Kathryn Anne Edwards

You know, this is kind of like losing jobs because of the minimum wage.

It's not that the pressure isn't there, it just hasn't shown up in a large degree in the data.

Because if immigrants are growing the economy, they can have a downward pressure on wages, but not actually reduce wages.

And so there's lots of case studies of high levels of immigration where people look, so what happened to low-wage workers in that locality?

Did the rush of immigrants hurt their wages?

Probably one of the most famous examples is the Mariel Boatlift.

which sent a very large number of immigrants to Miami.

And so what happened to the wage distribution in Miami?

Well, the economy grew enough from those new immigrants that the wages of even low-wage workers still grew.

But even the most ardent anti-immigrant economists would say they grow the economy.

They would just say it's not worth it for the effect on wages.

People like me would say the wage effect is probably there but small, and that's why we don't see it.

Me as a human would say, we talk about immigrants, even in this framework, that they're not like us.

Should we let them in?

Should we not let them in?

We are still approaching it as they are different from us on some fundamental level.

And I think that that is a function of our broken immigration system that we tend to knock them down a peg.

You know, at the end of the day, these were people that showed up at the border desperate, saying that they were in danger if they stayed at home.

What is the answer to that question?

That is something America has not decided.