U.S. Chamber of Commerce Immigration Myths and Facts

A new report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

Employment is not a “zero-sum” game. The U.S. economy does not contain some fixed number of jobs for which immigrants and native-born workers compete. For instance, if the approximately 8 million unauthorized immigrants currently working in the United States were removed from the country, there would not be 8 million job openings for unemployed Americans. Why? Because native-born workers and immigrant workers possess different skills and can not simply be swapped for one another like batteries. And because removing 8 million undocumented workers from the economy also means removing 8 million consumers—and the jobs they support through their spending. If the undocumented population were to vanish, the U.S. economy would contract and the total number of jobs would decrease. Read more…

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