Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman famously said, “You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.” Smart guy, but wrong on this point. Michael Clemens, a leading immigration economist, estimates that completely opening borders would double the global GDP, adding literally trillions of dollars into the global economy. Clemens writes in a 2011 peer reviewed article that estimates in how much money is lost due to immigration barriers “should make economists’ jaws hit their desks.” Clemens surveyed a host of studies that look at efficiency gains from eliminating
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Modern economics has a problem. It looks only at numbers and graphs and COMPLETELY ignores the human element. By looking only at numbers, Michael Clemens' argument seems to make sense. Immigrants come in and buy things and produce things so the economy expands. Immigrants don't take away jobs from people who are already in the country so what is there to be worried about? But the problem is that modern economics does not know how to deal with things it cannot see.
I have worked in places where people are fired and replaced by either illegal immigrants or recent immigrants. The pay of the new hires are considerably greater. Those people who would have been hired at the previous rates will probably settle for jobs paying lower. An economist reporting on the salary trends will say somehing like 'There is a wage stagnation'. But it will never occur to him (because there is no way to measure it) that one of the reasons for the stagnation in wages is because employers have figured out how to replace one group of persons with another group of persons at a lower age for the same work.
A person living here is accustomed to a particular quality of life. A recent immigrant from a poor country or an illegal immigrant is not. Who benefits? The employer and the immigrants? Who loses? The non-immigrant. Will the GDP reflect this? Nope. The GDP will show an aggregate increase, but not the particular exploitations.
Those who doubt this should ask the myriad immigrants in San Francisco doing tech work. The valuations of the companies are increasing along with GDP. But the workers are increasingly unable to live on what they are paid. This is not necessarily an argument against immigration, but just to show that the gains of immigration are not widespread. You can only find it in aggregate measures.
