America Needs More Immigrants

Americans have both celebrated and denounced immigration since the country’s founding. George Washington wrote in 1788: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable Asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.” In contrast, Benjamin Franklin wrote of German immigrants: “why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours?” This ideological clash continued throughout American history: discrimination against Irish immigrants, the “Yellow Peril” of Chinese immigration, the eugenics movement, opposition from labor unions, and former President Trump’s “Muslim Ban.” Given this contentious history, researchers have devoted careers to studying the economic effects of immigration, and the evidence supports one conclusion: immigration is good for the American economy and the world.

The strongest evidence for the economic benefits of immigration comes from research on the predicted benefits of global open borders. Estimates suggest that if the world had open borders, gross world product (GWP), a measure of economic output equivalent to the gross domestic products of all countries, would increase by 50 to 150%. Given that GWP is approximately $96 trillion, that would amount to a $48 to $144 trillion boost to the global economy. These gains come from migrants moving from low-productivity countries to high-productivity countries. An immigrant from a poor country will be more productive with access to the capital, education, and management practices of developed countries like the U.S. That said, the United States and the developed world can realize many of these economic benefits without an open borders policy. Even incremental liberalization of our immigration system could bring enormous gains to the American economy by letting people move to places where they can be more productive.

Immigrants also contribute to the U.S. economy by buying goods and services from American businesses. One estimate suggests that each immigrant creates 1.2 jobs due to their economic activity. Furthermore, immigrants are 80% more likely to start a business than native-born Americans, and first- or second-generation immigrants, who make up just a quarter of the U.S. population, started 45% of Fortune 500 companies. Lastly, immigration allows American workers to specialize in the tasks are best at, which will make U.S. workers more productive and raise wages. More workers enable an increase in the division of labor and production specialization. One person cannot specialize, but many people can specialize, and more people can specialize further. In turn, specialization accelerates productivity, forcing employers to raise wages to better compete for labor.

While detractors may argue that immigrants take Americans’ jobs, immigrants often take jobs that Americans do not want and that would otherwise go unfilled. Immigrants largely do not decrease the wages of native-born Americans because they compete for different jobs and increase both the supply and demand for labor. Granted, the group of American workers potentially most harmed by immigration is those without high school degrees. Fortunately, solutions to aid this group include increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), offering unconditional cash transfers, improving career and technical education programs, and reforming the U.S. education system.

Critics of immigration also argue that immigrants could be dangerous criminals; immigrants commit crimes at a much lower rate than native-born Americans. In Texas in 2018, illegal immigrants were convicted of a crime at a rate of 782 per 100,000 and legal immigrants were convicted at a rate of 535 per 100,000. In contrast, native-born Americans were convicted at a rate of 1,422 per 100,000. The conviction rates of illegal and legal immigrants nationally are similarly low.

Critics also claim that immigrants are more likely to be involved in criminal gangs or commit terrorist attacks. However, just 0.03% of arrests by the U.S. Border Patrol were suspected gang members. Moreover, the chance of an American being killed in a terrorist attack by an immigrant on a B visa is 1 in 4.1 million per year while the chance of being killed in a terrorist attack by an illegal immigrant is zero, given that an illegal immigrant has never killed an American in a terrorist attack between 1975 and 2017.

Lastly, critics may argue that even if the U.S. wanted to help immigrants, there is no room for them. Indeed, President Trump claimed that the U.S. was “full.” In truth, the U.S. has a minuscule population density compared to other developed countries. The U.S. has just 36 people for every square kilometer of land, while the United Kingdom has 277, France has 123, and Germany has 238. Additionally, researchers have found that immigrants use less welfare than native-born Americans and the children of immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Lastly, given the U.S.’ aging population, an influx of young working-age adults is necessary to maintain entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.

With the economic benefits of immigration so clear-cut, policymakers should move beyond the question of “why” we need more immigrants to “how” we should decide which people to let in. The United States had open borders until the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, but an open borders policy today is politically unviable and unpopular. Thus, we cannot let in every person who wants to come to the United States.

A more popular policy to increase immigration could draw inspiration from the Canadian immigration system, which places a significant emphasis on valuable skills. Canada accepts nearly five times as many immigrants with bachelor’s degrees and four times as many immigrant workers with advanced degrees per capita. Nonetheless, Canada’s system is also more welcoming to immigrants without valuable skills. Canada accepts, per capita, almost three times as many immigrant workers without bachelor’s degrees as the U.S. does, and Canada also admits more immigrants on family and humanitarian bases per capita than the U.S. Other wealthy countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden, also accept more immigrants per capita than the U.S. These countries all have unique immigration systems with differing emphases on economic, family-based, and humanitarian immigration, but they all demonstrate that countries can thrive by accepting more immigrants.

One proposal for reform shares a similarity with the Canadian immigration system: a state-sponsored visa program for foreign workers. The Canadian Provincial Nominee Program allows provinces to nominate immigrants for permanent residency. In 2017, Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act, which would have allowed states to sponsor foreign workers and entrepreneurs. The advantage of a decentralized immigration option is that each state has different workforce needs that the federal government cannot meet with a single nationwide policy. To ensure compliance, the federal government could renew a temporary worker’s visa only if they continue to work in the state that sponsors them. To further incentivize compliance, Congress could create a path to permanent residence and eventually citizenship for temporary workers who remain in their sponsoring state. Such a federalist approach could increase support for immigration across the country by better matching immigrants to the locations where their skill sets are needed.

In 1980, then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan pronounced that immigrants “make America work.” Today, many Republicans have renounced their liberal, pro-immigration roots in favor of “national conservatism.” Yet a federalist immigration option would not only allow individual states to adopt immigration levels that match their needs and political priorities, but also enable increased immigration overall, thereby providing a much-needed turbocharge to a wavering U.S. economy. Such an approach embodies the long-stated principles of the Republican Party and offers a bipartisan path forward on immigration that will truly make America great.