New Study Seconds Cato Finding: Immigration Reform Good for Economy
The Center for American Progress and the Immigration Policy Center released a new study this morning that finds comprehensive immigration reform would boost the U.S. economy by $189 billion a year by 2019. The bottom-line results of the study are remarkably similar to those of a Cato study released last August.
Titled “Raising the Floor for American Workers: the Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” the CAP study was authored by Dr. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda of the University of California, Los Angeles.
It finds that legalizing low-skilled immigration would boost U.S. gross domestic product by 0.84 percent by raising the productivity of immigrant workers and expanding activity throughout the economy.
Using a different general-equilibrium model of the U.S. economy, the earlier Cato study (“Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform,” by Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer) found that a robust temporary worker program would boost the incomes of U.S. households by $180 billion a year by 2019.
Both studies also concluded that tighter restrictions and reduced low-skilled immigration would impose large costs on native-born Americans by shrinking the overall economy and lowering worker productivity.
I’m partial to the Cato study. Its methodology is more comprehensive and more fully explained, but it is worth noting that very different think tanks employing two different models have come to the same result: Legalization of immigration will expand the U.S. economy and incomes, while an “enforcement only” policy of further restrictions will only depress economic activity.
If Congress and President Obama want to create better jobs and stimulate the economy, comprehensive immigration reform should be high on the agenda.
California Grubbing
Kids often have a tremendous sense of entitlement. Well, there are a lot of kids in California colleges — and running them.
You probably have heard about the University of California Regents voting yesterday for a 32-percent tuition hike over the next two years. Not surprisingly, many students are angry, some enough that they were arrested protesting outside the Regents’ meeting.
Now, a 32 percent hike over two years isn’t small. But here’s the thing: California has typically charged students very little relative to both state taxpayer funding and national averages. As you can see in the chart below, which uses data from the State Higher Education Executive Officers, net per-pupil tuition revenue (meaning revenue from tuition minus any state financial aid) in California has hovered around $1,200 over the last 25 years, and has only gone up about $18 per year. Meanwhile, state taxpayers have been shelling out around $7,300 per pupil per year. So state taxpayers have been furnishing the vast majority of funding for California college students, and students have done very little to make up the vast gulf between what they pay and what taxpayers shell out.
Cato on Facebook
Cato on Twitter
Cato on YouTube
Cato Tweets