Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Harvard economist George Borjas, in a 2004 study, said, "The 10 million native-born workers without a high school degree face the most competition from immigrants, as do the eight million younger natives with only a high school education and 12 million younger college graduates."But other economists, such as David Card at the University of California at Berkeley, dissent from the view that immigrant workers have a dire effect on the incomes of less educated native-born ones. "It's quite possible that unskilled immigration is having some negative effect on unskilled natives. The question is: How big is the effect? Has it reduced native wages by 20 percent, or has it reduced their wages a couple of percent?" Card asked in an interview published by the journal of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis last month."The best available evidence is the effect is on the order of a couple of percents nationwide over 25 years, and possibly a little bigger in certain local labor markets," Card said.He added that research suggests that "there are positive benefits for other workers, for consumers and for the economy as a whole."

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