Is Massive Immigration an Unmitigated Blessing? An Interview on Immigration With Harvard Economist George Borjas

TPM has a great interview with Harvard economist George Borjas:

Judis: I want to ask you a final question about who is most hurt by low-skilled legal and illegal immigrant. I have seen studies that the groups that are disproportionately hurt by unskilled immigration are African Americans and first-generation immigrants. These are groups that liberals who oppose any new curbs on immigration claim to champion. Is that right? Are these groups hurt?

Borjas: Yes, basically, if you look at the last thirty years, we have let in a disproportionately large number of low-skilled immigrants. Many of them are high school dropouts. So the question is who are the native high school dropouts that have to compete with these immigrants. Many of them are African Americans and Hispanics who are immigrants themselves. Those are the people who are being hurt by current immigration.

The debate over immigration is very similar to the trade debate, We talked about trade for thirty years — that it was a great thing, that everybody was supposed to gain — but we now know that that is untrue. Some people were left behind, and it’s a pretty big political problem. Immigration is the same way, not everybody will gain, and the people who lose out from low-skilled immigration. are the people we are trying to protect in many other ways. So from one perspective low skilled immigration is attenuating the beneficial impact of everything else we do to help these people.

An interview , well worth your time.