August 30, 2010
The San Francisco Fed is wading into the contentious debate over whether immigrants help or hurt employment for American citizens, in a paper that asserts new entrants to the nation help make almost everybody wealthier.
The report, published Monday, was written by Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis. He is currently a visiting scholar at the bank. The report counters those who believe immigrants to the U.S. take away the jobs of citizens and depress wages.
“There is no evidence that immigrants crowd out U.S.-born workers in either the short or long run,” Peri writes. Instead, the evidence suggests “the economy absorbs immigrants by expanding job opportunities rather than by displacing workers born in the United States.”
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