Bailout

How increased immigration would help fix the economy

By Felix Salmon

Never mind the stimulus vs austerity debate: here’s something that both sides should be able to get behind. It’s a simple legislative fix which increases tax revenues without raising taxes; which increases the demand for housing; which increases the economy’s productive capacity; and which boosts wages for American workers. It’s about as Pareto-optimal as legislation gets. So let’s open the borders, and encourage much more immigration into the US!

The SF Fed’s Giovanni Peri has the latest research on the subject:

Statistical analysis of state-level data shows that immigrants expand the economy’s productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization. This produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker. At the same time, evidence is scant that immigrants diminish the employment opportunities of U.S.-born workers.

The effects of immigration on US wages are large, positive, and significant:

Over the long run, a net inflow of immigrants equal to 1% of employment increases income per worker by 0.6% to 0.9%. This implies that total immigration to the United States from 1990 to 2007 was associated with a 6.6% to 9.9% increase in real income per worker. That equals an increase of about $5,100 in the yearly income of the average U.S. worker in constant 2005 dollars. Such a gain equals 20% to 25% of the total real increase in average yearly income per worker registered in the United States between 1990 and 2007.

It’ll be interesting to see how much debate this paper receives. Anti-immigration forces are more likely to ignore it than attack it, I think, if they don’t like what it says. And George Borjas seems to have stopped blogging over a year ago, which is a shame, because he would be the perfect foil for Peri.

Is there any chance of significantly liberalizing America’s immigration regime? I doubt it, not while unemployment is over 9%. No matter how convinced economists are that immigration creates jobs, voters aren’t going to believe them. And so politicians aren’t going to vote for it. Talk about ignoring the low-hanging fruit.

Update: Cardiff Garcia provides background here.

Full post as published by Macroprudential on August 30, 2010 (boomark / email).