A Dozen Facts about Immigration

This report updates and expands a 2010 publication on the same topic by the Hamilton Project -- a research arm of the Brookings Institution. The Project believes in putting forward  “innovative proposals from leading economic thinkers – based on credible evidence and experience, not ideology or doctrine…” The report groups its “dozen facts” into three broad categories:  first, how immigration has changed over time; second, the education, occupations, and employment of U.S. immigrants; and finally, the effects of immigrants on the U.S. economy. One key fact in the first category is that the rising foreign-born share of the U.S. population is driven both by immigration and by falling fertility rates of native-born individuals. A key fact in the second category is that immigrants are much more likely than others to work in construction or service occupations, but that the children of immigrants have a similar occupational distribution as the children of natives. And a key fact in the last category is that economic output in the economy seems to be higher and grows faster with more immigrants. (American Immigration Policy Portal)

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