The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) released a report, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration, that examined a decade’s worth of data to come to the conclusion that immigrants and their offspring make important contributions to economic growth, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the U.S. Immigrant workers will be vital in replacing the tax and economy loss of retiring Baby Boomers and they serve as an essential counterpart to other native born workers. As has been found in a number of other reports before, the NAS report showed that immigrant workers cause little to no negative effects on the wages or overall employment levels of native-born workers and adverse consequences are generally found only for U.S. workers without a high school degree.
The report also found that the estimated GDP growth due to contributions of immigrant workers from 2015 to 2016 amounted to nearly $2 trillion. Children of immigrants continue to be some of the top economic contributors among the U.S. population. While first generation immigrants may be slightly more costly to the government than a native-born American, that is usually due to a lower income and paying less in taxes, not because they are a drain on federally-sponsored programs. Furthermore, Americans now spend less on consumer goods and services like child care, food preparation, house cleaning and repair, and construction thanks to immigrants.
Our immigration system is in dire need of reform; but, even in its current broken state, immigrants continue to have an overwhelmingly positive impact on the U.S. economy. Any reforms that could potentially be passed by a newly elected Congress next year could only continue to provide economic benefits throughout the nation.
