My research analyzes the impact of immigration on the unemployment rates in the destination countries. In particular, my empirical analysis is based on 396 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States for the 2005-2016 period.
Immigration has been an important topic throughout history, but it has become a very common discussion theme in the recent years due to the current Syrian refugee crisis and the 2016 US election. The displacement of native-born workers by immigrants is the most politically-influential fear about immigration in the US as well as in other countries. Thus, there has been a lot of controversy related to the immigration policies. People who are against immigrants usually argue that every immigrant added to the US …show more content…
Thus, they enter the labor force as unemployed. Holding all else equal, if the number of immigrants that add to unemployed is the only change, this will increase the unemployment rate in the short run. However, in the long-run this might not be the case. Even if we believe that immigrants might be taking some jobs that potentially could have been filled with natives, this is not the only effect immigrants have on labor markets, and in fact, Immigrants do actually create jobs. They spend their wages to buy goods and services produced by US businesses. These businesses respond to the increased demand for their goods and services by investing more in different production facilities. This on the other hand, creates new jobs in the US. In addition, some immigrants are self-employed and some start their own business, and according to previous research by Borjas, immigrants have a high propensity to start their own businesses. They are slightly more likely than the US-born to be employed by their own corporations. The explanation is that people who migrate to the US are entrepreneurial-minded seeking opportunities to start their own
Immigration has been an important topic throughout history, but it has become a very common discussion theme in the recent years due to the current Syrian refugee crisis and the 2016 US election. The displacement of native-born workers by immigrants is the most politically-influential fear about immigration in the US as well as in other countries. Thus, there has been a lot of controversy related to the immigration policies. People who are against immigrants usually argue that every immigrant added to the US …show more content…
Thus, they enter the labor force as unemployed. Holding all else equal, if the number of immigrants that add to unemployed is the only change, this will increase the unemployment rate in the short run. However, in the long-run this might not be the case. Even if we believe that immigrants might be taking some jobs that potentially could have been filled with natives, this is not the only effect immigrants have on labor markets, and in fact, Immigrants do actually create jobs. They spend their wages to buy goods and services produced by US businesses. These businesses respond to the increased demand for their goods and services by investing more in different production facilities. This on the other hand, creates new jobs in the US. In addition, some immigrants are self-employed and some start their own business, and according to previous research by Borjas, immigrants have a high propensity to start their own businesses. They are slightly more likely than the US-born to be employed by their own corporations. The explanation is that people who migrate to the US are entrepreneurial-minded seeking opportunities to start their own