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Instead of Cutting Legal Immigration in Half Over a Decade, Let’s Increase It
I want to make sure I understand this. President Trump is supporting an immigration bill from GOP Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue that would replace, as The New York Times explains, “a system that favors family ties in deciding who can legally move to the United States with one based on skills and employability.”
So more a merit-based system that gives an edge to those who have advanced skill and restricts those who don’t.
I campaigned on creating a merit-based immigration system that protects U.S. workers & taxpayers. Watch: https://t.co/lv3ScSKnF6 #RAISEAct pic.twitter.com/zCFK5OfYnB
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 2, 2017
The end result here, according to The Wall Street Journal paraphrasing a Cotton aide, is that “the legislation would decrease overall immigration to about 638,000 in its first year—a 41% drop—and to about 540,000 by its 10th year—a 50% reduction. The number of employment-based green cards issued each year would remain at 140,000.”
A few things:
First, the US is hardly an immigration outlier here, whether it’s the average annual inflow of immigrants as a percent of population or the stock of immigrants as a percent of the population.
Second, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that “the impact of immigration on average native-born workers remains small and inconsistent, with no evidence to show a large detrimental impact on less-educated workers.”
Third, economists strongly agree that the average US citizen would be better off if a larger number of highly educated foreign workers were legally allowed to immigrate to the US each year.
Fourth, a demographic-driven slowdown in US labor force growth means real GDP growth is likely to be slower in the future than in the past.
Fifth, slower labor force growth means we need faster productivity. And “evidence also shows that immigrant scientists and entrepreneurs play a disproportionate role in driving the technological advances that power productivity growth in the United States.”
So given all that, isn’t this bill off point? How about a bill to sharply boost overall immigration with an emphasis on attracting many, many more immigrant scientists and entrepreneurs? This from McKinsey: “The nation could generate tremendous impact on productivity in the near term and beyond 2020 by increasing the annual flow of high-skilled immigrants.”
And as I have also noted:
Roughly half of U.S.-based unicorns — technology startups worth at least $1 billion — were founded by immigrants, with India the top nation of origin. As venture capitalist Paul Graham tweets, “This is a good time to remember that without immigration the U.S. will only have 5 percent of the top people in each field.” And more to the point regarding the Trump ban, as The Atlantic notes, “Iranian-Americans founded or hold leadership positions at Twitter, Dropbox, Oracle, Expedia, eBay, and Tinder.”
If a smart person with a good idea wants to do great things, shouldn’t America be the place that helps make that ambition happen?
Published in Economics, Immigration
Statistics employed by think tanks in the service of specific legislative agendas should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.
According to Google Translate I would write,
That can’t be right.
Since the immigration reform bill of 1965, the US has admitted about 65 million immigrants. Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 the US has aborted close to 65 million babies. So, one could surmise that immigration is a replacement system for the population we abort , right? Maybe instead of increasing immigration we should decrease abortion?
Well, no, actually we can’t stop then. Unless the assumption is that the current historically low (and declining) fertility rate is going to reverse course to being greater than the requisite replacement rate.
That’s true.
This is an important debate, and we shouldn’t let it descend into name-calling.
Karl, why do you think that birth rate decline is a natural by-product of a maturing economy? I think that Hypatia has a good point in arguing that this is cultural, at least in significant part. Here are some birth rate (actually total fertility rate) figures from a 2014 Pew poll [edit: here’s the link]:
I’ve found it surprisingly difficult to find data on birth rate differences between political parties and ideologies. A 2006 report from ABC News indicates that Republicans have 41% more children than Democrats, but that data is old and vague.
We should not ignore the political effects of immigration. I’d like to see a detailed study, but my strong impression is that heavy immigration since the 1960s has contributed substantially to a leftward tilt in US politics. Population decline would present problems, but if we avoid it with immigration, we’re likely to end up with a different set of problems.
The interplay could be complex. Immigration could lead to greater economic growth, if only on the theory that all else being equal, more people implies higher GDP. On the other hand, if immigration helps the Democrats, and if their policies harm economic growth, then we might be better off with less immigration.
I like the general idea of the Cotton/Perdue proposal — decrease immigration somewhat, while focusing it on the more economically productive immigrants.
“Deep, is an abomination dish pizza.”
I don’t know any latin, and so have no idea about the grammar, but I came up with:
Pizza altum catino est abominationem facientem
It translates exactly as the original phrase.
I think birth rates might inch back up. People who like kids have more kids who are more likely to have kids. Also, I think we’re starting to see one of those paradigm shifts where people are going to have larger families as a signal for wealth.
Keep in mind, I don’t think this is an argument that we don’t need immigration. The most restrictions I’d like to see would be for infectious disease and basic terrorist detection. I want a lot more immigration, but I want new babies even more.
“People called Romanus they go the house.”
Also, I just looked it up. There’s been a 2/3 decrease in teen pregnancy over the last 25 years and large increases among women age 30-45. It could just be they are putting kids off until later in life and the dip in the birth rate isn’t nearly as dire as it seems.
Th “dirty foreigners” comment was a crude leftist insult to all those who disagree with you.