How Immigration Shapes American Politics 33:10

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Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk. Today we're going to touch the third rail of American politics, or at least a third rail of American politics. On Thursday, Title 42 is going away, a pandemic-era rule allowing the U.S. government to turn away most asylum seekers at the border as a public health measure.

This comes at a time when apprehensions at the border are at record highs. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 2.3 million apprehensions in 2022, more than double the number in 2019. Officials believe crossings could grow by up to 60% in the coming months.

Americans already give President Biden some of his lowest ratings on his handling of immigration, with just a third approving, according to a recent Gallup poll. Also per Gallup, Americans say immigration is the third biggest problem facing the country behind the economy and poor leadership. And the number who say that the level of immigration in the U.S. should be decreased has doubled to 40% since Biden took office. Just 8% say that it should be increased.

This all amounts to a pretty skeptical public when it comes to how the U.S. is dealing with one of its most intractable political issues.

And so today, we're going to dig into the specifics of what Americans think about immigration and why, what impacts it has on the U.S. and our politics, and how we compare it to other countries. And here with me to do that is Ana Maria Maida, professor of economics at Georgetown University, whose research focuses on the political, social, and economic effects of immigration. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you very much, Galen. Why have we seen such elevated levels of migrants at the border? First of all, these numbers are driven by what is going on in the origin countries of migrants.

So they are for the most part push factors: difficult economic conditions, political persecution, the situation in Venezuela and also the COVID pandemic have increased the incentive of migrants to move. At the same time, it is also true that in the United States there is a lot of demand for migrant labor and this demand has attracted migrants.

This is all to say that deterrence at the US-Mexico border can only work so far because to a certain extent the numbers, the very high numbers of people who arrive to the border are driven by factors that are outside of control of US government policies and are also driven by economic drivers within the US labor market.

How does the surge that we're seeing today compare with what other advanced economies have dealt with? The situation at the US-Mexico border reminds me of the situation in Italy, which is where I'm from. So to a certain extent, these dynamics are global. And actually this year, just a couple of weeks ago,

World Development Report of the World Bank has come out on the topic of migration. And this report makes the point that we are undergoing at the global level a number of changes from a demographic point of view. Advanced countries are experiencing a decrease in population growth. They are also characterized by population aging, by decreases in fertility rates.

And actually this is true not only of advanced countries, also more and more of middle-income countries, for example Mexico. And this labor market dynamics can in part be addressed through migration, especially from very poor countries.

So a lot of countries in the world receive these large numbers of migrants who come from countries where population growth is still very high. And again, there is a need in advanced economies for this labor.

And so we can look at the experience in both the United States and in other receiving countries, like you mentioned, to learn something about the politics of all of this, perhaps. You know, how do events like the one that we're experiencing in the United States right now, or, for example, the migrants arriving in southern Italy, affect public perception of immigration?

So this is of course a complex question and the reason is that, differently from other economic changes, migration has an impact not only on markets of goods and services, but when you talk about migrants you're talking about people. So when people arrive they have the potential to affect many different spheres of the destination country, not only the economy but also the society, the culture.

And people think about all of these issues. So let me divide up the drivers of migration attitudes into two broad categories: economic and non-economic drivers. Among the economic drivers, it seems like people are concerned about impacts on the labour market. But even more than that, people worry about fiscal issues.

So there is the concern that when especially low-skilled individuals arrive, they might have a negative impact from a fiscal point of view. They might lead to increases in tax rates or decreases in the per capita amount of public services that are provided.

Essentially because citizens believe that the government will spend money taking care of newly arrived immigrants, for example. This is one channel. The other channel is that when poorer people arrive to a location, the average income of the location goes down.

Hence the tax base goes down. And if there is not a corresponding increase in tax rates, then the per capita tax revenues will go down and when there is less money to spend, there is less provision of public goods in per capita terms.

So that's actually something that I've been working on in the United States. And we find evidence that that is the case. But let me be clear, this is the type of effect that you would expect to take place not only with low-skilled migrants arriving, but also with low-skilled Americans, low-skilled Italians, low-skilled natives.

Every time a group of individuals who are poorer than individuals at destination arrive, they're going to decrease average income through compositional effects. And so they are likely to have this type of effect from a fiscal point of view.

Now, we also find that high-skill migrants have the opposite effect. So when high-skill migrants arrive to a county in the United States, they increase per capita tax revenues, they increase per capita public expenditures, and very importantly, what we find is that

all the immigrants who came to the United States between 1990 and 2010, both low-skilled and high-skilled, had on average an impact which is very close to zero at the fiscal level in terms of local governments. So basically what we find is that although low-skilled migrants had a negative impact, that negative impact was offset by the arrival of high-skilled migrants.

A lot of focus historically has been on the labor market effects. And that's part of the reason that historically labor unions have also opposed high levels of immigration.

what have we learned from all of the research that has gone into that? Because my understanding from what I've read is that there are negative effects for the people in the country who would compete with those immigrants for jobs. It's oftentimes other recent immigrants to the United States whose wages would decrease or folks who have less than a high school degree who are part of the native-born population. But that...

middle class Americans and up would benefit. And so in a way, there are winners and losers amongst the American public. You're right. So your understanding of the liberal market literature is correct.

On average, the effects are close to zero. There are some groups of workers who have been found to be negatively affected, for the most part migrants who came before, earlier to the United States, but also high school dropouts. But consider that, for example, in 2022, high school dropouts were only 9% of the US population. And this number is likely to go down over time.

because the American population is becoming more and more educated. So I'm not saying that we shouldn't care about these people, but what I'm saying is that it's a very small slice of the US population and other type of policies, other than migration policy, can be carried out to compensate these workers for the potential negative effects through the labor market channel.

When I talk about in the labor market, I'm thinking about the workers. So I'm thinking about wages and employment rates. But then of course there is the side of businesses and there is the profits and there is also innovation, there is entrepreneurship and through all those other channels there is a positive effect.

I should also mention that from a fiscal point of view, there is evidence that the fiscal effects at the federal government level are more positive.

And the reason is that, and this is related to what I was saying before, migrants tend to be younger, tend to come in their prime working age, they contribute to labor force growth, and they offset population aging, and so they can help reduce the increase in the old age population ratio, and they can help the feasibility of social security systems.

Is this something that Americans are thinking about when they assess their attitudes about immigration? This is the sort of actually putting pen to paper and figuring out what the impact is on an economic level. But is this what Americans are thinking about when they form their attitudes, like when I mentioned at the top,

that Americans are pretty skeptical about how we're dealing with immigration at the moment. Are they thinking like, oh, this is going to be expensive for local governments? And that may well be the case. I mean, New York and Chicago, for example, are saying that their local budgets are strained because of the influx of migrants.

Well, I actually think that these fiscal effects are quite important and there is research that backs up this point. So research based on public opinion data. But you're right that people also think a lot about non-economic issues. They worry that immigrants might increase crime rates.

By the way, the evidence shows that this is not true. We have a section actually in our paper where we find that the arrival of low-skilled migrants does not have an impact on crime rates. The arrival of high-skilled migrants decreases crime rates. People also worry about cultural effects. And going back to your first point, people also worry about the loss of control at the border.

I think the expiration of Title 42 is worrisome from this point of view, because it gives the impression that we are in crisis mode, that there is a situation that is not under the control of the U.S. government. Yeah. In looking at your research, all of this comes together to actually have a political impact, according to the numbers that you've looked at, which is that

When counties in America receive low-skilled immigrants on average, the vote share for the Republican Party goes up. And when they receive high-skilled immigrants, the vote share for the Democratic Party goes up. Now...

This makes me immediately think, well, OK, are high skilled immigrants just moving to places where there are more Americans already with college degrees like cities that are more likely to be blue anyway? Like, how do we tease out what the actual political impact is on the ground of immigration?

That's a great question. So you're right, you may be concerned that in that type of analysis, what we are capturing is self-sorting of immigrants into certain locations. We deal with that by using variation in the number of migrants across counties that is not driven by the

the economic opportunities in each location. So the type of variation that we use in technical terms is exogenous and allows us to estimate a causal effect. And you're right, what we find is that paradoxically the low-skilled migrants that Republicans want to keep out are the ones that benefit them from a political point of view. And this is driven by an indirect effect

So this is not an effect that works through the way migrants vote, but it's an effect that works through the way Americans vote when they see the number of migrants increasing. How big are the effects?

The effects are quite big. So we do a calculation of the states that would have gone to Hillary Clinton if the share of low-skilled migrants had not increased as much as it did. And they seem to matter quite a lot.

Because many of the states that ended up going for Trump in the 2016 election were states where the share of low-skill migrants had increased. And according to our paper, the increase led to higher voting shares for the Republican Party. You look at this from primarily an economic perspective and mentioned that it can be somewhat difficult to gauge the cultural impact.

or social reaction to migration. Although you do mention that

there is a divide between sort of skill level and how folks respond. So it's not necessarily just Americans are opposed to all immigration. I think there's some critics of the Republican Party, like on the left, would say, no, this isn't about economics. This is mostly about cultural stuff. And they're just xenophobic. And that's why they're voting the way they are. How do you respond to that? I mean, do you think they're right? Do you think that it is actually more about economics, but it's just easier to wage a cultural war?

Well, I think there are groups of voters who definitely are driven by discrimination towards migrants. But I think there is also a slice of the electorate that is thinking about

economic effects. And I think, for example, the fiscal effects are an issue. But also, on the other side, I think if we are able to make it more clear what the benefits of migration are, I think that's the life of the electorate.

would be persuaded to take more action. Let me give you an example. For example, in France there has been a lot of pushback of the increase in the retirement age, which was pushed by President Macron. And in that situation it would have been helpful to point out to the French electorate that France

just like many other countries in Europe and the United States faces a trade-off in terms of demographic changes. And so what is the alternative to increasing, for example, the retirement age by two years? Well, an alternative would be to let more migrants in. I think people need to be told what the trade-offs are from an economic point of view and how very practically migrants can help

or economic well-being. It is more difficult, I think, to affect cultural perceptions and cultural attitudes, but definitely from an economic point of view, we can make a better job to inform people about what the effects are.

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How does public opinion in America compare to public opinion abroad? Like,

being taught from a young age that we're a country of immigrants, are we more open to immigration than other countries? Well, so I've worked on public opinion data, but I've used data from the late 90s, early 2000s. Of course, I follow the patterns. And what I can tell you is that compared to those years, so the late 90s, early 2000s, now Americans are more pro-migration than they used to be.

Back then, only around 10% of Americans in nationally representative samples wanted the number of migrants to go up either a little or a lot. Now I just checked surveys, Gallup surveys, and the percentage is up to around 30%, although as you said, in this very recent period, there has been a decrease most likely for the situation at the border.

So I would say that the US is on an upward trend and it's neither the most open nor the most closed country. A country that is definitely much more open than the United States is Canada, but there are also many more countries that are quite more closed than the United States, and in particular many European countries.

Part of the reason we've seen that shift in public opinion over the past couple decades is because Democrats have grown significantly more open to immigration as Republicans have remained about the same. It's one of those stories, actually, where you look at public opinion over time and Republicans' views on immigration haven't really changed all that much. It's just that Democrats and Republicans used to agree and that they were both relatively anti-immigration and now Democrats are more pro-immigration.

Why did that happen? Well, definitely migration has been used politically in a certain way by the right. I should also mention that within each political party, there are differences.

So within the Republican Party, there at least used to be now a little bit less, but there used to be Republican policymakers and politicians who would be pro-migration. Think, for example, about Bush.

Within the Democrats and within the Democratic Party more broadly, if you think about labor unions, labor unions have historically been against migration. It is only around the year 2000 that the position of labor unions changed vis-à-vis migration. So this is all to say that these two parties are not compact groups. They're not groups that have a homogeneous defined position vis-à-vis the topic of migration.

And that probably is one of the reasons why comprehensive migration policy reform has been so hard in the United States. Within each party, there are different forces. It is true that on average, the Democrats are more pro-migration than the Republicans. But even within the Democrats, there are certain concerns that have kept policy reform from taking place.

Is there some kind of policy position on immigration that you think could receive majority support amongst Americans? Maybe put the conflict between the two parties aside for a second. But if you had to look at, you know, all of the different public opinion research and the options out there, is it clear what they would look like?

Yeah, so actually this is kind of a puzzle to me, which is why in the United States the quota for H1B visas has not been increased for the longest time. The last increase in the quota took place at the beginning of the 2000s.

Yet there is a ton of evidence that skilled migrants in the United States have a range of positive effects ranging from innovation, productivity, GDP growth, and at the same time in terms, for example, of fiscal effects at the local government level, again there are positive effects, and yet the quota for each one be visas has been kept the same for the longest time.

That would be something on which definitely Republicans and Democrats could agree on. But I think there is a reluctance within both parties, and I think even within the Democrats, to do incremental migration policy reforms.

There is this fear that if, for example, the H1B visa quota is increased, the bargaining power of the Democrats for major migration policy reform is lost.

I tend to disagree with that. I think actually incremental migration policy reform is the way to go in the United States, also because these policy changes at the margin can change the political narrative about migration. They can showcase the economic benefits of migration and show that the people who come to the United States come here to work and there is nothing to fear.

Right now, what's in the news is asylum seekers. Is there broad agreement amongst the public on this kind of immigration itself? Like, what does the public want the Biden administration or any administration to do about the current situation?

My perception of what is going on is that, first of all, people realize that to a certain extent, again, many of the forces that are at work that push people to arrive to the U.S. border are outside of the U.S. government control. And many of the people who cross the border actually look for

Border Patrol agents. So they're not really crossing illegally, but they go and they present themselves to Border Patrol agents, which is very important because it means that these are not people who are sneaking into the border.

Then the situation, once these people cross, is problematic because there is a huge backlog in terms of the administration of asylum cases.

And that is what creates this impression, this perception of loss of control because these people are often detained in detention centers and they are detained

in centers which can only host a certain number of people. And instead the numbers of people in these centers explodes, it becomes very high. And these asylum cases last for the longest period of time. And people who have a solid, strong case for asylum often have to wait long time to get asylum.

It sounds like according to your calculations, immigration was a deciding factor in the 2016 election. I'm curious if you expect it to be a deciding factor this time around as well.

I think it will be a deciding factor. The border in particular is grabbing the attention of American voters and the crisis at the border and the negative political narrative that surrounds the border has completely taken over the discussion and the conversation about migration policy in the United States. So I think that's going to affect the chances of future migration policy reform and it's also likely to negatively affect the chances of re-election of Biden.

So what needs to be changed is, first, the administration needs to address the backlog from an administrative point of view. And second, what is very important is to address the fact that many of the people who come to the border are actually in high demand in the US labor market.

And we need to increase the legal pathways that these migrants can take to come to the United States, because currently it's not easy for especially low scale migrants who want to come and work in the United States to do so. We mostly focus on economic effects here, and this has been really interesting information. I think also in this moment, folks are thinking about.

Crime. And you mentioned earlier that that's one of the concerns that folks in the receiving country may have. From what I understand, the research that's been done, a couple of things are true. One, as immigration levels have risen significantly over the past several decades in America, crime levels have gone down. That's looking at the population level and that individually, immigrants are less likely to have a criminal record than native born Americans.

Is there more to the story than that? Is it just simply to the extent that folks are talking about crime related to immigration, it's really just like a political talking point? Well, most of the evidence in the economics literature on crime and migration finds that there is not an effect of the arrival of migrants on crime rates.

There is some work done for other countries, for example in the UK, distinguishing between migrants who can work, economic migrants, and migrants who cannot immediately work. So for example, those waiting for asylum decisions. And in that case, there is evidence that property crime rates go up.

So in situations where migrants don't have access to labor market opportunities, there can be an increase in property crime rates. So what becomes crucial is that migrants are integrated in the labor market.

But this is not really an issue in the United States because migrants are quite quickly integrated in the labor market in the United States. I think it's more of an issue in European countries where often, unfortunately, there are rules that prevent some migrants from working. And in that case, you put it in an action vicious cycle where migrants cannot work and they're more likely to end up in criminal activities.

Looking from a macro perspective, about 14% of the U.S. population is immigrants. That's somewhat close to the highs that we saw around the turn of the 20th century, the late 19th century. And in the early 20th century, there was a significant backlash, which led to restrictionist immigration policies that were only liberalized in the mid to late 60s.

Is it just the case that when immigration levels reach a certain point, there's a backlash in society and the society becomes more restrictionist? Are there examples of that not happening? How should we think of this in a broader historical perspective? Well, you have a point that there might be a tipping point beyond which the local population feels threatened.

that it's too much. I doubt that that is driven by economic drivers. That is probably driven by cultural perceptions, cultural fears.

Also political fears, fears to lose control of what is going on politically in the country of destination. If I think about other situations, think for example of the European context with the free mobility of workers, I think

the long run, in the medium to long run, things have worked out quite well. It is true that there are countries that are more similar from a per capita GDP point of view, so it has been easier to manage migration, for example, from Eastern European countries to Western European countries than it would be from Mexico or from Central America to the United States. But I think within the

proper framework, the proper political framework and coordination across countries, migration can be managed in such a way that people think of it as a good thing. I think what people get scared about is the perception of the loss of control and the fact that their own government may not be in charge and able to control who's coming in.

All right. Well, we're going to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me today. You're welcome. Bye-bye. Anna Maria Maida is a professor of economics at Georgetown University whose research focuses on the political, social, and economic effects of immigration. My name is Galen Druk, and Tony Chow is in the control room and also on video editing. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments.