Immigrants Hurt?

Consider this cost: After years of mule-headed congressional refusals to increase the number of H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, Microsoft recently opened a research facility in Vancouver for such workers. We immediately lost significant tax revenues, as well as ready markets for housing and other U.S. goods and services.Translation: a loss of U.S. jobs because of restrictive immigration policies. It is misleading to suggest (as columnist Charles Davenport Jr. recently did) that passing recent reform legislation would have brought in 10 million additional workers. The 2007 bill addressed the status of the undocumented workers already in the U.S. It was just as misleading to cite 1996 figures for public assistance; since 1996, use of those benefits by immigrants has plunged dramatically because of restrictive federal laws.

Jean-Paul Chauzy, head of media at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) – one of the contributors to the report – welcomed the "essential and extremely timely message in light of the current recession that has led many countries to raise rather than lower barriers to mobility".

Overcoming barriers lays out a core package of reforms, six ‘pillars’ that call for:

• Opening existing entry channels for more workers, especially those with low skills; 
  
• Ensuring basic human rights for migrants, from basic services, like education and health care, to the right to vote; 
  
• Lowering the transaction costs of migration; 
  
• Finding collaborative solutions that benefit both destination communities and migrants; 
  
• Easing internal migration; and 
  
• Adding migration as a component for origin countries’ development strategies.

The 2007 report of the President's Council of Economic Advisers found:

• The long-run fiscal impact of immigrants is likely to be positive.
  
• Entrepreneurial activity is nearly 40 percent higher for immigrants than the native-born.
  
• For men between 18 and 40, immigrants are much less likely to be incarcerated than natives.
  
• Per capita, immigrants and their descendants over their lifetimes contribute $80,000 more in taxes than they receive in public services.
  
• Some 70 percent of first-generation Latinos use Spanish as their predominant language; only in 7 percent of the second generation is Spanish predominant.
  
• Immigration results in annual wage gains for native-born U.S. workers of $30 billion to $80 billion.