The Economic Benefits from Immigration

George Borjas

No 4955, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Natives benefit from immigration mainly because of production complementarities between immigrant workers and other factors of production, and these benefits are larger when immigrants are sufficiently `different' from the stock of native productive inputs. The available evidence suggests that the economic benefits from immigration for the United States are small, on the order of $6 billion and almost certainly less than $20 billion annually. These gains, however, could be increased considerably if the United States pursued an immigration policy which attracted a more skilled immigrant flow.

JEL-codes: J6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1994-12
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (440)

Published as Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 9, no. 2, (Spring 1995), pp. 3-22.

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Journal Article: The Economic Benefits from Immigration (1995)
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