The National Academy of Sciences has released a major study regarding the effects of US immigration policy on the economy and on the population. A report of the results was released by a panel of the Natioanl Academy of Science’s National Research Council. The report is said to be one of the most important on this subject to date.
One of the study’s most important finding seems to be that immigration has an overall positive effect on the economy. According to panel chairman James P. Smith, a senior economist at California-based RAND corp., “Immigrants may be adding as much as $10 billion to the economy each year. It’s true that some Americans are now paying more taxes because of immigration, and native-born Americans without high school educations have seen their wages fall slightly because of the competiton sparked by lower-skilled, newly arrived immigrants. But the vast majority of Americans are enjoying a healthier economy as the result of the increased supply of labor and lower prices that result from immigration.”
According to the report, immigrant labor allows many goods and servces to be produced more cheaply, and provides the work force for some businesses that otherwise could not exist such as America’s texttile and agricultural industries. Other business – such as restaurants and domestic household services – could not exist on the same scale.
The study found that immigrants tend to compete only with themselves and with American workers with less than a high school education, but even in this area of competition, the effects of immigration are “not significant.”
The study reported that while immigrants may use more publicly funded services than they pay in on an annual basis in the states where immigrants are most concentrated, the panel reported that in the long-term on a national level, “the majority of new immigrants and their descendants will add more to government coffers than they receive over their lifetimes. The positive fiscal effects of immigration at the federal level are shared equally by all residents across the nation.”
The study also fond that if immigration continues at its present level, the US population will grow to 387 million people by 2050, 124 million that at present. Immigration will play the dominant role in this growth. Immigrant children are expected to grow in number perhaps balancing the expected doubling of the number of Americans over the age of 65 that is expected to occur in this period.
The study was commissioned by the US Commision on Immigration Reform, a congressionally appointed board charged with making recommendations on immigration policy.
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