Backman Back Again - The Monday Morning Memo

“There’s an intricate debate among economists about [immigration,] but if you survey the whole literature on the subject you find that most research shows immigration has very little effect on native wage or unemployment levels. That’s because immigrants flow into different types of unskilled jobs. Unskilled immigrants tend to become maids, cooks and farm workers — jobs that require less English. Unskilled natives tend to become cashiers and drivers. If immigrants are driving down wages, it is mostly those of other immigrants… As Ted Hesson points out in The Atlantic, New York, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles account for about 20 percent of America’s economic output, and in those places, immigrants can make up as much as 44 percent of the total labor supply.

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- David Brooks, conservative columnist for The New York Times, Sept. 2, 2016

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