More Immigrants, More Pie

Reihan Salam wants wage subsidies for low-skill workers. Mark Krikorian has a “better” idea: fewer Mexicans:

There are many reasons for the stagnant or declining prospects of poor workers, immigration being only one of them. But it’s simply absurd to talk about wage subsidies or minimum-wage increases or any similar government initiative to improve opportunity for the working poor until we stop subverting their job prospects through another discretionary government initiative.

This is silly. Immigrants are overall beneficial to the American economy, meaning that if you combine immigration with measures to directly boost the welfare of low-skill workers, then all Americans wind up better off. And, of course, the immigrants are also better off. Declaring that there should be an absolute priority on reducing immigration as an exclusive means of helping working class Americans is senselessly zero-sum. Indeed, even within the real of immigration-related policy changes the much smarter thing to do would be to increase the number of high-skill immigrants who we let into the country.

Conservatives are generally fond of talking about economic growth, but the anti-immigrant wing of the movement seems to totally lose sight of the concept when it comes to immigration.