Title: 15 Common Arguments against Immigration, Addressed - Foundation for Economic Education
Headings: 15 Common Arguments against Immigration, Addressed
15 Common Arguments against Immigration, Addressed
1. “Immigrants will take our jobs and lower our wages, especially hurting the poor.”
2. “Immigrants abuse the welfare state.”
3. “Immigrants are a net fiscal cost.”
4. “Immigrants increase economic inequality.”
5. “Today’s immigrants don’t assimilate like previous immigrant groups did.”
6. “Immigrants are especially crime prone.”
7. “Immigrants pose a unique risk today because of terrorism.”
8. “It’s easy to immigrate to America and we’re the most open country in the world.”
9. “Amnesty or failure to enforce our immigration laws will destroy the Rule of Law in the United States.”
10. “National sovereignty.”
11. “Immigrants won’t vote for the Republican Party – look at what happened to California.”
12. “Immigrants bring with them their bad cultures, ideas, or other factors that will undermine and destroy our economic and political institutions. The resultant weakening in economic growth means that immigrants will destroy more wealth than they will create.”
13. “The brain drain of smart immigrants to the United State impoverished other countries.”
14. “Immigrants will increase crowding, harm the environment, and [insert misanthropic statement here].”
15. “Some races and ethnic groups are genetically inferior. They need to be prevented from coming here, breeding, and decreasing America’s good ethnic stock.”

Content: 1. “ Immigrants will take our jobs and lower our wages, especially hurting the poor.” This is the most common argument and also the one with the greatest amount of evidence rebutting it. First, the displacement effect is small if it even affects natives at all. Immigrants are typically attracted to growing regions and they increase the supply and demand sides of the economy once they are there, expanding employment opportunities. Second, the debate over immigrant impacts on American wages is confined to the lower single digits – immigrants may increase the relative wages for some Americans by a tiny amount and decrease them by a larger amount for the few Americans who directly compete against them. Immigrants likely compete most directly against other immigrants so the effects on less-skilled native-born Americans might be very small or even positive. New research by Harvard professor George Borjas on the effect of the Mariel Boatlift – a giant shock to Miami’s labor market that increased the size of its population by 7 percent in 42 days – finds large negative wage effects concentrated on Americans with less than a high school degree. To put the scale of that shock to Miami in context, it would be as if 22.4 million immigrants moved to America in a six-week period – which will not happen. Some doubt Borjas’ finding ( here is Borjas’ response to the critics and here is a summary of the debate) but what is not in doubt is that immigration has increased the wages and income of Americans on net.