Do immigrants really take jobs and lower wages?

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

We wade into the heated debate over immigrants' impact on the labor market. When the number of workers in a city increases, does that take away jobs from the people who already live and work there? Does a surge of immigration hurt their wages?

The debate within the field of economics often centers on Nobel-prize winner David Card's ground-breaking paper, "The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market." Today on the show: the fight over that paper, and what it tells us about the debate over immigration.

More Listening:
- When The Boats Arrive
- The Men on the Roof

This episode was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk and Jeff Guo. It was produced by Willa Rubin, edited by Annie Brown, and engineered by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message come from SAP Concur, a leading brand for integrated travel expense and invoice management solutions.
0:08.5	With SAP Concur solutions, you'll be ready to take on whatever the market throws at you next.
0:14.0	Learn more at concur.com.
0:18.0	This is Planet rally season again. It is political rally season again.
0:31.0	It's not too hot out here,? You know it's not bad.
0:34.0	Former President Donald Trump has been traveling, Michigan, Wisconsin, and recently he made a stop in Nevada.
0:40.0	Did you see we put out a note of saying, don't come.
0:43.8	So only 20,000 people showed up.
0:47.5	And like pretty much every Trump rally.
0:50.1	This open border, so many bad things, but this open border situation where you're
0:54.7	allowing millions and millions of people to flood our country.
0:59.0	Immigration comes up pretty quickly.
1:01.1	Virtually 100% of the new jobs under Biden
1:05.2	have also gone to illegal aliens.
1:07.1	Did you know that?
1:08.3	A hundred percent.
1:10.0	To be clear, it is not 100%.
1:12.5	But Trump doesn't just claim that immigrants
1:14.6	are taking jobs from Americans.
1:16.5	He says they're also making wages go down.
1:19.3	Real wages of African Americans
1:21.7	and the workers from all over the world that came here
	...

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