A 2017 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine showed that first-generation immigrants are more costly to governments than are the native-born but second generation are among the strongest fiscal and economic contributors in the U.S.
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/23550/the-economic…
A new book, “Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success,” by two economists, Ran Abramitzky of Stanford and Leah Boustan of Princeton, links census records to pull together what they call “the first set of truly big data about immigration.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/11/opinion/immig…
**Why So Many Children of Immigrants Rise to the Top**
**By Peter Coy, The New York Times, 7/11/22**
**...**
**Immigrants [past and present] tended to settle in parts of the country experiencing strong job growth. That gave them an edge over native-born Americans who were firmly rooted in places with faltering economies. Immigrants are good at doing something difficult: leaving behind relatives, friends and the familiarity of home in search of prosperity. The economists found that native-born Americans who do what immigrants do — move toward opportunity — have children who are just as upwardly mobile as the children of immigrants. ...**
**If immigrants are so upwardly mobile, why doesn’t it seem that way? One reason is that there are more newcomers than there have been in decades and most haven’t had time yet to get ahead. The share of foreign-born people in the United States is back to the levels of the first two decades of the 20th century. ...**
**Less skilled immigrants gravitate toward jobs for which there is relatively little competition from native-born Americans, such as picking crops, while highly skilled immigrants often create more jobs for native-born Americans by starting businesses and inventing things....** [end quote]
This table shows the financial status of mid-30s 2nd-generation immigrants whose parents were poor compared with native-born whose parents were poor.
2nd gen immigrant Native-born parents
Poor 21% 29%
Lower Middle class 22% 28%
Middle Class 22% 21%
Upper Middle Class 20% 14%
Upper Class 15% 9%
The data show that immigrants have always been a source of economic power for the U.S. With a dropping birth rate and growing proportion of older people in our population, the U.S. needs immigrants to bring labor and future productivity growth.
The long-term economic health of the U.S. depends upon keeping the U.S. an attractive place to immigrate to. “The Golden Country” (“Goldeneh Medina” in Yiddish) with freedom and opportunity. The second generation immigrants will take decades to make their impact felt, but it’s a worthwhile investment.
Wendy