Immigration works in complex ways

On Aug. 2, the president embraced a dramatic shift in legal immigration, endorsing legislation that seeks to reduce the annual level by half during the next decade, largely by narrowing the opportunity for American citizens and legal residents to bring family members into the country.

The president argues that reducing legal immigration from its current 1 million entering each year is necessary because low-skilled immigrants leave many lower-income Americans with fewer opportunities to find jobs.

That seems to make sense: Shrink the labor pool, and those remaining will do better.

Then, there’s what the country has learned from its actual experience with immigration. For instance, economists note that most of the European immigrants to this country during the previous century were low-skilled, and they helped deliver unprecedented prosperity.

Akron and other cities across the aging industrial belt have benefited from an influx of refugees and immigrants. Newly arrived Latinos famously revitalized a sagging Chicago. ... The country’s experience teaches that immigration works in complex ways, the economy and quality of life advanced by higher-skilled and lower-skilled immigrants. If immigrants do take some jobs from American workers, they help to generate far more.

Read the full editorial from the Akron Beacon Journal at bit.ly/2wBlSGy