Immigrant economics

Do illegal immigrants help or hurt the economy? At this point, the sides are so polarized that it's doubtful many minds can be changed. For those willing to listen, the Migration Policy Institute has released a study that finds a negligible impact when all the costs are weighed against all the benefits. From the report:

Unauthorized immigrants provide a ready source of manpower in agriculture, construction, food processing, building cleaning and maintenance, and other low-end jobs, at a time when the share of low-skilled native-born individuals in the US labor force has fallen dramatically. Not only do unauthorized immigrants provide an important source of low-skilled labor, they also respond to market conditions in ways that legal immigration presently cannot, making them particularly appealing to US employers.

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The small net gain that remains after subtracting US workers' losses from U.S. employers' gains is tiny. And if we account for the small fiscal burden that unauthorized immigrants impose, the overall economic benefit is close enough to zero to be essentially a wash.

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Because the net impact of illegal immigration on the US economy does not appear to be very large, one would be hard pressed to justify a substantial increase in spending on border and interior enforcement, at least in terms of its aggregate economic return. A more constructive immigration policy would aim to generate maximum productivity gains to the US economy while limiting the fiscal cost and keeping enforcement spending contained. Effectively, this means converting existing inflows of illegal immigrants into legal flows. It does not have to mean increasing the total number of low-skilled foreign workers in the labor force.

I'm a sucker for studies that conclude the cost-benefits are a wash. They suggest to me that the authors aren't out to grandstand their views - predictably, this report has gotten little coverage.