Federal Reserve to unemployed millions: massive immigration is great for you (Tobias Madden)

Tobias Madden - a Regional Economist for the Federal Reserve in Minneapolis - offers an "Economic Myth Busters" sales job asking, 'should policymakers curb immigration to “protect American jobs”?' (minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=4277)

In a nutshell, no. This myth stems from the idea that the number of jobs in America is fixed, and every job taken by an immigrant reduces the total number of available jobs, always to the detriment of native-born workers. This overlooks some valuable economic contributions from immigration on both the supply of and demand for labor.

Right now, the number of jobs in the U.S. is fixed or falling. If, say, there were a million fewer low-wage illegal aliens in the U.S. their absence would reduce spending, but at the same time Americans would be able to step in and take the jobs they're doing. That would also have many other benefits, such as reducing the power inside the U.S. of the Mexican government, striking back at attempts to gain race-based power, minimizing the dependence of able-bodied workers on government assistance, encouraging innovation (such as agricultural machinery), encourage people to better understand how valuable U.S. citizenship is, encourage reforms in foreign countries, and on and on and on.

From the other side of the ledger, the most Madden can point to is this:

In 1997 the National Research Council estimated that immigrant labor conferred net benefits of anywhere from $1 billion to $10 billion per year on the native-born population.

Nowadays, $10 billion is almost nothing; Obama probably spent a couple billion before lunch.

So, the question becomes, why is the Federal Reserve promoting things like this rather than promoting reducing immigration and reaping the far greater benefits outlined above and elsewhere?

See also the $5.50 challenge and the letter I sent to CAP.

Tue, 09/22/2009 - 20:14 · · Importance: 4