Back in August, I wrote a brief summary of a conversation I had with my mother on immigration as well as a longer summary of a great NY Times article on immigration. In general, I don’t have a problem with immigrants. I think that they add a lot to the country and they don’t cause nearly the harm to wages that people attribute to them. While I wouldn’t accuse anyone of racism, it wouldn’t surprise me if xenophobia is behind most of the opposition to immigrants.
Interestingly, as this LA Times article discusses, two new California studies indicate a) that immigrants boost the wages of native born citizens by an average of 4%; and b) that immigrants have significantly lower incarceration rates than native born citizens.
Both studies should be considered when people advocate for a French-styled guest worker program. The U.S. economy can absorb and is helped by a growth in the working population; and moreover, many of these workers are good-citizens (except for the fact that they are, really, you know – citizens 🙂 ).