Over at Marginal Revolution there’s an “Open Letter on Immigration” (found via Freakonomics) that I found pretty interesting.  The part that really caught my attention was this:

Immigrants
do not take American jobs. The American economy can create as many jobs
as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain
free, flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis.

Immigration
in recent decades of low-skilled workers may have lowered the wages of
domestic low-skilled workers, but the effect is likely to be small,
with estimates of wage reductions for high-school dropouts ranging from
eight percent to as little as zero percent.

While a small
percentage of native-born Americans may be harmed by immigration,
vastly more Americans benefit from the contributions that immigrants
make to our economy, including lower consumer prices. As with trade in
goods and services, the gains from immigration outweigh the losses. The
effect of all immigration on low-skilled workers is very likely
positive as many immigrants bring skills, capital and entrepreneurship
to the American economy.

Reading this made me feel a little dumb.  I fell for the weak argument that immigrants take Americans’ jobs, and hand-in-glove, the counter argument that they take jobs that no Americans will do.  Well, when you think about it immigrants have to eat, they need shelter and they have to travel to the job.  In other words they are consumers and they definitely do create jobs just by being here.

Now I’m not getting into the politics of illegal immigration here, but I do think find it interesting that it is so easy to accept at face value so many of the arguments on both sides of the debate.  We all know this is a complex issue and it only gets worse if we don’t use our noggins and get all the pertinent information.  Making decisions based on bromides won’t help anyone.