Where the trouble does and doesn't lie with immigration
One of the most plausible consequences of immigration is that it increases the supply of workers. And you would expect by simple economic theory that if the bulk of the immigrants have a particular set or level of skills, the wages for that kind of work would go down. The practical problem with that observation, like a lot of economic theory, is that it predicts an effect that is larger then zero but less than infinity, so you can't tell a priori whether you need to care.
There's also the fact that immigrants buy things, creating an additional demand for labor, which counteracts the effect of the additional supply of labor, to some degree.
It turns out that economists have done a significant amount of work studying instances of abrupt immigration of large groups of workers, often low-skilled workers, and the effect they have on wage rates is very small. Here is a decent summary: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce
Unfortunately, this isn't definitive evidence that we should just allow unlimited immigration. Another problem with large-scale immigration is "social stress"; increased social frictions due to cultural diversity. (Which I believe is a large part of anti-immigration movements everywhere.)
More depressingly, there's another, more concrete problem with large amounts of "low-skill" immigration: increased consumption of social services by the immigrants and their children. This seems to be a real and significant effect, especially if the immigrants have low social capital vis-a-vis the country they immigrate to. Worse, the tolerance of the citizens for taxes to support a generous social service system seems to depend on the perceived ethnic uniformity of society.
Sweden, the premier example of a social-welfare society, is running into these problems. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/business/sweden-economy-immigration.html Ironically, part of the problem is that Sweden has done so well with its people -- "The state ensures that working-age people are prepared with the skills for high-wage jobs, in industries like technology and advanced manufacturing." But "Many of the refugees have little education and do not speak Swedish, making them difficult to employ." "But as citizens absorb the reality that many refugees will rely on welfare for years, some are balking at the cost while demanding limits on government aid for jobless people."
The United States isn't so good at ensuring people have the skills for high-wage jobs, but we're world leaders in creating crappy jobs for people with low skills, so we are better protected from having a large, permanent class of unemployable people. In the short run, even Massachusetts is having a hard time housing the influx of refugees. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/30/metro/emergency-shelters-overflow-healeys-push-funding-comes-up-against-slow-moving-legislature/
There's also the fact that immigrants buy things, creating an additional demand for labor, which counteracts the effect of the additional supply of labor, to some degree.
It turns out that economists have done a significant amount of work studying instances of abrupt immigration of large groups of workers, often low-skilled workers, and the effect they have on wage rates is very small. Here is a decent summary: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce
Unfortunately, this isn't definitive evidence that we should just allow unlimited immigration. Another problem with large-scale immigration is "social stress"; increased social frictions due to cultural diversity. (Which I believe is a large part of anti-immigration movements everywhere.)
More depressingly, there's another, more concrete problem with large amounts of "low-skill" immigration: increased consumption of social services by the immigrants and their children. This seems to be a real and significant effect, especially if the immigrants have low social capital vis-a-vis the country they immigrate to. Worse, the tolerance of the citizens for taxes to support a generous social service system seems to depend on the perceived ethnic uniformity of society.
Sweden, the premier example of a social-welfare society, is running into these problems. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/11/business/sweden-economy-immigration.html Ironically, part of the problem is that Sweden has done so well with its people -- "The state ensures that working-age people are prepared with the skills for high-wage jobs, in industries like technology and advanced manufacturing." But "Many of the refugees have little education and do not speak Swedish, making them difficult to employ." "But as citizens absorb the reality that many refugees will rely on welfare for years, some are balking at the cost while demanding limits on government aid for jobless people."
The United States isn't so good at ensuring people have the skills for high-wage jobs, but we're world leaders in creating crappy jobs for people with low skills, so we are better protected from having a large, permanent class of unemployable people. In the short run, even Massachusetts is having a hard time housing the influx of refugees. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/30/metro/emergency-shelters-overflow-healeys-push-funding-comes-up-against-slow-moving-legislature/