The case for more low-skilled immigration

Americans should remember that by working for less, immigrant workers help produce goods and services at a much lower cost, which in turn lowers prices for consumers.  According to Cortes, immigrants lower the prices of products consumed by highly educated consumers by 0.4 percent of GDP. For less educated consumers, they lower the prices by 0.3 percent of GDP.

And immigrants are consumers, too. Nowrasteh notes that Asian and Mexican immigrants together spend about $2 trillion annually and sustain many “service jobs in the nontradable sectors of the U.S. economy like haircuts and auto repairs,” which cannot be imported from abroad and are performed by low-skilled Americans.

Finally, a common hang-up for people opposed to low-skilled immigration is the pressure that is placed on state and local governments – mainly through Medicaid and public school spending. As libertarian economist Milton Friedman put it, “It is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both.”

However, this is an argument for reducing the welfare state or at least further restricting immigrant access to welfare to immigrants – not keeping them out of the country.