Two Excellent Essays About Immigration
The first is by David Nicklaus. He responds to the argument that immigrants take Americans’ jobs with this reasoning:
In an area where the overall population is declining or stagnant, this argument loses its potency. Without an adequate supply of labor, employers would be under pressure to move out of the region. Or, in many cases, the jobs wouldn’t get created in the first place.
Nicklaus concludes that immigrants to the Midwest are doing low-skilled work that wouldn’t get done otherwise because midwesterners are leaving the area.
Nicklaus’ points are relevant to Missouri, but immigration in general isn’t just about low-skilled labor. Will Wilkinson discusses immigration’s role in Toronto’s economic and cultural development:
Multicultural Toronto and cities like it prove that the institutions of liberal modernity are robust. Life within them is so good that people the world over flock to them. And newcomers do not take these institutions for granted. They have a stake in seeing them last. They can and do make them stronger.
Restricting immigration is just like restricting trade in food, electronics, or any other commodity. In fact, it can actually be worse than some of those forms of protectionism, because people are an extremely valuable resource.
