The New York Times has a very long piece on the issue of immigration. Here’s my version of a TLDR:
Denmark has shown that an enlightened progressive government can preserve its welfare state by adopting fairly restrictive policies on immigration. Thus it’s now OK for American liberals to switch to a position of opposition to large scale immigration.
The Democratic Party establishment was already leaning in this direction due to the recent presidential election, but the NYT story provides a sort official sanction for progressives to adjust their views on immigration.
To be clear, I agree with those who suggest that the surge in undocumented immigrations during 2021-24 was a problem for the Democrats in the recent election. Indeed, the Biden administration seemed to recognize this fact, but too late to alter voter perceptions. Nonetheless, I was disappointed by the NYT story, which presented a somewhat distorted view of the broader immigration issue. Â
Consider the following statement:
Many studies find a modestly negative effect on wages for people who already live in a country, falling mostly on low-income workers. A 2017 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, intended as a comprehensive analysis of the economic effects of immigration, contains a table listing rigorous academic studies that estimate immigration’s effects on native wages; 18 of the 22 results are negative.
Most readers probably don’t bother following up by examining the report cited by the Times. Here is its abstract:
The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration finds that the long-term impact of immigration on the wages and employment of native-born workers overall is very small, and that any negative impacts are most likely to be found for prior immigrants or native-born high school dropouts. First-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born, but the second generation are among the strongest fiscal and economic contributors in the U.S. This report concludes that immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S.
I won’t say the NYT description was false, but it was certainly a bit misleading.
Or consider the following item from the Times story:
During the Biden administration, the United States experienced its most rapid immigration on record, with a pace of entry that surpassed even that of the peak years of Ellis Island. More than eight million people entered the country, about 60 percent without legal permission. In all, about 16 percent of U.S. residents today were born abroad, exceeding the previous high of 14.8 percent in 1890.
Given their previous claim that immigration especially lowers the wages of those at the bottom, you might have expected the Times to provide some data about the effect of the unprecedented wave of immigration. I think I know why they did not do so. It turns out that this surge in immigration was associated with unusually large wage gains among the lowest paid workers. It is clear that the author of the story was trying to cherry pick data that supported their argument, and hide data that suggested immigration doesn’t hurt real wages.
The story also mentions the fact that immigrants to countries such as Denmark and Sweden tend to engage in more crime than the native born population. But they fail to mention that immigrants to the US are far less likely to commit crimes than are native-born Americans. Indeed, in places like New York City the crime rate often decreases sharply when a wave of immigrants supplant the native born population. I live in Orange County, which combines an especially high immigrant population with an especially low crime rate. I wonder why the NYT suggested that America needed to learn from what happened in Denmark, but failed to mention that the immigrant crime problem in Scandinavia does not apply to the US?
READER COMMENTS
Travis Allison
Feb 26 2025 at 4:55pm
How would you break down the benefits of immigration for existing citizens?
In a world where everyone produces and consumes a single good, then immigration is only beneficial for existing citizens if immigrants consume less than they produce and add to the existing stock of capital. Would you agree?
In a world with more than one production/consumption good, immigrants can innovate and add new goods/services to the basket of consumer goods that existing citizens can trade for.
So it seems that immigration can offer two paths to better existing citizens lives: add to the existing stock of capital and innovation.
Any others?
Robert EV
Feb 26 2025 at 8:04pm
Filling holes in production. If there are supply-demand disparities among various goods in a society then immigrants might rectify some imbalances even if they consume, on net, more than they produce.
Alexander Search
Feb 26 2025 at 9:08pm
Does the cost-benefit analysis of immigration depend at all on the size of the target region? I’m not sure; I’ve never given it any thought.
Would the existing citizens of large and/or populated regions like Florida and Michigan, for example, generally benefit more from immigration into their areas than the residents of small and/or under-populated regions like Alaska and Rhode Island? Or would the citizens of larger administrative units generally benefit less?
Maybe the effects would depend on the proximity of the source region of migration? For example, because Michigan’s economy is integrated with Ohio’s, the economic impact of immigration into Michigan from Ohio, arguably, (though I don’t really know), might be next to nonexistent.
What do others think?
Scott Sumner
Feb 26 2025 at 11:28pm
I would add that immigrants can boost technological progress (Elon Musk, etc.), and can also provide cultural benefits that are hard to measure (better food, etc.)
The US is both the world’s most successful economy and the economy that has attracted far more immigrants than any other. There may be advantages to economies of scale, network effects, etc.
Matthias
Feb 27 2025 at 8:42am
You can benefit from division of labour, specialisation and agglomeration effects even in the absence of technological innovation.
Young immigrants can also help with demographics. Your Social Security system works better if new generations aren’t smaller than previous generations.
bill
Feb 27 2025 at 4:33pm
How about a landscaper who becomes a crew supervisor once there are 4 immigrants to do more of the manual labor?
Craig
Feb 26 2025 at 5:36pm
I’d stick my junker bike on a NJ Transit bus to the PABT and ride it downtown in nice weather. Lost three bikes, reported none. If that happened to me in Germany, I’d call in the Bundeswehr and they’d likely find it too! Illegal aliens underreport crime because of fear of detection and deportation, even though they likely wouldn’t be. Fl county has lower rate than Orange, is it ACTUALLY lower? Almost assuredly not. I dunno maybe Zoe Pound, among several ethnic gangs, don’t call in the sheriff unless its a dire dire emergency.Â
Jon Murphy
Feb 26 2025 at 7:02pm
Was it ever not OK? The Left has never been huge on immigration, the Progressives even less so. Bernie Sanders called open borders “a Koch Brothers idea,” and they’ve been pushing immigration restrictions hard for over a century because of the wage thing. Even Caesar Chavez was staunchly anti immigration
Scott Sumner
Feb 27 2025 at 2:53pm
“Was it ever not OK?”
After 2016, the left switched to pro-immigration.
John Hall
Feb 26 2025 at 9:00pm
“Given their previous claim that immigration especially lowers the wages of those at the bottom, you might have expected the Times to provide some data about the effect of the unprecedented wave of immigration. I think I know why they did not do so. It turns out that this surge in immigration was associated with unusually large wage gains among the lowest paid workers. ”
I think it’s hard to use what happened during the pandemic as evidence either way.Â
steve
Feb 26 2025 at 10:32pm
That’s a fair point but the claim is also that this was among the largest surges of illegal immigration we have seen and the increase in pay was rather large when the existing data that claims a negative effect generally notes the effect is small. . The claim was that this surge was hurting people’s income so given the actual data I think the burden of proof about a negative effect should lie with this who want to make the claim.Â
Steve
Craig
Feb 26 2025 at 11:18pm
Forget the immigration for one moment, saw one stat today saying income needed to buy average home has increased by 75%. If the economic numbers accurately reflected reality Trump should’ve lost. If the economic numbers are true really we should repeat the experiment, except minus an actual pandemic, and we’ll have all the benefits and none of the dead people. Propose that and people would hang you. I’d suggest let’s begin with the premise that the pandemic was a NEGATIVE event because it was. The country took a major blow there. I’m fortunate I’m able to get around and large swaths of the country look straight up awful.Â
steve
Feb 27 2025 at 12:02pm
Not really following your logic on Trump losing. The major issue in the election was inflation. There were other peripheral issues which had some effect  but it was really inflation. People buy a house once in a lifetime or once every few years. They buy food at least every week or every day.Â
Steve
Scott Sumner
Feb 27 2025 at 2:56pm
“I think it’s hard to use what happened during the pandemic as evidence either way. ”
That’s not a good reason for the NYT to withhold important information from the public. I guarantee that if real wages of the lowest paid workers had fallen by 13%, the NYT would have regarded that data point as being EXTREMELY important.
Mactoul
Feb 26 2025 at 11:40pm
Such a strong and counter-intuitive claim requires understanding of why it is so. Either the Americans are much more crime-prone than the rest of the world, or the immigrants are being selected to be less criminally inclined. Or there are effects of how crime by immigrants is being reported–maybe illegal on illegal crime is significantly under-reported.
And does the term “immigrants” include illegal immigrants or only legal? One can suppose that studious H1b from China/India are much less likely to be criminal but can this fact be stretched to cover Guatemalan or Haitian gang members?
Jose Pablo
Feb 26 2025 at 11:53pm
Guatemalan or Haitian gang members
why would a gang member migrate to another country?
It’s quite a difficult business model to replicate.
What would a Chicago gang member do in Copenhagen?
One in every three Americans has a criminal record—including the president. That’s an achievement that’s very hard to replicate.
Jose Pablo
Feb 26 2025 at 11:58pm
It’s quite a difficult business model to replicate.
However, one could argue that the Italians managed to do so in the U.S.—and despite that, the Italians overall contribution to the country has been undeniably positive
Craig
Feb 27 2025 at 12:06am
FYI JP, MS-13 started in the US. These gangs are international. Some gang members often have regular jobs, go to school. have families and can participate much less frequently than one might think. Obviously some might be much more heavily involved.Â
Matthias
Feb 27 2025 at 8:53am
You confidently claim that either A or B has to be true. What makes you think so? Why no third explanations?
For example, it is plausible that the very act of migrating might make people less prone to crime. Both generally, and specifically to the US.
I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s at least something you’d have to investigate.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Feb 27 2025 at 7:14am
Typical of the NYT to have the wrong reasons to support even a good policy. 🙂
Jameson
Mar 2 2025 at 4:38am
The author completely misses the main point.
A) It’s about social cohesion being undermined be immigration (depending on culture of immigrant, relative to prior cohesion).
B) Any economic impact favours the rich, not the poor.Â
However, while important for Denmark, in the US it’s less significant, since A) social cohesion is anyway very weak and B)Â there is not much concern for the poor anyway.
Liberales lacking understanding of A) and B) oprens the door for Trump.