It’s Not a Bed of Roses

I wanted to draw your attention to this compendium at the Center for Immigration Studies, “Negative Impacts of Immigration”. It’s basically a list of recent academic studies. Here’s the introduction of the compendium:

Have scholars reached a consensus that immigration has no downsides for the United States? Listening to advocates and their allied media, one might assume so. Vox once ran this headline: “There’s no evidence that immigrants hurt any American workers”. The Cato Institute similarly claims “there is no evidence that immigrants weaken or undermine American economic, political, or cultural institutions”. A writer for Forbes has declared that immigration restrictionists “are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of social science”.

The purpose of this compendium is to dispel such self-serving myths. The truth is that the costs and benefits of immigration are routinely measured, weighed, and debated in academic journals. No fair reading of the literature could conclude that immigration is an unambiguous good. What follows are my own summaries of 72 recent academic works showing negative impacts of immigration in areas ranging from labor markets to health. Each summary focuses on the immigration aspects of the work, draws out policy implications, and links to related CIS research whenever helpful.

As I have said repeatedly in the past I am not anti-immigration although I do oppose mass immigration and some of its attendant problems, e.g. an increase in cultural persistence. This compendium illustrates that immigration, particularly of low-skilled immigrants who cannot speak, read, and write English fluently, has risks that are too frequently ignored by immigration advocates.