly, Trump issued an executive order aimed at deny visas to highly skilled foreigners, many of whom worked in the technology sector.

Miller and his boss apparently believed this would mean more jobs for Americans, when in reality it would undermine American competitiveness in advanced technology.

So this seems like a good time to point out that negative views about the economics of immigration are dead wrong.

Far from taking jobs, foreign-born workers played an important role key role on the United States’ recent success in combining rapid growth with rapid declines in inflation.

And foreign-born workers will also be crucial in the effort to solve our country’s long-term problems.

On that recent success:

It took time, but many observers finally recognize that the United States has done remarkably well in recovering from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inflation has declined in much of the country.

Inflation has eased in much of the world, but the United States stands out for its ability to combine disinflation with vigorous economic growth.

And one of the keys to this performance was speed growth of the active population American, increased by 2.9 million since the eve of the pandemic, four years ago.

How much of this growth is due to foreign-born workers?

As a whole. The native working population has declined slightly over the past four years, reflecting the aging population 3 million foreign-born workers joined.

Have those foreign workers taken jobs away from Americans, particularly those born in the country?

NO.

As of early 2024, the United States has full employment, and consumers who say jobs are “plentiful” outnumber those who say jobs are “hard to get” by a ratio of nearly 5 to 1.

The unemployment rate among native workers is 2.5%. The unemployment rate among native-born workers fell below 3.7% in 2023, the lowest level since the government began collecting data.

The unemployment rate among native-born workers fell below 3.7% in 2023, the lowest level since the government began collecting data.

In fact, I would argue that the influx of foreign-born workers has helped the natives.

There is a large research literature on impact economics of immigration, which systematically fails to identify the often expected negative effects on employment and wages.

On the contrary, migrant workers often turn out to be so complementary to the native workforce, providing different skills that, in fact, help avoid supply bottlenecks and allow for faster job creation.

Silicon Valley, for example, hires many foreign-born engineers because they bring something extra; The same is true for workers in many less glamorous occupations.

And migrant workers have likely been especially important in recent years as the economy struggled to resolve difficulties caused by the pandemic.

Foreign-born workers are crucial to America’s fiscal future.

As a first approximation, the federal government is a system that collects taxes from working-age adults and spends much of the revenue on programs that help the elderly, such as Medicare and Social Security.

If we stopped the flow of immigrants, who are mostly working-age adults, our system would be much less sustainable.

So while the border mess needs to be fixed — and could be fixed if Republicans would help fix the problem instead of exploiting it for political gain — let’s not let that mess obscure the broader reality that immigration is a major source of power and prosperity of the country. the United States.

c.2024 The New York Times Company