When looking beyond solely economic effects, studies paint immigration/diversity less favorably - that it reduces trust and social cohesion [0,1], and makes ethnic conflict more likely [2].
I'd appreciate it if you didn't deliberately misinterpret your citations, considering in your first he explicitly says: "in the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits" [1]
And your second citation says nothing of the sort with regards to immigration, it is solely examining the affects of geography within a country as it affects conflict both religious and ethnic.
I didn't misinterpret anything - the study author says so, not the study itself. And he failed to show it in that or any subsequent study. He also delayed publication for 6 years because he didn't like the results, so it's not surprising he said so.
The second citation doesn't examine the effects of 'geography', but the effects of borders and boundaries between ethnic groups, finding increased conflict where those boundaries are missing.
Accusing the above comment of deliberately misinterpreting the citations adds an unnecessary negativity to this discussion. Better to assume incompetence than malice, if that's even the case.
Furthermore, this discussion is about the overall cost/benefit calculation, so your point about the paper saying there are benefits does not preclude what the above comment stated.
Like it or not, in the USA cash is king. It is what people optimize for.
If you FIX a highly-rewarded measure for a nontrivial time period, the "take best comers" approach kicks ass. As long as your fix apriori and them measure. That's what we see here. GDP was defined before current immigration policy was set, after all.
If we have faults, they are in our system for doling out rewards. Not in the color/creed/religion of the people we let compete for those rewards.
If you want better social cohesion, design social systems to REWARD that cohesion. Then, communities will offer what you seek. To your great surprise, I suspect, those communities will be highly diverse.
Otherwise, you end up with sub-populations that severely under-perform on actually measured metrics and go out to search for bullshit alternative (under/arbitrarily)measured metrics by which they win. Again, that's what we see in your comment.
Page 1315 (actually page 5 in the PDF) has a graph which illustrates an interesting fact that many people don't seem to be aware of. The percentage of foreign-born people living in the United States is the highest it's been in nearly a century. There are some interesting correlated facts (such as % of people living in the US that aren't citizens being similarly record-breaking).
It seems crazy to me that this fact isn't part of the table stakes for any debate about US immigration. This isn't a liberal or conservative argument, it's just an acknowledgement of the fact that there's no precedent in living memory for the current number of foreign born, non-citizens living in America.
It's possible to stake out many positions based on these facts. Depending on your persuasion you could argue that the road to citizenship needs to be easier because we're creating a disenfranchised underclass; or you could argue that America is under assault from foreign influences; or you could argue something else. But it seems like this hugely relevant fact doesn't even get discussed in most public or policymaking discourse.
> The percentage of foreign-born people living in the United States is the highest it's been in nearly a century.
I think this is happening in a lot of countries, the capital cities in particular attract a large diversity of population. I was curious so spent a few minutes exploring figures.
In London 36.7% are Foreign-Born, rising to 42.2% for Inner London. [0]
Paris is about 21% [1]
Berlin is 18.4% [2]
New York city is 36%, Los Angeles is 41% [3]
In 1976, less than one in four Sydneysiders was foreign born. Forty years later the figure is nearly 40 per cent. [4]
Strongly depends on the city - Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, Cairo, and Istanbul have hardly any foreign-born population, and with the exception of Kurds in Istanbul, are not very diverse either.
14% of the population being foreign born doesn't seem that unsurprising or unexpected. Based on your comment I thought it would be much higher.
My opinion: I am a believer that immigrants are the lifeblood of America and are the secret sauce that make it great. It's a nation for immigrants, by immigrants. I think we should encourage immigration on the basis that brain power is the resource that US needs and one that will be driving the growth of the next century.
> I think we should encourage immigration on the basis that brain power is the resource that US needs and one that will be driving the growth of the next century.
That's a good argument for legal merit based immigration but not for illegal immigration or the majority of legal immigration that is family based.
That's true. It's also worth pointing out from the same graph that today's "high immigrant population" is the same as what it was from the entire 1870-1910 period. A period that saw America rise from second-tier status to a world power. Most natives can trace some of their ancestry to the immigrants who arrived during this period.
From the paper: new arrivals created winners and losers in the native population and among existing immigrant workers, reducing the wages of low-skilled natives to some degree
What the MSM buries, immigration is a mixed bag, immigrants are not a magical people that always benefit citizens in the US. Of course on the negative side, Americans in the most vulnerable position take the hit.
One can be pro immigration but acknowledge this, and advocate for policies that encourage high skilled immigration.
labor doesn't exist in vacuum either, low skill immigration lowers wages up the chain. In the past people could earn a good living right out of high school. Now more people have to take out loans, go to college, and then there's more people competing for those "high-skill" jobs, plus a mountain of debt on their backs
I know older people who made $30/hr out of high school at local factories with full benefits thanks to unions in the 70s and 80s. Illegal immigration was used to break those unions and today those jobs pay $10-15/hr with no benefits
Except that you don't need illegal immigration to reduce labour costs since you can just outsource work overseas or have legal immigrants do the work.
The biggest reason why wages have gone down has been the decline in union membership since it is only through collective bargaining that you can force wage rises.
So what was it that made unions in these now low-paying jobs vanish? What enabled companies to say "we're going to drastically drop wages" and made unions unviable? How did America, seemingly within the span of years, end up with a tremendous number of jobs that "no American wanted to do"--jobs that Americans did and earned living wages for, for many, many years?
>decline in union membership since it is only through collective bargaining
because illegal immigration destroys any negotiating power of unions. You can't go on strike when there are millions of illegals that will take that job
You can’t force wage rises across an economy. There’s only so much productivity to go round, only 100% of the pie. Higher wages for unionised industries come at the price of higher prices for those who consume the products of those industries.
On a less theoretical point the US and Switzerland both have much lower unionisation than comparable countries and are much richer. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, none look good compared to their richer, more unionised neighbour.
These things can never be understood purle statistically but have to be understood in a complex mix of evolutionary, social, psychological and geographical, economical, context before we can even start to talk about benefits and problems with immigration.
I believe a different question needs to be asked which is. What conditions need to be in place before immigration becomes a net positive or a net negative.
It's always struck me as an important difference that the US is so attractive to people even though they don't get anything compared to Europe.
I remember when I grew up in Denmark and we had discussions about why immigrant/refugees got free bikes and free metrocards to take public transportation.
This turned into a kind of resentment where every time you saw an immigrant doing well you would often hear "well of course since they get everything from the government" The sentiment is that it's less deserved.
There is something about access to better opportunity which transcends the actual state of that opportunity as long as it feels deserved which I believe is what actually helps a country get more out of its immigration even though if it's system isn't as generous as ex. the Scandinavian or German immigration systems.
The US system could be much better but the opportunities here are still second to none IMO (I moved from Denmark because of better opportunity for what I want to do with my life)
Immigration is at times great for a country at other times can be a problem depending on the state of the situation the country finds itself in.
Looking at it statistically just isn't the right way to do things. It will always be a mix and doesn't really make sense to talk about net benefits in any truly meaningful way IMO. Only context matters.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Putnam#Diversity_and...
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/juaf.12015
[2] https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1409