Do immigrants drive down citizens' wages?:No

New York Daily News

Do immigrants drive down citizens' wages?: No 移民使公民的工资水准降低了吗？否

By DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH

Saturday, April 15th, 2006

Lou Dobbs can rant all he likes (Lou Dobbs尽可以夸夸其谈；随便Lou Dobbs怎样夸夸其谈). The truth is, immigration doesn't lower wages - and it may actually raise them.

Some economists, such as Prof. George Borjas of Harvard University, assert that the wages of native-born Americans are driven down by the lower wages employers can pay immigrants. But Borjas assumes that

immigrants are complete substitutes (替代者) for American workers and that investment in factories and machines - what we call "physical capital" - is fixed.

Both assumptions are wrong.

First, immigrants aren't substitutes for native-born workers. Immigrant labor is concentrated among the low-skilled, who have no high school diploma, and the high-skilled, who have doctorates in science,engineering and technology. And while there are many low-skilled immigrants among agricultural workers, tailors and gardeners, there are fewer among funeral service workers and correctional officers. High-skilled immigrants are more often found in science and dentistry than in law or veterinary (兽医的) practices. The upshot (结果): Immigrants don't compete with most Americans for wages.

Second, the availability of immigrants can result in new projects, which can create more jobs for native-born American workers. Consider a county that has to pay $15 per hour to clean and service a community pool. It might conclude that the pool is not worth building. But if immigrants could do the job for less (结合上文，for less = for less than $15 per hour), the pool might be built. And some of its builders would be native-born Americans. From hxw.red.

Or take (以…作例子) an entrepreneur (企业家) who owns a computer chip company that faces a shortage of engineers. Hiring bright immigrants could result in more production, more sales and more jobs for

all.

Research supports this reasoning. Profs. Gianmarco Ottaviano of the University of Bologna and Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis, have shown that over the past two decades, immigration

has resulted in a 2% boost in the wages of native-born American workers. Increases ranged from 0.2% for those without high school diplomas to 2.5% for college grads.

Whatever your politics, immigrants don't lower wages.

Furchtgott-Roth is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Employment Policy at the Hudson Institute. She was chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor from 2003 to 2005.