Writer Adam Davidson, founder of NPR’s Planet Money, argues that immigration is one of the most misunderstood aspects of economic policymaking today. Economists generally have a positive view of immigration. A recent University of Chicago poll of leading economists did not find a single one who rejected the notion that immigration yields economic benefits.
To the extent that economists disagree, it is often due to the Lump of Labor argument. The notion is that rapid immigration can quickly increase the size of the labor force, thereby displacing native workers. But immigrants do not simply increase the supply of available labor, they also increase the demand for it through their own consumption. One of the most interesting bits of research conducted on the Lump of Labor idea comes from David Card, a prominent economist from Berkeley.
He studied the economics of the Mariel boatlift, a mass migration in nineteen eighty that brought more than one hundred and twenty five thousand Cubans to America. Forty five thousand of them were of working age and moved to Miami. In just four months, the city’s labor supply increased by seven percent, yet Card found that among people already working in Miami, there was no measurable impact on wages or employment.
