New Book Tackles Hot-Button Issues

In their 2008 book Good Intentions: Nine Hot-Button Issues Viewed Through the Eyes of Faith, authors Bob Smietana and Charles M. North point out that "The United States is a land of immigrants," and argue that they are necessary.

The real question, though, is this: Do immigrants take jobs away from poor Americans and drive down wages for the rest? Basic supply-and-demand says that adding more workers to a market (an increase in supply) will lead to lower wages for all workers in that market. So if a large number of workers from Mexico seek construction jobs in the U.S., then construction wages will fall, and some American construction workers may end up out of work. If many engineers from India or China come to the United States and seek jobs, then some engineers will be paid less and some American engineers may not find jobs. Of course, this assumes that all other things don't change — most notably, demand for workers.

It turns out that studies can't find any major effects of immigrants on either wages or native-born employment. At worst, the effects are negative but small. Immigrants may "take" a few American jobs and push wages down a little bit. But it's more likely that immigrants flow in because demand for workers is growing. Why? Because the American work force is aging, and because American families are having fewer children.

Fertility in the United States is barely at the replacement rate of just over two children per woman. Plus, about 75 percent of men age 20 and up are already in the labor force; for women, the rate is about 60 percent. The unemployment rate in 2007 is well below 5 percent. When employers want to hire more workers, there aren't enough native-born Americans to choose from. Immigrants come to the United States because American employers need them.

American social-insurance programs need immigrant workers too. Social Security and Medicare mostly benefit the elderly, using taxes on workers. Americans are living longer today, which means that social-insurance costs are increasing. At the same time, post–baby boom generations have been smaller, so that there are fewer workers to support the growing elderly population. Immigrants are new workers who can help solve this imbalance across age groups.