More Immigrants, More Jobs

More Immigrants, More Jobs
June 30, 2009 11:33 AM ET | Matthew Bandyk | Permanent Link | Print
Byron York repeats the conventional wisdom about immigration's effect on employment:

Is this time of great economic distress really the right time to argue for greater immigration? "You want to bring more people in?" asks one incredulous GOP aide on Capitol Hill. "That was a hard case to make when unemployment was four percent, much less when it's almost ten percent."

But if anything, greater immigration becomes more necessary when there's more unemployment.

This argument assumes that there are a limited amount of jobs out there, and so each additional person looking for a job means one less job for someone else. It's funny that this argument is coming from a GOP aide, because his or her own party seems to reject this zero-sum logic in every case except immigration. Look at the GOP response to the climate change bill just passed by the House: they argue that it will kill jobs by raising costs to businesses. But immigration also increase costs to businesses by reducing the supply of labor, thus making it more expensive. So why is it "incredulous" that anyone could have a problem with this job-killer?

The evidence is actually pretty strong that immigrants create jobs--they don't steal them. The average entrepreneur in this country is an immigrant. Educated immigrants are more likely to create startup businesses than native-born Americans.

If we want to bring down this high unemployment rate, we can't shut out the people who are going to create new jobs. Allowing more H-1B visas and easing the process by which temporary workers can become citizens would expand the pool of jobs in the country.

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2009/06/30/more-immigrants-more-jobs.html

Bull

Crap

Bullshit. If you believe that, I have some land to sell you...

just a lazy kid slinging another batch of anti-American lies

"But immigration also increase costs to businesses by reducing the supply of labor, thus making it more expensive."

This could only be true if the immigrants were US workers leaving the US.

"The evidence is actually pretty strong that immigrants create jobs--they don't steal them."

Try selling this line of argument among construction workers; I'm NOT saying immigration stole construction jobs, but US contractors certainly took advantage of illegal immigration in a fashion that did the legal workers of the industry no good.