Illegal immigration has become an increasingly prominent political issue as the number of people crossing the southern border into the United States has sharply increased, exacerbating the problem.
Studies indicate that allowing more people into the United States benefits the overall economy, but also show that some Americans benefit more than others, while others may be worse off. The type of people coming to the United States and how they enter is also crucial, with some experts suggesting that mismanagement of immigration issues can lead to some less noticeable problems from a purely economic perspective.
Even those who pride themselves on supporting immigration are reconsidering their stance in the face of the border situation currently felt in communities across the country. A Gallup report stated that in June of last year, 40% of Democrats supported increased immigration, but by February of this year, according to a poll by The Associated Press/NORC Public Affairs Research Center, this percentage had dropped to 27%.
According to the Pew Research Center, the majority of Republicans or those leaning Republican view illegal immigration as a “crisis” or “significant problem.” Gallup surveys show that most of them also wish to reduce immigration overall.
Increasingly, research shows that immigration can promote economic development in the long run.
An upcoming paper by Tarek Hassan, an economist at Boston University, estimates that in an average county in the United States, for every 12,000 new immigrants, the number of patent applications per capita for local residents would increase by 30% and average wages would rise by 5%, with all these changes realized within five years. In the following decades, the wage effects could double and then gradually diminish.
Hassan told the Epoch Times, “This is a game of competing forces. When more immigrants arrive… They push down wages because more people mean lower wages for everyone.” “But at the same time, we also believe that economic growth comes from more people sitting down, thinking, and generating new ideas.”
He said that the paper suggests that the latter effect “wins out,” where the theory holds that the production and consumption by new immigrants increase the economic scale, thus able to support more high-paying jobs.
However, findings shared with the Epoch Times from the study revealed that highly educated immigrants bring most of the benefits, while low-educated immigrants have negative impacts on innovation and education. Yet both figures are not statistically significant, with margins of error too large.
Hassan acknowledged, “Indeed, higher-educated immigrants do produce more positive effects.”
This is where the difference between legal and illegal immigration comes into play.
The Migration Policy Institute estimates that the overall educational attainment of (legal) immigrants is nearly equivalent to the native population, with 36% of immigrants holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to only 18% of illegal immigrants.
A March poll by The Associated Press/NORC Public Affairs Research Center showed that Americans’ concerns about illegal immigration far exceed concerns about legal immigration.
The conclusion of Hassan’s paper is that highly-educated Americans benefit the most from immigrant inflows. The wage increase for those with at least five years of college-level education is much greater than for those with only four years of college. The wages of less-educated individuals hardly change, and those without a high school diploma experience a slight decline, although this figure is not statistically significant.
Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California, Davis, used a different approach to analyze the impact of immigrants on native workers’ wages and employment. His results seem to contradict Hassan’s views to some extent.
Peri concluded in a paper co-authored with Alessandro Caiumi in April that from 2000 to 2019, immigrants raised the wages and employment rates of less-educated native workers but had virtually no impact on higher-educated native workers.
He found that new immigrants indeed caused some wage decreases for other immigrants, but only impacted those with a high school diploma or higher.
Peri indicated that less-educated immigrants are often low-skilled, and many of them are illegal immigrants who work off the books or apply for asylum to obtain work permits during the pending case proceedings.
He told the Epoch Times, “The issue is that a vast majority of these people do not receive asylum.”
In fact, those crossing the southern border are often doing so to escape problems in their home countries or seek better job opportunities, neither of which are reasons for seeking asylum, as asylum is specifically for those facing persecution.
According to his research, Peri suggested creating a legal pathway for lower-skilled immigrants to enter, allowing them to work in industries like restaurants, hotels, farms, and nursing homes where illegal immigrants frequently work.
He said, “We would be able to track and understand their situations more, making immigration management more orderly.”
Peri’s paper did find some negative impacts on native workers’ employment due to immigrants but limited to those with a high school education or less and little work experience.
Hassan and Peri also noted that their research focused on the average effects of immigration.
Hassan stated, “There are a lot of microeconomic studies documenting wage rises or falls in specific times, places, and populations.”
His argument is that when averaged out, immigrants aid in economic development, even on a local level.
Some experts argue that regardless of how much economic benefit immigration brings, consideration should be given to the cost taxpayers bear for it, with illegal immigration costs being particularly high as they impose a heavy burden on immigration enforcement agencies.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) President, Daniel Stein, said, “In a country with a procedural civilization, constitutional norms, basic principles of fairness, and quasi-judicial procedures, the cost of removing someone is very high as it involves a series of hearings over and over again.” FAIR advocates for a significant reduction in immigration.
FAIR attempts to calculate the fiscal costs of illegal immigration, including enforcement of immigration laws, law enforcement, welfare, healthcare, and child education, among others. Their report stated that the annual cost last year reached $163 billion, higher than the $116 billion in 2017, but the organization acknowledges limitations in estimation due to a lack of data.
Many illegal immigrants work off the books and do not pay income taxes.
However, Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), stated that even if illegal immigrants pay taxes, they generally end up being a fiscal burden due to insufficient income. The Center for Immigration Studies advocates reducing immigration.
Camarota told the Epoch Times, “American-born individuals and legal immigrants who earn $15, $18, or $20 per hour are typically also fiscal burdens.”
“But they are already here.”
He noted that restaurants, hotels, and landscaping companies may indeed need more workers. “But you have to understand, the wages these businesses pay are not enough to support these workers, especially after they have children (so they rely on welfare, becoming a fiscal burden).”
Many complaints about illegal immigrants no longer solely revolve around economic issues. Stein said that due to the cumbersome nature of immigration enforcement procedures, the government “doesn’t even bother a lot of times .” Yet for him, this reality tears at the fabric of society’s structure. “It undermines principles of universal application of the rule of law,” he said.
He believes that relying on foreign labor is not conducive to economic health development. He pointed out that the labor force participation rate among working-age men is at a historic low. In the 1950s, less than 3% of men aged 25-54 neither worked nor looked for work. In recent years, this figure has hovered around 11%, for which he cited various factors, with foreign labor being one of them.
Hassan expressed skepticism about this, saying, “I think it’s speculation without any evidence to support that claim. Furthermore, given our findings of zero impact on wages from immigration, I find that possibility to be slim. If immigrants weren’t pushing locals out of the job market by depressing local wages, how would they be crowding them out?”
“Moreover, one of our findings is that the increase in local immigrants leads to more locals moving to that area. If locals (leave the labor market due to immigrant inflows), you would see the opposite effect!”
However, Stein believes that his perspective stems from longer-term cultural shifts rather than economic factors. “There are certainly class factors at play in native-born labor force participation as well,” he said.
In the past, young Americans viewed physical and service work as a rite of passage to adulthood.
“This was a way for people to develop habits of good citizenship and work ethic.”
As reliance on foreign labor has increased, parents are no longer willing to allow their children to engage in such work, and young people also struggle to assimilate, often not speaking the same language as their colleagues.
“The effect of networking hiring exists, where managers recruit employees from the communities they already have contacts with.”
He said that these issues are now deeply rooted in culture, not easily resolved by merely cutting off immigration inflows. However, he believes that a stable supply of foreign labor allows society to overlook the issue of idle working-age Americans.
Several experts say it has been difficult to determine how many people have entered the United States since the surge in 2021.
Camarota pointed out that since 2021, the foreign-born population has increased by approximately 6.6 million – “an unprecedented growth rate.”
According to CIS estimates, around 3.8 million of these individuals are illegal immigrants. Camarota noted that this is much less than the number of border patrol apprehensions or at least sightings of border crossers, but added that this was to be expected.
He mentioned that over time, the illegal immigrant population naturally decreases. Every year, people are deported, some leave the United States, some marry Americans and obtain legal status, and some pass away. Their children born in the U.S. automatically become citizens, so their population only grows with the arrival of new immigrants.
Simon Hankinson, a senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, pointed out that besides scale, new immigrants have a different way they are accommodated.
He told the Epoch Times, “I’ve been focused on immigration issues for over thirty years, and I’ve never seen a situation like in New York City, where they are being given blank checks, willing to provide shelter and food for an unlimited number of people.”
He believes that this level of shelter could hinder assimilation, concentrating immigrants in their own enclaves.
“The idea of the melting pot is that people from all over the world can adopt the same basic principles about free speech, hard work, personal responsibility within a generation or two, they go to public school; hence, even though there are political differences, there’s some consensus.” he said.
“If you concentrate a lot of illegal immigrants in a community where they do not interact with locals or other community people at all, then today’s Europe will be tomorrow’s America, and the assimilation process will take longer.”
Hassan said that societal and political factors may indeed be more compelling reasons to regulate immigration than purely economic ones.
“Immigration has an impact on politics and society that somewhat constrains the overall ability for society to absorb immigrants. I believe we are not yet in a position where economically we can no longer absorb more people, but we may be getting close to where society no longer wishes to have more immigrants. This issue should indeed be debated, but as polarization continues, that debate is yet to be held, and people are not interested in the subtle differences here.”
“In my view, it’s clear that some political decisions need to be made about how many immigrants we need, while keeping in mind the economic benefits of immigration.”