Views from the nation’s press

The New York Daily News on how immigrants power the economy:

Simple question: Are you happy that inflation has stabilized? The economic indicators don’t and can’t capture everyone’s circumstances, but real wages have gone up and costs have held steady. We’re ... better situated than the recession that many economists had predicted would be engulfing the nation by now. The soft landing that had seemed like a significant reach has come to pass . ...

To some extent, we can thank the Federal Reserve’s needle-threading on rate hikes and the pro-labor and pro-industrial policy stances of the Biden administration. But what really stuck the landing is what’s been America’s economic secret sauce for two centuries: immigration.

Recent economic analyses by the Economic Policy Institute, the Congressional Research Service and others shows that the labor force has grown enormously in large part on the back of rebounding immigration, which had fallen during the pandemic. This helped plug labor force problems that were in large part leading to inflation, as well as kept consumer demand high and money flowing around the economy.

Here we can hear critics jumping in to roll out the persistent myth that these foreignborn workers are “taking” jobs from the native born; that would pack some more punch if unemployment weren’t at historic lows across the board, or wages rising especially for lower-income populations, immigrant and native born alike.

To the extent that there are negative economic circumstances, such as rising child poverty rates following the expiration of pandemic-era child care and other assistance programs, these are areas where immigration can be a significant boon.

Birthrates have dropped below replacement levels in the United States, and a big chunk of the child care, nursing and general health care workforce now is drawing from immigrants, who will ensure against the demographic crash.

Unfortunately, you won’t hear much about this from political leaders, from Joe Biden to Donald Trump, who are competing for who can appear tougher on immigrants rather than touting the substantial benefits of continuing to be a global destination for talent and culture . ...

We should focus on cutting down on the waste happening in migrant services contracts and continuing to push the Biden administration to assist ... migrants itself instead of foisting it all on municipalities and states.