The most interesting effect here is that newer immigrants compete with the immigrants who preceded them, not much with native-born Americans who are similarly skilled. Even then, research by David Card and Ethan Lewis looked at how new Mexican immigrants displaced older Mexican immigrants and found small effects. Only in Los Angeles and El Paso did new Mexican immigrants push out older ones. The U.S. economy is good at attracting lower-skilled immigrants, providing incentives for them to settle in areas where they are most demanded, and responding in ways that increase net production and employment for native-born Americans.
Americans shifting into different occupations have produced a division of labor whereby lower-skilled immigrants compete for manual labor occupations while similarly skilled natives concentrate on the one area of low-skilled jobs where they have an advantage: communicating with customers and managers in English. Communications jobs pay more than those focused on manual labor.
There are also very few instances where immigrants displace natives from the labor market. The most common estimate in the academic literature is that for every 10 percent increase in the foreigner share of the population of a country, native employment rates fall by a minuscule 0.2 to 0.7 percent. Countries with relatively liberal labor markets, like the United States, face the smallest effects. In fact, an increase in lower-skilled migration can induce skilled natives to reenter the workforce. If immigration restrictionism improves wage growth, Japan certainly missed the memo.
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