America should think before it slams its door on immigration

The benefits of it are subtle but compelling enough to keep it going

- CLIVE CROOK

The economics of immigration has a lot in common with the economics of trade.

Lower barriers to imports raise growth and living standards in the aggregate, but may harm particular people and places. Lower barriers to immigration do the same. Politicians struggle to understand this trade-off, let alone manage it wisely. Of the two, the case for more immigrants might be harder to grasp—because the aggregate gains are more subtle.

Until recently, the case for liberal commerce was mostly taken for granted. As Americans are now discovering, high tariffs make many of the things they want to buy more expensive. That will depress consumers’ real incomes and make almost everybody worse off. The gains from trade are widely shared and, given time, obvious. The gains from immigration, by contrast, go disproportionately to immigrants themselves. Natives might see that as no reason to welcome them , especially if it also means higher taxes, fewer jobs and lower wages for those who were there first.

There’s no denying that immigration is good for migrants. Yet, trade-offs notwithstanding, it’s a fallacy to think their gains impose a net cost on everybody else. Overall, the hosts gain too, and not just a little. Squeezing immigration will probably harm the US even more than taxing imports.