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37 Cato J. 461 (2017)
How Immigration Affects Workers: Two Wrong Models and a Right One

handle is hein.journals/catoj37 and id is 502 raw text is: How IMMIGRATION AFFECTS WORKERS: Two WRONG MODELS AND A RIGHT ONE Ethan Lewis Immigration has been in the news a lot recently, along with many strong claims about how it harms workers. This article reviews what research by economists says about how immigration affects workers. This requires first getting past common misconceptions that pervade press accounts and public policy debates about immigration, some of which even claim to come from economics. Unfortunately, these misconceptions usually lead to exactly the wrong policy conclusions about immigration-policies that tend to make the United States worse off. This is why it is important have the right economic model of immigration. This article first covers two common wrong mod- els of immigration, before explaining the right model. The right model is confirmed by a large body of empirical evidence, which will be described here as well. A frequent starting point for concern about immigration in public discussion is the large number of immigrants in the United States. There are currently 42 million immigrants in the country, and they make up almost 17 percent of workers, a historic high. This is often compared to another large number-the number of unemployed. It is not hard to find policy briefs and news articles with titles like All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went to Immigrants (Zeigler and Cato journal, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Fall 2017). Copyright @ Cato Institute. All rights reserved. Ethan Lewis is an Associate Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. A technical appendix, which provides details of the mathematical theory underlying the claims made in this article, is available at www.dartmouth.edu/-ethang /TechnicalApprendix-v5.pdf. 461

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