Immigration isn’t exactly a new occurrence in the United States. Still, despite a rich history of welcoming strangers into the country, it seems that the voices of critics calling for stricter immigration policy only get louder and fears over the negative economic impact immigrants might have continue to grow. It’s worth asking, in a country where nearly everyone’s ancestral line includes an immigration story, how things got that way.
A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research compares immigrant pools in the past to the present to determine what has changed about the groups of people destined for a new life in the U.S., and what happens once they arrive.
The study’s authors, Ran Abramitzky of Stanford University and Leah Platt Boustan of UCLA, focus on two specific waves of immigrants: Those who arrived in the U.S. between 1850 and 1920, and those who have arrived in the past few decades. First, they found significant differences in country of origin: The historical group is primarily composed of Europeans while current immigrants are much more likely to hail from Asia and Latin America. That difference is important for many reasons.
Countries in western Europe shared similar developmental trajectories and backgrounds as the United States. Even though some countries were poorer, their economies often had familiar structures and labor markets included similar industries and jobs. That familiarity could help make assimilation somewhat easier for immigrants around the turn of the 20th century, especially when it came to finding and starting jobs.
Workers from western Europe could come to the U.S. and find jobs that were about on par with the average American, like factory work. Because they had similar jobs and skill levels, immigrants made similar wages to their American counterparts. Within a single generation, immigrants could be caught up economically to the native born population.
But that fast, sure path to the American dream doesn’t exist for many of today’s immigrants. In the current economy, the skill level of the average American worker has shifted and lower-skilled trades, like those found in manufacturing, have declined. That means that workers who immigrate in recent decades with low-skill levels face a much more significant economic gap than immigrants a century ago. Today, low-skilled immigrants earn less and that means it takes them, and their children, much longer to catch up.