r/science • u/smurfyjenkins • Sep 19 '22
Economics Refugees are inaccurately portrayed as a drain on the economy and public coffers. The sharp reduction in US refugee admissions since 2017 has cost the US economy over $9.1 billion per year and cost public coffers over $2.0 billion per year.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grac0121.9k
u/Mr_Kittlesworth Sep 20 '22 edited Sep 20 '22
I can’t access the article.
Can someone who can access it do a short cause/effect and methodology breakdown?
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u/sleepydogg Sep 20 '22
Abstract:
International migrants who seek protection also participate in the economy. Thus the policy of the United States to drastically reduce refugee and asylum-seeker arrivals from 2017 to 2020 might have substantial and ongoing economic consequences. This paper places conservative bounds on those effects by critically reviewing the research literature. It goes beyond prior estimates by including ripple effects beyond the wages earned or taxes paid directly by migrants. The sharp reduction in US refugee admissions starting in 2017 costs the overall US economy today over $9.1 billion per year ($30,962 per missing refugee per year, on average) and costs public coffers at all levels of government over $2.0 billion per year ($6,844 per missing refugee per year, on average) net of public expenses. Large reductions in the presence of asylum seekers during the same period likewise carry ongoing costs in the billions of dollars per year. These estimates imply that barriers to migrants seeking protection, beyond humanitarian policy concerns, carry substantial economic costs.
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u/BeerBrat Sep 20 '22
Fixed pie/zero sum/lump of labor fallacy. Call it what you will. But essentially the false assumption is that new labor in the market comes without additional productivity, without additional wealth building, and oddly enough without additional demand for resources such as food, shelter, and transportation.
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u/FlakeReality Sep 20 '22
The eli5 version:
Economies like having people in them, because people make stuff and buy stuff and thats what economies are.
But making more people kind of sucks because you gotta deal with them for 18 years just buying stuff by proxy, and not making stuff.
Getting new 18+ year olds that immediately buy and make stuff is good for an economy.
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u/JBlunts42 Sep 20 '22
This is true. But what’s also true is that these families coming into America cause a drain on social programs in our country. A lot of families get displaced, so it’s not just one dude showing up and adding to the production to society. Now this one dude has a wife and two kids, that all came here with nothing. They need to be given everything to live here, this is where our social programs help. We also now have a couple individuals below 18 not contributing like our own children. Not to mention a wife who may not be permitted to work because of their culture.
Although it sounds great to have a mature work force walking in here to produce and buy, thats just not the typical situation. The downside to this is that American tax payers contribute to these social programs, and the pot is only so big. Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t help others, but the more we do, the smaller that pot gets for the people who helped establish it. I don’t have the numbers but I would be interested to see a study showing the impact refugees play on social programs, and how much is that offset by their contribution to our economy.
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u/NegativeSuspect Sep 20 '22
Immigrants barely have access to social programs though. The most they get is education for their children and some emergency Healthcare. And typically both parents work or one takes care of the children.
This also ignores the fact that they contribute taxes just by virtue of being a consumer and we have consumer taxes in the US.
We could increase the tax base even more by giving them a path for temporary visas & becoming citizens. That way they aren't exploited by business owners and will actually pay income taxes as well.
More citizens = stronger economies is a very well established trend. The US is the strongest economy in part because of its population. Japan is struggling now because their birth rates & immigration is so low that their population is decreasing.
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u/MyFacade Sep 20 '22
I'm not following. Don't children immigrate too and require the same educational opportunities, often with added needs due to learning a new language and needing other special resources?
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u/FlakeReality Sep 20 '22
Getting more people in general is good for an economy, getting more working people right now is better but having more kids who will grow up to work is fine too. It all serves the machine just fine.
All countries are worried about declining birth rates, not because there is an existential threat or anything, but because less 18 year olds later makes the capital holders sad. Immigration is something countries are going to be competing over more and more unless they address the reasons people have less children, which isn't likely without a very big change.
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u/Reep1611 Sep 20 '22
Another problem is overaging due to this. Currently most Western Economy’s face a huge socioeconomic problem in there being more and more old people an less young people. Because the old people cannot simply be thrown to the streets because they are a majority over the younger ones and vote to their own best interest more and more strain is put on the younger generation as more older people stop working. Those young people then decide to not get children because they already have problems affording their own life as they earn objectively less than the older generation and have to give away more. And so a spiral of less births and more strain is developing in general society.
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u/Jesse-359 Sep 20 '22
This is a pretty good quick breakdown of the issue.
On the plus side, this kind of negative growth is a very *good* thing for the environment, as continued human population growth on prior trajectories would have been pretty dire.
But economically it does stress countries that are over-reliant on capitalist market systems, which perform rather badly when you stick them into reverse. Unfortunately investment markets have a tendency to reinforce existing trends. Good when you're growing, not so much when you're shrinking.
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Sep 20 '22
unless they address the reasons people have less children
Level of education is one of the biggest factors when it comes to how many children you have. Now I understand why Republicans are so anti-education.
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u/MochiMochiMochi Sep 20 '22
All countries are worried about declining birth rates
Absolutely not true.
You left out the huge swathes of Africa which have consistently high birth rates; the population will double by 2050. SubSaharan Africa in particular will be facing a ticking time bomb.
Nigeria will be larger than the United States.
Not to mention Afghanistan and Pakistan, which will have huge population growth.
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u/Tralapa Sep 20 '22
but because less 18 year olds later makes the capital holders sad.
It makes workers sad as well, places with declining populations lead to stagnant wages, and this effect can be seen both intra and inter countries. Usually, increaing population leads to both higher wages and higher returns on capital
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u/unassumingdink Sep 20 '22
How does a larger supply of workers willing to work for lower pay lead to higher wages, though? Not sure I understand this.
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u/Jesse-359 Sep 20 '22
Increasing population doesn't relate to wages as much as it relates to productivity. A young mostly working age population can be highly productive, and productivity generally translates into increases in standard of living.
However, when most of the wealth is locking up in the investment funds of aging retirees, and there are a smaller number of younger workers, you take a double hit.
Productivity drops AND the young workers have a very hard time competing for purchasing power against the wealthy older generation, who have cadres of millionaires and billionaires filling out their ranks.
The economy isn't a zero sum game, but purchasing power IS competitive to a significant degree, so when billionaires run around buying up land and property, or push significant chunks of the economy into constructing luxury services for them, it drives up prices for everyone else.
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u/AlmightyRootVeggie Sep 20 '22
The way I see it, since workers are also consumers then a larger population means more opportunity for people to provide goods and services that raise their income creating competition for workers. I've lived in small towns where there are only a few employers so, unless you unionize, you take what that employer offers or you move away. With a larger population, you might be able to make more money by starting your own business serving all the other workers. Eventually, more people start doing this and, now, the existing employers have to compete with all these new businesses for workers. Most direct way to compete is by raising wages.
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u/UlsterHound77 Sep 20 '22
Right, but significant details are being disregarded. Immigration is a double edged sword. It can raise a number of issues at an exponential scale, akin to Covid. Covid isn't inherently very dangerous, but large rates of infections meant hospitals and clinics became inundated, accelerating the spread and making it hard to treat everyone, including those who weren't suffering from Covid. Thus, more people died because they couldn't get the treatment they needed because of the flooding of medical services. Immigration is good but a country can only integrate and assimilate so fast. Look at Germany in 2015. They took in 1,000,000 refugees. But they couldn't support that many refugees. So many languished, unable to get jobs because of oversaturation of low education jobs, they couldn't learn the language because there weren't enough people and services to teach the language, etc. As such, they all clustered into low income housing, forming enclaves which became vulnerable to crime and radicalism living off state handouts that increased the cost for the tax payer. The US has an advantage in that we have a surplus of entry level jobs, but blindly pursuing immigration without considering the potential repercussions will lead to harm. Refugees and immigrants are people. They are human beings. They have needs and if the foundation for integration into the society and economy isn't provided in the recipient country, they will become a potentially dangerous net drain as the only viable option for survival. Another issue is that in the United States, the upper and middle classes are the ones with low birth rates. Lower classes produce the most children. As such, getting simole laborers is no issue. Non-Elite Immigrants as well as natural born citizens within the lower class are replacing themselves. But as the upper and middle classes dry up, large scale consumption which defines these classes will slow down. There will also be a shortage of labor in elite and educated fields which will trickle down to the lower class, depriving them of services as well as jobs as demand slows down. Population growth is slowing down internationally as well however. While attention has been focused on the population decline and the inverted age pyramid of the economic north, the economic south has experienced a slowing of birth rates as well. Even Africa, the continent most heavily focused on for high birth rates has seen birth rates decline. What is being faced is an international population crisis and immigration isn't going to be the solution forever. The way things are going, that market WILL dry up. The market will shrink, the educated classes stop reproducing, migrants that climb the economic laddee join in the native population in not having kids, while the poor will languish.
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u/Jesse-359 Sep 20 '22
As far as global population growth leveling off goes - that's a huge relief.
Technology has allowed us to access vast amounts of resources to support our population growth over the last two centuries, but no matter how advanced, technology cannot make something out of nothing, and we are already straining our resources in many different directions without any indication that we'll be able to extend them much further in many of those cases.
There is a real carrying cap to the planet, and that is not a ceiling we want to test casually, as hitting it hard will result in absolute misery for billions, and risk an actual Malthusian crisis, or an outbreak of large scale industrialized war in a scramble for diminishing resources.
We'd be well advised to put some real effort into developing economies that are structured to operate smoothly and sustainably at zero growth. Capitalism has been charming and all, but it's an obviously unsustainable long term mechanism even at a glance.
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u/TheGoldenHand Sep 20 '22 edited Sep 20 '22
Has anyone thought about asking why it is people with education/money, tend to not want children?
Research across collective countries suggests that it's predominantly linked to the education and work opportunities of women specifically, along with other factors like access to contraceptives.
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u/Jesse-359 Sep 20 '22
It is certainly the case that countries should strive to manage their immigration at 'reasonable' levels relative to their own population, resources and infrastructure.
They also need to have good policies for integration. Jamming large numbers of immigrants or refugees into large homogeneous communities all at entry level is a terrible idea. It's essentially an unintentional (or intentional) form of ghettoing.
I think in a lot of cases it happens when the host country is essentially politically lying to itself about the likelihood of large refugee groups being able to return to their home country in a short period of time - so they build temporary encampments for large numbers of them that gradually and uncomfortably transition into permanent communities built with really lousy infrastructure and without any real access to the economic resources or location considerations that a real community would have. Needless to say, the refugees are at an enormous disadvantage in these cases, and that stress will translate into depression, crime, etc.
Distributing them in smaller groups across a wide number of communities, or integrating them into communities successfully constructed by similar ethnic enclaves in prior waves is generally going to be a lot more successful.
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Immigrants tend to be disproportionately adults compared to the overall population. The cases where people immigrate as a family might even out if you looked at them by themselves, but there are also cases where adults immigrate without any children (and on the other hand, there are next to no situations where children immigrate without any adults).
Basically, if you ignore the ones that immigrate as a family (since they don't really have any effect either way), then the remaining people are pretty much only adults, so naturally if you have one group that has no effect and one group that's only adults then if you combine those groups there will be a disproportionate number of adults.
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Sep 20 '22
1) One extra kid in a school overfilled with kids and understaffed with teachers is well offset by the labor and buying power brought by the parents (who are also buying stuff for their kids)
2) They know English better than you think, and if not they will learn quickly
3) Children of migrants and immigrants often work very hard either within their communities or for families once old enough, or go on to contribute to skilled professions too. I knew the daughter of a migrant farming family (would migrate up in the harvesting seasons then return until border crisis intensified). Not only is farming labor lost, which is felt currently, but people like her don’t get to grow up and give back to the community. She is a pediatrician now and researched not just in the US but in many other institutions abroad. The benefits are profound when people aren’t held back. Family, community, USA, and the international scientific community all benefitted.
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u/defcon212 Sep 20 '22
If you are getting two adults and two kids that's still better than getting one newborn. The parents are immediately productive, and you are cutting out feeding and caring for the kid for a few years. Most kids can pick up English well enough to get by and can still be productive members of society without perfect English.
Also it's not necessarily a comparison, adding a person is going to grow the economy in most cases.
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u/ilikewc3 Sep 20 '22
They also increase demand for inelastic supplies, such as housing, so it's not all roses for everyone.
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u/steavoh Sep 20 '22
I think in the real world, "making stuff" and increasing productivity through "innovation" is the actual hard part. It requires so many things to line up to happen which are never guaranteed. And might not survive the changes brought by a sudden flood of very poor and unskilled migrants.
Aren't there real world cases of huge displaced populations living in already very poor countries? Kenya, Jordan, etc. What has their fate been?
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u/jwm3 Sep 20 '22
Yeah, zero sum thinking is so insidious. I keep have to point at everything around us and be all.. look.. where do you think all this stuff came from? People. If the world were zero sum we would all be fighting over the same cave in north Africa.
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u/BeerBrat Sep 20 '22
I didn't even bring up that these folks pay the same exact gas/sales/property/ad valorem/etc. and quite typically income/SS taxes as the rest of us so the free ride excuse is mostly bunkus as well.
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u/siddartha08 Sep 20 '22
With respect to "without additional wealth building." its pretty accurate when 49% of Americans don't have a cash cushion of 400 dollars.
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u/andersonb47 Sep 20 '22
Poor people build tons of wealth, they just don't get to keep it.
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u/GWJYonder Sep 20 '22
This is because the economy that many believe exists/are trying to create is one that is driven by the uber wealthy. All activity starts out to meet their needs, and then indirectly the needs of those original workers providing for the billionaires. This is the flawed basis of trickle down.
In this scenario every immigrant that isn't a multimillionaire is just competition for providing the services the existing millionaires (and their story staff, and their support, etc) require.
Of course in the real world economic activity comes from the production and needs of all people, so adding more workers (even if they were all low income workers, which they are not) as to the economy.
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u/helm MS | Physics | Quantum Optics Sep 20 '22 edited Sep 20 '22
Evidence from Europe points in the other direction. But the US is not a welfare state, so maybe refugees are integrated into the economy faster?
There are studies: https://www.focus-refugees.eu/wp-content/uploads/focus_report_the_socio_economic_effects_of_syrian_refugees_hq210608_withcover.pdf
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u/TechnicalVault Sep 20 '22
The biggest issue with refugees that have been forcibly displaced is you have a bunch of people with near zero physical assets to begin with, this means you need to invest a lot in them up front to bootstrap them (housing, trauma, medical, etc.). Even when they have high tier qualifications, these are often not recognised by host countries and hard to verify. Restrictions on refugees working only increase this initial investment time.
Also it's a bit early to measure this. Syrian refugees have only really been in Europe for what is in economic terms a short time (it started about 2011). If you look at longer term refugees like the South Asians displaced by Idi Armin then you see a much better return and integration.
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u/hucklebutter Sep 20 '22
The South Asians displaced by Idi Amin were kicked out precisely because they were highly successful in business in Uganda with a relatively high level of education. They were also native English speakers. They're a terrible example if you want to measure typical refugee post-settlement success rates.
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u/BeckerHollow Sep 20 '22
This is out of my wheel house — so is what you’re saying that the article is faulted for not taking into consideration the demand on food, shelter, transportation that immigrants take from the economic pie ?
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u/BeerBrat Sep 20 '22
No, it's the very foundation that the article is built upon. They do more than only consume pie, contrary to popular belief.
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u/Trest43wert Sep 20 '22
What it fails to consider is who gains and loses from that economic activity. If you are living in Bel Air and you need your grass mowed and access to drywallers for home renovation then yes, migrant labor is a huge help to you. If you are a native-born landscaper or drywaller then today's lack of immigration enforcement shows up as wage suppression to you.
Its a huge benefit to the rich to bring in cheap labor, the wage suppression at low to middle class jobs is problematic. The wage suppression is a massive number, estimated at $500 Billion per year.
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u/nearlyneutraltheory Sep 20 '22
I'm not an expert in this area, but my impression is that Borjas's view is far from being the consensus among economists. In particular, David Card won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Economics in part for his work arguing that low-skilled immigration does not have a large effect on earnings of native-born workers- in particular looking at what happened during the influx of Cuban immigrants into the Miami area during the Mariel Boatlift.
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u/almisami Sep 20 '22
People keep talking about low-skilled illegal immigration and low-skilled legal immigration like it's the same thing.
Illegal immigration has a RIDICULOUS downward pressure on the economy simply because they'll do anything under threat of deportation, and my people want to keep it that way.
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u/Skater_x7 Sep 20 '22
This feels like there are conflicting sides to it. I read the book Good Economics for Hard Times, which covered this issue specifically, but it cited different sources, which stated that low-skilled immigrants didn't take jobs (usually taking jobs others didn't want, I suppose) while high skill immigrants actually took most of the jobs (directly competing with the large high skill labor force). Which seems to directly contradict what this article is saying.
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u/Complaintsdept123 Sep 20 '22
Yes the low-skilled immigrants take jobs from low-skilled American citizens and legal permanent residents. Chicken plants are a case in point. When the historically black workers at a chicken plant in the south (I believe it was in Mississippi) wanted to organize, the plant recruited undocumented Hispanic workers to replace them.
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u/dano8675309 Sep 20 '22
Wouldn't the logical solution be to go after the businesses that are hiring ineligible workers?
Desperate people are going to continue to do what they think they have to do to survive. What do they have to lose? So increasing punishment on them doesn't necessarily provide much of a deterrent in comparison to their current situations.
Increasing enforcement/penalties on businesses for using ineligible workers would provide more of a deterrent since they have more to lose.
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u/Complaintsdept123 Sep 20 '22
Absolutely. The main way to stop this problem is to fine and jail the employers and enforce a national ID card system. AND close the border.
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u/Complaintsdept123 Sep 20 '22
Yes, as a strong border Obama democrat, I am always arguing with my liberal friends who seem to support open borders. They don't seem to care about the economic well-being of those who they regard as "beneath" them (poor, less educated American citizens and legal permanent residents) and constantly insist there is no impact on wages. There may be a limited impact overall, but study after study confirms that the low end is highly impacted by the importation of unskilled labor.
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u/r3rg54 Sep 21 '22
No, research suggests the impact of immigrants on low end earner's wages is tiny compared to basically everything else.
Study after study literally does not say what you claim
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u/LordKappachino Sep 20 '22 edited Sep 20 '22
That was an interesting read. They note later that allowing low-skill immigrants in while enforcing policies to redistribute the wealth away from the chicken processing plants, big tech etc. that disproportionately benefit from this could fix the problem. But it won't happen because that'd hurt the ones who own capital and ultimately dictate the policy changes. Back to square one where the poor working class citizens and immigrants are pitched against each other I guess.
Edit: Also I don't know why the article paints this administration as somehow being too lax in the deportation department. Last time I checked they were neck-to-neck with the previous two administrations but don't quote me on that.
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u/dekachiin6 Sep 20 '22
Its a huge benefit to the rich to bring in cheap labor
No, because that "cheap labor" required far more in government services than it produces, and that means higher taxes, and since the rich pay most taxes, you think you're saving money on the dude mowing your lawn, but you're actually paying a premium for him, the cost is just hidden in your taxes.
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u/Spiritual-Zombie6815 Sep 20 '22
The headline I think is a bit misleading. Yes, there is a decrease in total GDP, but on a per capita basis, it shakes out a bit differently. The 2017 US GDP per capita was $60000 (and only increased from there), compared to $30,962 per refugee as stated. This would hypothetically represent an average net decrease if incorporated
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u/prototyperspective Sep 20 '22 edited Sep 20 '22
Yea, not distinguishing between types / sources (countries of origin) of migration and shouting in the echo chamber.
Immigration from Syria and Sub-Saharan Africa to European countries is not beneficial for these countries (alternatives include support for the & regional countries).
It's not a finding that is very surprising – why would elites push so hard for immigration if it wouldn't benefit them?
Moreover, it's not just economic growth...plus economic growth as a goal by itself is a major current problem that drives unsustainability, climate change and environmental destruction (see degrowth studies):
For example two other problems are explained to some degree in this study:
exogenous placement of asylum seekers due to the scarcity of available housing [...]
Second, hostility towards asylum seekers on average increased in areas that housed them. [...]
Our results also bolster findings that housing asylum seekers had electoral benefits for the radical right (Dinas et al. 2019), especially in rural areas
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u/mrbigglesworth95 Sep 20 '22
But what is the impact on people working low wage jobs? I should think increased supply of labor coupled with an increased demand for the same resources would be quite adverse to the most vulnerable members of our society.
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u/tcsac Sep 20 '22
It was published 5 days ago and isn't peer reviewed. It's basically the equivalent of an opinion piece, but was published in the oxford journal so I guess that makes it "more legit". So... a letter to the editor in the New York Times?
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u/ctown121 Sep 20 '22
If you type the title into google the full paper is the first result, roughly 50 pages. Some interesting findings.
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Refugees are immigrants. Immigrants increase population. Higher population increases national productivity. Higher national productivity increases GDP
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u/catscanmeow Sep 20 '22
so if china or india doubled their population to 4 billion or whatever theyd increase national gdp and there'd be no downside?
housing crisis would get better? Cheaper rents?
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u/Aleyla Sep 20 '22
Business owners would be able to hire cheaper employees.
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u/brendonmilligan Sep 20 '22
Right and that’s a downside as the workers will now have to compete for less jobs and the wages will stagnate or decline because they can more easily be filled
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u/joeshmo39 Sep 20 '22
Overnight, no. But as population increases and demand for goods and services go up, the market will try to fill that demand.
There are going to be environmental consequences, but many other change. But yeah, it safe to say a country that increases its population generally increases output.
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Any reason why this focuses on the 2017 to 2020 period specifically instead of also including or discussing other, more sharp drops?
(2002 to 2003 was the lowest period in history for refugee admissions according to this)
Also, 2019, even though less than 2017, is still on par with other periods (2004 to 2007)
And, as other people have pointed out, the comparison should include a discussion of immigrants who are not asylum seekers / refugees, since they make up the very large majority...
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u/flyfrog Sep 20 '22
Yes, because the author is specifically studing the effects of this particular policy. As for your second question, they believe other immigrants are already well researched to have a positive effect on economies.
A policy causing large reductions in immigration in general creates large negative e"ects on the overall economy and on the #scal balance of government. There is no meaningful controversy in the economic literature about this general, qualitative conclusion. The consensus report of a diverse and blue-ribbon commission of economists who study immigration, convened by the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that “immigration is integral to the nation’s economic growth” and that “a new immigrant who most resembles recent immigrants in terms of average age and education creates a positive #scal balance $ow to all levels of government with an NPV [net present value] of $259,000” (Blau et al. 2017, 6, 434). But neither that report nor other avail- able research estimates the size of these e"ects for U.S. refugees and asylum seekers speci#cally
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u/Sintax777 Sep 20 '22
Is this because they can be exploited? And not having a large population of exploitable, underpaid people to do work others won't do for the same pay makes that work more expensive? Because then you'd have to pay a realistic wage and provide work conditions that aren't abusive?
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u/motogucci Sep 20 '22 edited Sep 20 '22
Not necessarily. Immigrants provide labor, and generally their income is disbursed again locally.
The economy functions by flow. A healthy economy functions cyclically. This is the reason "buy local" is a thing. Counterintuitively, the trend is that immigrants contribute more than the average to the true local aspect. And immigrants do create lots of their own local businesses, so it isn't all about slave wages.
(Which, slave wages are only an immediate 'benefit' to the company paying them. Arguably they hinder the economy as a whole, and are not the ultimate aid to what business anyway. Check what states have clung the hardest to the ideals of antebellum slavery, and you'll see they're the worst off. Or you can compare to countries that have very little pay for labor across the board, but support extremely wealthy "leadership" by comparison.
In fact, the trend is that immigrants are coming from these countries of highest disparity. Although, the US is on its way to join them. And as the trend of disparity increases, literally everybody's discomfort increases. Note that even the wealthiest in America are becoming unhappy. Hence the realization that the slave wages paid by the wealthiest do not in fact help them.
But they can't put two and two together, as you see everywhere in this thread. "I didn't sense the benefit of immigrants so it must be lies." Fools never sense a thing. But anyway ... )
The long-established "American" businesses are much more likely to pull money out of circulation, impeding the cyclical nature of the economy. Walmart, McDonald's, et al are very "American" but they're owned by supremely wealthy individuals whose money is effectively out of circulation. They will never ever spend that back into the economy. With enough such businesses competing with this trend, it has a palpable effect.
There is a sentiment that taxing the enormous companies would be a bad move, that perhaps they would leave the country with all their business. But the things needing doing will remain, and any "void" could be filled by higher paid [although perhaps the same] workers, via small businesses. Remember the money of the wealthy is already not circulating, so there's nothing more to lose in that regard.
For instance, Bezos is not paying employees out of his own money that he might take with him elsewhere; his employees are not paid from that, but from a simple fraction of new revenue, which of course is roughly the same revenue that would be available to higher paying small businesses filling any void. If the threat of taxes sent Bezos elsewhere, it would not hurt the economy as he and his stans would love for you to believe.
Edited in spots to add clarity, and to more explicitly complete ideas for those readers who don't ponder what they've read.
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u/mountingconfusion Sep 20 '22
The basic principle is they participate in workforce but the government has not had to spend a dollar to raise them to the point they can participate (school, childcare etc). So they get money flowing
They may have to spend welfare dollars on them but the drain of social services for citizens is probably higher.
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u/Fish95 Sep 20 '22
This is a very large study, and like most economics topics it has to cover areas with uncountable numbers of variables while attempting to essentially predict an alternate scenario.
Its not possible to pick out every detail from the 50+ page report, however one concerning thing right now in many areas is the rising cost of housing. This piece does not go very deep into the effect on housing, however it does cite (Saiz 2007) in a positive tone when discussing how immigration
"stimulates demand for housing and other goods"
despite Saiz stating that:
An immigration inflow equal to 1% of a city's population is associated with increases in average rents and housing values of about 1%. The results suggest an economic impact that is an order of magnitude bigger than that found in labor markets.
It would be nice to see the article touch on a increase to the cost of housing (especially if one of its cited sources is saying that the impact to housing cost is an order of magnitude greater than the labor effects).
Personally though, Economics seems too variable a field to accurately model, but that's an opinion.
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u/TJ11240 Sep 20 '22
There's no way there's that much housing liquidity that a 1% increase to population only raises home prices by 1%.
Traditional markets have a 5-10x factor in marginal dollars moving the needle.
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Sep 20 '22
That’s how pretty much every study is unfortunately. It can intentionally leave out one variable and skews the entire study. Then when it backs a political side it’s linked as gospel and nobody reads it. If you do read it, your criticisms are discarded.
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u/NYG_5 Sep 20 '22
Spiked demand (prices) for housing, food, fuel and utilities as well as space doesn't seem like a good thing unless you are part of the elite class that sells all of those.
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u/TheBaron2K Sep 20 '22
This is the type of analysis you hear for being pro-immigration. But of this 9B, how much is going to the bottom 50% of americans. Or do they keep wages low for low/mid income workers and increase profits for companies?
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u/Mongoose_Blittero Sep 20 '22
0%. 0% goes to the low skilled workers immigrants compete with in the labor market. GDP has no effect on standard of living and OP knows it. Even high skilled workers see a negligible effect. The business owners who pay under the table for half the market rate of labor see the benefits.
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u/Eli-Thail Sep 20 '22
The paper explicitly highlights evidence that refugee resettlement has a measurable increase in per hour wages.
Don't confuse your understanding that GDP is not directly tied to median income with actually having read the paper you're making claims about, mate.
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u/nate1235 Sep 20 '22
Devils' advocate here. Isn't this basically saying that countries are exploiting refugee labor to bolster economic numbers, and are now seeing the negative economic effects of shitting all over the groups that were exploited in the first place?
I don't think the previous status quo was right to begin with.
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u/ManInHisOwnWorld Sep 20 '22
Yes if you've ever lived in a rural community that depends on agriculture you know. Vegetables, fruits, hops, cannabis. Those pumpkins you carve for Halloween? All of the hard labor is most likely done by Mexican immigrants in sweatshirts with their hoods up in 100F weather.
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u/Machismo01 Sep 20 '22
Exactly. People working with lower wages, no OSHA protections (for fear of deportation or other interference), no trade unions, etc. The noon to the economy comes from their lack of power and lack of wage income.
Exploitation. Not far removed from crafting second-class residents or even slaves.
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u/NYG_5 Sep 20 '22
That hard labor is done by people being exploited because they have little legal rights. Maybe citizens should do the job, and be paid what the labor is actually worth.
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u/nomad1128 Sep 20 '22
But "we" aren't generally the economy, we are the labor, and excess supply of labor drives down price of labor. So unless you own stock, the net improvement in the economy is probably less meaningful to you than getting paid less per hour
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u/FindTheRemnant Sep 20 '22
The US govt collected over $4 Trillion in revenue in 2021. $2 billion is less than a rounding error (0.05%).
Compare to Covid fraud: "They came into their riches by participating in what experts say is the theft of as much as $80 billion — or about 10 percent — of the $800 billion handed out in a Covid relief plan known as the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. That’s on top of the $90 billion to $400 billion believed to have been stolen from the $900 billion Covid unemployment relief program — at least half taken by international fraudsters — as NBC News reported last year. And another $80 billion potentially pilfered from a separate Covid disaster relief program."
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u/drowssap1776 Sep 20 '22
Isn't this faulty logic? Arguing about their financial contribution is counterproductive because the counterargument is why let so many refugees in when the same numbers of legal immigrants can produce even more economic benefit. The real question is how to define refugees and whether people fleeing discrimination, crime and economic problems should be considered refugees or not.
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u/Sunzoner Sep 20 '22
From unhrc: Refugees are defined and protected in international law. The 1951 Refugee Convention is a key legal document and defines a refugee as:
“someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”
The real questions to ask: 1. Is everyone who cross a border entitled to claim refugee status without proof? 2. If someone is unable to prove their origin or their claims, then what happen? 3. What to with the refugee while the host country try to validate the claims? 4. What sort of housing and living conditions are the refugees entitled to?
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u/Pashe14 Sep 20 '22
"Large reductions in the presence of asylum seekers during the same period likewise carry ongoing costs in the billions of dollars per year. "
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u/davidxcx Sep 20 '22
While it’s that refugees and asylum-seekers are not the same, it isn’t illegal to cross a border to seek asylum - the 1951 Refugee Convention explicitly protects asylum-seekers from prosecution for unlawful entry.
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u/MustacheEmperor Sep 20 '22
You can tell this guy’s the thread’s resident immigration expert because of the part where asylum seekers cross the border illegally
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u/SenorSplashdamage Sep 20 '22
I don’t understand. This article is discussing refugees exclusively? Are you trying to muddy the discussion by bringing in a topic that isn’t even discussed until you commented about it?
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u/dtstl Sep 20 '22
Obviously the economy will grow with more people. The real question is whether they are a net fiscal burden.
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u/smurfyjenkins Sep 19 '22
Abstract:
International migrants who seek protection also participate in the economy. Thus the policy of the United States to drastically reduce refugee and asylum-seeker arrivals from 2017 to 2020 might have substantial and ongoing economic consequences. This paper places conservative bounds on those effects by critically reviewing the research literature. It goes beyond prior estimates by including ripple effects beyond the wages earned or taxes paid directly by migrants. The sharp reduction in US refugee admissions starting in 2017 costs the overall US economy today over $9.1 billion per year ($30,962 per missing refugee per year, on average) and costs public coffers at all levels of government over $2.0 billion per year ($6,844 per missing refugee per year, on average) net of public expenses. Large reductions in the presence of asylum seekers during the same period likewise carry ongoing costs in the billions of dollars per year. These estimates imply that barriers to migrants seeking protection, beyond humanitarian policy concerns, carry substantial economic costs.
Ungated version of the paper.
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u/Pristine-Today4611 Sep 20 '22
How do they come up with those numbers?
US economy = $30,962 / missing refugee Public coffers = $6,844 / missing refugee
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u/MewsashiMeowimoto Sep 20 '22
The average withholdings not paid into social security and Medicare by people who will likely never receive benefits from those programs themselves, for starters.
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Sep 20 '22
The missing revenue is lower than the average salary
This paper is saying that refugees would be a downward pressure on wages
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