Harvard Economist: Immigration Costs US Workers $500 Billion A Year

Immigration effectively redistributes half a trillion dollars from U.S. workers to the businesses that hire immigrants each year, Harvard economist and immigration and wages expert George Borjas testified before Congress Wednesday.

Based on a supply and demand model, Borjas found an increased supply of immigrants competing in the U.S. job market does produce a net gain for current U.S. workers of about $50 billion a year. But that small gain in the context of an $18 trillion economy is far outweighed by a transfer of wealth from U.S. workers to the businesses that hire those immigrants that amounts to $500 billion dollars.

“What immigration really does is not so much increase the pie, as redistribute the wealth,” Borjas testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest. “So what I’ve learned from all this is that immigration happens to come out to be just another government redistribution program.”

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