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Mark Negus

Ms. Bice

English 8H

17 Feb 2022

What is the Economic Impact of Immigrants on Their New US

Counties?

I. Intro

Immigration is among the most emotionally loaded and impactful debates in the US. In San

Diego, 24% of the population is made up of immigrants, with 1 million of them being illegal

(Wilkens, Morrissey, Cruz). Elections are won and lost on immigration policy, and the economic

ramifications they can have: enforcing regulations and removing workers. This report seeks to

show the extent of immigration’s economic impact with policy and economic statistics, on a

local level1. This issue is increasingly relevant in San Diego and across the country as

immigration has gone up 8.5 percent (Wilkens, Morrissey, Cruz) in San Diego and the

percentage of immigrants in the nation as a whole has risen to nearly 14% (Budiman).

II. Connections

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“Local” is will be defined later, or can be used in reference to the SDMA (San Diego Metropolitan Area)
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This topic has already been thoroughly researched from a national and state level, but there are

few detailed analyses of the local ramifications of immigration. Many sources claimed that

immigration had a negative effect at the state and sometimes local level, but a positive overall

effect for the nation. This was backed up with ideas like: immigrants are by and large a younger

demographic (meaning they work more), they have more kids, the kids use the state welfare

school funding more, but there was generally a lack of detailed reasoning for implying that

immigrants were harmful on a local level. The novel Into the Beautiful North had an accurate

portrayal of immigrant’s economic effect on the local level: the characters spent lots of money

through the towns they were visiting, the economic system at the border was a diverse market

because of the mixed cultures, and the immigrant workers they met along the way were usually

entrepreneurs/business owners.

III. Data Collection, Analysis, and Research

Research found using Grossmont College’s EbscoHost database and Google Scholar had mixed

results. To narrow the focus of the research, nation and statewide studies were excluded and the

latest a study could be used was 2015. Keywords/phrases searched were: “Economic impact of

immigration”, “What are the effects of immigration locally”, “How do immigrants impact native

workers”, ect. The keywords were always: “Local”, “native”, “policy”, and “economic impact”.

Almost every study that looked at immigration’s economic effect on the nation agreed that they

are beneficial, but there are numerous studies suggesting that immigrants hurt the economy from

a local standpoint. These studies, however, are only tangentially in disagreement with the

majority of conclusions from the research.

IV. Findings
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Over the course of this research, there was an abundance of empirical evidence that supported

the idea that immigrants helped local economies. “States that have experienced the fastest

employment growth have had the highest relative growth in foreign-born population” (Orenius

and Gullo 4). With employment growth specifically, for each immigrant introduced to a new

“local” economy, 1.2 new native jobs were created (local defined as a “METAREA”

“METAREA’s are metropolitan areas with boundaries drawn in such a way as to contain both

employment and residence for a typical worker in the city”) (Mclean and Hong 3). Additionally,

Mclean and Hong show that immigrants not only create more supply (as is a usual

pro-immigration point), but demand as well, and they diversify the market while increasing

mobility by virtue of sheerly more workers (Mclean and Hong 3,9). In “Can the Informal

Economy Be “Managed”?: Comparing Approaches and Effectiveness of Day-Labor

Management Policies in the San Diego Metropolitan Area”, Sean Crotty pushes this idea of

demand and diversity further: “Hiring sites exist in neighborhoods with statistically higher

demand for the services jornaleros provide, as such; they are an integral part of the local

economy. “ (Crotty 29). Furthermore, it’s relevant to note that the main proponents of

restrictionist ideals are not in line with their own logic economically, “... the centrality of

neoliberal capitalism in the USA… has fundamentally paved the way for the emergence of

market-based arguments in favor of immigrant rights.” (Gleeson 8).

Another critical finding was that the public is largely unknowledgeable about this subject, which

is especially relevant considering much of the policy confusion surrounding immigration and the

regulation of these workers. In “They Come Here To Work”, Cornell University Professor

Shanon Gleeson’s research (essentially, she sorted through hundreds of prominent organizations,
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articles, blogs, etc by hand and using the Atlas.ti program to find keywords surrounding

immigration) found that by far, the main reasons for restrictionist sentiments were not based in

true economic concern, but rather, framed by stereotypes. For instance, there is plenty of

misconception around the education level and work of immigrants. While it is true that about

half have a high school diploma or less, roughly the other half have a bachelor’s or higher, with

30% of immigrants having a doctorate degree (Orenius and Gullo 4). Additionally, the bottom

half of these workers are the foundation for the service industry and fill many of the jobs that

natives aren’t willing to do, while the educated portion of immigrants are nearly 1.8 times more

likely to work in STEM (Orenius and Gullo 4). Even at a local level, this irrational framing can

be devastating. “However, at the local level, residents’ embodied reactions to jornaleros as a

result of anti-immigrant discourse can threaten economic growth. At the time of the conflict in

Carlsbad, the city was in the midst of a transformation from mostly-agricultural landscape to

mostly single-family residences. In that context, the public perception that the area was

dangerous due to day-labor was a threat to the city’s reputation and perceived quality of life, both

of which could negatively affect land value and future economic development” (Crotty 21).

Even some relevant qualms that restrictionists have, such as the welfare dilemma that have been

used for decades are now becoming irrelevant, “Earnings (and tax revenues) tend to be low for

the initial generation of immigrants, contributing toward fiscal deficits. The initial generation

also tends to push up government expenditures on services, particularly schooling for children.

However, the picture improves for the children of immigrants and subsequent generations” (Pozo

2).
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Lastly, even hypothetically, if restrictionist policies were the best moral or economically

cognizant course of action, they are simply too costly to try to enforce. In the case of regulating

day labor in San Diego, the cost of one police officer enforcing laws at day labor sites is $10,000

per week. Additionally, the city would likely need 3 officers (Crotty 926), hundreds of thousands

of dollars in legal fees, and lastly, the day laborers are essentially free compared to the

taxpayer-funded work centers that would take on these new workers. Additionally, if detention

efforts were focused on sheerly nonviolent offenders, it would save another $1.6 billion annually

nationwide, which of course would save an enormous amount sate and citywide, even if only

partially implemented (Gleeson 19). Besides this “fiscal folly” that Gleeson describes, the

“costly militarization of the border” is more contributing weight to the unnecessary and

counterproductive border/immigration policy that is enforced.

V. Conclusions

After evaluating recent research on this topic, it is suggested that immigrants have a positive

outcome on local economies. While the schooling system for instance might be slightly

burdened, many of the other traditional arguments against more progressive immigration reform

are now going out of date, and there is a mountain of empirical evidence that illustrates their

productivity in the workforce. Immigrants help create jobs locally, increase mobility, are usually

young (meaning working age, and adding for children to our aging population), diversify and

create demand in local economies, are filling the gaps in the service industry, become

increasingly educated, and are often more likely to be entrepreneurs. With this being established,

the next questions would be relating to how we can support these new workers, helping them to

receive education, work permits, and insuring their working rights and conditions are humane.
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Perhaps the most important next step, however, is first helping to spread the latest information on

immigration to the public. Educating the public on the lack of rights, and the amount of shared

prosperity there has already been economically and could be if we changed policies.
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Works Cited

Budiman, Abby. “Key Findings about U.S. Immigrants.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research

Center, 20 Aug. 2020,

www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/20/key-findings-about-u-s-immigrants/.

Crotty, Sean M. “Can the Informal Economy Be ‘Managed’?: Comparing Approaches and

Effectiveness of Day-Labor Management Policies in the San Diego Metropolitan Area.”

Growth and Change, vol. 48, no. 4, Dec. 2016, pp. 909–41,

https://doi.org/10.1111/grow.12180. This paper analyzes the ramifications of regulating

and shutting down day laborers (75% are immigrants) known as “jornaleros”. The author

states that day laborers are low-cost labor that “support the neoliberal economy”, and that

“Efforts to remove day-labor activity through the annihilation of space—either through

new legislation or direct policing efforts—are expensive and ineffective in the

long-term.” The author additionally states that removing and overregulating these day

laborers can be detrimental to the local economy, as illustrated in Carlsbad- where day

laborers grew a bad public perception/were forced out and the city became unpopulated

and agricultural.

Sean Crotty is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Texas Christian University, who

received 6 citations on this paper, as well as 18 on another paper concerning day labor in

San Diego. Crotty comes to his conclusions by simple chains of reasoning that

incorporate the neoliberal economic logic ideals, with the progressive policy lens that

could support that.

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This source supports my other findings (that an increasingly significant percentage of

immigrants are getting bachelors and higher degrees) by showing that even the less

educated immigrants in San Diego are helping the economy, creating supply and demand,

and that attempts to remove and overregulate/outlaw them are far too expensive and

damaging..

Hong, Gihoon, and John Mclaren. NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES ARE IMMIGRANTS a

SHOT in the ARM for the LOCAL ECONOMY? 2015,

www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w21123/w21123.pdf. While most studies on

the economic impact of immigration focus on the fact that immigrants help increase

supply, this paper/model also highlights the effect of demand and notes that immigrants

create a more diverse market. Additionally, immigrants are found to help native workers

by increasing mobility, real wages, and demand. The authors of this study found that each

immigrant creates 1.2 more local jobs. Next, the authors outline the “devastating” effects

of when immigrant workers leave or are deported.

This source was cited by 66 on google scholar, found easily on a number of college

workshops including one for Princeton University, and cited in an article by the Atlantic.

Additionally, the authors cited three US censuses for the demographical data used in the

model, and defined their use of the term “non-tradable” with regards to the central fact of

the study: “...Find that each immigrant on average generates 1.2 local jobs for local

workers, most of them going to native-born workers, and 62% of them in the

non-tradables sector”.
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This source is essential to my research because it empirically outlines the clear benefits of

having immigrant workers in a local economy and provides logical/model reasoning for

this. The article also indirectly helps another likely conclusion of mine (as outlined in

page 5): that immigration policy is hurting immigrants help themselves/native workers..

“They Come Here to Work.” Cornell.edu, 2015,

ecommons.cornell.edu/bitstream/handle/1813/74807/Gleeson4_They_come_here_to_wor

k.pdf?sequence=1. This paper directly addresses the idea that immigrants should be

deported/regulated in certain ways for economic reasons. It not only defends the

idea/evidence that immigrants help local economies, but pushes the idea that our attempts

of regulation regarding immigration and visa work laws are “fiscal folly” and harm our

economy. The study is targeted at a diverse group of prime and unlikely immigration

areas: CA, FLA, IL, NY, TX, and DC. Gleeson also asserts and backs up the claim that

the majority of opposition to immigrants is based in “framing” that is irrelevant and not

true economically.

Shannon Gleeson is a professor at Cornell University and this article has 33 citations on

Google Scholar. Gleeson thoroughly outlined her methods for finding the evidence

regarding the “framing” that she asserts is unjustly hindering and affecting policy

surrounding immigrants. She found 153 organizations/sources which she narrowed down

to 36 for the purposes of this study, searching through these hundreds of sources and

reading by finding keywords and using a program called Atlas.ti. Of those 36 sources,

she compiled the various reasoning for anti-immigration policies/sentiments and found
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that the majority were not economically motivated reasons, and the ones that were she

evaluates.

This source helps illustrate that there is not even stable ground for arguments that suggest

immigrants hurt the economy. Gleeson also pushes for an amoralistic argument that can

appeal to those who traditionally advocate against immigrant rights: a neoliberal citizen

approach, where immigrants are granted K-12 education. Additionally, Gleeson’s point

contributes to a likely conclusion of mine: that not only the idea of regulating immigrants

from crossing/working is incorrect, but the attempt in doing so is costly..

Twitter, et al. “In the Midst of Bitter National Debate, San Diego Immigrants Share Their

Stories.” San Diego Union-Tribune, 16 Sept. 2018,

www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/immigration/sd-me-immigration-snapshot-201809

16-story.html.