Punch line: While many poor immigrants from Latin America have been leaving the United States because of an inability to find decent jobs,
American workers might want them back.
This is because new studies have found that immigrants have a positive impact on the economy in the long run.
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Excerpted from New York Times Economix’ blog’s, “Immigration and American Jobs”
Of all the economic dynamics buffeting the American middle class, immigration might seem the easiest to explain: as millions of poor immigrants from Latin America poured illegally into the country … they displaced American Workers from their jobs and undercut their wages.
But this typical explanation of the impact of immigration is mostly wrong.
The most recent empirical studies conclude that the impact is slight … they suggest that immigrants have had, at most, a small negative impact on the wages of Americans who compete with them most directly.
Meanwhile, the research has found that immigrants … have a big positive impact on the economy over the long run, bolstering the profitability of American firms, reducing the prices of some products and services … and creating more opportunities for investment and jobs.
Those nostalgic for strawberry fields harvested by well-paid Americans ignore the fact that without the cheap foreign labor, there might not be American strawberry fields.
Edit by JDC
The Homa Files 
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