Trump can't achieve his economic goals without more immigrants

Washington Post

6 days ago

Stephen Moore is a co-founder of the nonprofit Unleash Prosperity and was a senior economic adviser to the 2020 Trump campaign. Richard Vedder is an economics professor emeritus at Ohio University and a senior fellow at Unleash Prosperity.
Most Americans would agree that immigrants have made a positive contribution to the U.S. economy throughout our nation's history.
But legal immigration might be more vital to our economy today than ever before. That is the result of an unavoidable demographic reality: Like that of every other industrialized nation, our population is aging quickly. Roughly 10,000 baby boomers are retiring every day, but nowhere near that number of native-born Americans are entering the workforce.
This raises a challenge to the Trump administration's goal of achieving and maintaining 3 percent economic growth, increasing wages and lowering federal budget deficits. To achieve that level of growth, we will need two things: an increasing labor force and higher productivity on the part of working Americans. Artificial intelligence and robotics will provide a profound boost to productivity — just as farm tractors, computers and the internet propelled growth. But we will still need smart and willing workers because our country's declining birth rates deplete the pool of available domestic labor.
Our group, Unleash Prosperity, examined the economic and demographic effects of immigrants on American society, using the latest census data. We found that the U.S. economy is already super dependent on immigrants. Over the past decade, just under half of all new civilian workers, almost 6 million, have been immigrants. The majority of them entered the country legally.
Here is an even more jaw-dropping statistic on the need for expanded visas: Because of our inverted population pyramid, immigrants will contribute virtually all of the net increase in the American workforce over the next two decades. Without continued immigration, the U.S. workforce would start shrinking.
One underappreciated advantage of immigrants is that a disproportionate number come to this country at the start of their working years. They are twice as likely to be in the prime working ages of 18 to 64 than native-born Americans. Only a small percentage of immigrants arrive in the United States during their retirement years. We are mostly importing instant workers. This is why immigrants are a valuable demographic safety valve.
Many Trump voters worry that immigrants might take jobs from U.S.-born blue-collar workers, and there is no doubt that in some occupations there is a crowding-out effect.
But economy-wide, there is no evidence that natives lose jobs because of immigrants. There are nearly 8 million job openings in the U.S. today, and that number might increase in the years ahead as retirements accelerate.
Our study also found that today's immigrants — and their children — are prodigious creators of jobs and businesses. Most of these businesses are small, with a handful of employees, often family members.
But some are astonishingly successful, hiring thousands of American workers. We calculated that just under half of the Fortune 500 companies in the United States were started by an immigrant or the child of an immigrant.
Of the 'Magnificent Seven' U.S. firms — which together are worth more than all of the companies in Europe — three are led by immigrants. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, was born in South Africa. Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, is from Taiwan. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, is from India.
One prominent example of the United States importing the best and brightest is found in sports. The last seven MVP awards in the National Basketball Association — the award for being the best player in the world — have gone to foreign-born athletes, including Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), Nikola Jokic (Serbia), Joel Embiid(Cameroon) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada).
Most immigrants won't be superstar athletes or shooting rockets off to Mars. But most will contribute and help ensure that the United States retains its global supremacy in the decades ahead.
If we are smart enough to let them come.