America’s Stake in Immigration: Why Almost Everybody Wins

While competition from new immigrants reduces wages in some segments of the us labor market, the evidence suggests that the great majority of American workers benefit from the influx. Immigrant labor over the last decades has only very slightly depressed the wages of the least-educated us workers, but it has increased the wages of workers with high school diplomas or more. As of 2006, 89 percent of native workers had a high school degree or more, and only 11 percent lacked any degree and the number of native workers with no degree has been shrinking fast. us-born workers are climbing the educational ladder, acquiring interactive/analytic skills and progressively leaving the manual jobs that are those in which immigrants are typically found. If the trend continues as expected most of the manual labor could soon be performed by foreign-born labor. This would implies large wage gains for native workers, since they will be able to specialize in language-intensive and interactive tasks that are typically far better paid. In summary, as citizens of the us, Europe and Japan become both more educated and older (and quickly so), they are becoming increasingly complementary in production to potential immigrants, who are less educated and younger. These potential gains, for both immigrants and receiving countries, will only be realized to the degree that immigration restrictions are relaxed.