Scale Worldwide and in the US
- 244,000,000 are immigrants worldwide
- 50,000,000 (1/6) people in the US were born in other countries
- US->Mexico is the largest immigration corridor with 12 million Mexicans living in the US. However, the net migration into the US has now fallen below 0!
Why do people immigrate?
- Push factors: war or political situation, environmental issues
- Pull factors: economic and legal infrastructure, political freedom, better business opportunities
- Noteworthy: A person with the same skills who moves to a more advanced nation will have higher production, higher income, and a better quality of life. Why? Because more advanced nations have the economic and legal infrastructure that enables a person to use their skills more fully.
Who benefits from immigration?
- Consumers from cheaper products
- Consumers from greater diversity in domestic production
- Producers from cheaper labor
- Governments because first generation immigrants pay $20,000 to $80,000 more in state taxes than they receive in transfers over their lifetime (National Research Council)
Who gets harmed (and to what degree)?
- Some workers get harmed because wage rates decrease after a large increase in the labor force. However, many immigrants do jobs that Americans do not want to do, and evidence suggests that in reality there has been very little downward pressure on wages (immigrants also consume, increasing the derived demand for labor, and therefore wages)
What are remittances?
- Remittances are when immigrants send money back to their families in other countries.
- $60 billion in remittances in 2011 from the US