Even if immigration on net is an economic zero, it still creates winners and losers within the United States and amounts to a wealth transfer from poor to rich Americans. Borjas reports that increasing the immigrant flow by 10 percent depressed the earnings of native-born Americans by 4 percent between 1960 and 2010.
These costs are most heavily felt by African Americans, the most fragile group of citizens, whose unemployment rate is nearly double that of whites, and a 10 percent increase in immigration was associated with a 5.9 percent reduction in the black-employment rate.
In addition, a comparison between current immigrants and native-born Americans misses the opportunity costs of doing better still with higher-quality immigrants. Why not the best?
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