Russel Sage Foundation

RSF authors and grantees Mary C. Waters (Harvard University) and Francine D. Blau (Cornell University) recently gave a joint talk at the Russell Sage Foundation on their recent studies on immigration for the National Academies of Sciences (NAS). Their findings, which were released in 2015 and 2016, shed new light onto how immigration shapes the U.S., and challenge pervasive myths about immigrants and their role in society.

Waters, former chair of the RSF board of trustees and a former visiting scholar, chaired an NAS panel that examined immigrants’ integration into society. Supported in part by the Russell Sage Foundation, the study confirmed that across all measurable outcomes, immigrants’ integration in the U.S. increases over time—that is, they become more like the native-born the longer they reside in the country, with the second and third generations more like other native-born Americans than their parents were. Integration furthermore improves immigrants’ educational attainment, occupational distribution, income, and language ability. The panel also found that immigrants tend to be healthier in general than native-born Americans, and—contrary to media and political rhetoric that frames immigrants as more likely to commit crimes—cities and neighborhoods with large immigrant populations have much lower crime rates than similar places without significant concentrations of immigrants.

Blau, a former visiting scholar and recipient of numerous RSF research awards, chaired a NAS panel that explored the economic and fiscal consequences of immigration for the U.S. The study found that despite the common perception that immigrants take jobs from U.S. workers, the long-term impact of immigration on the wages and employment of native-born workers has been almost zero. They further found evidence that the presence of skilled immigrants could lead to positive wage effects for certain native-born workers, such as those with complementary skills in fields like tech and health care. Overall, the panel found that immigration has positive effects for long-term economic growth, and boosts housing markets and labor markets.

In looking at the fiscal impacts of immigration, they found that while first-generation immigrants are initially costlier than the native-born to state and local governments, second-generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population, contributing more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native-born population. Over the long term, while the impacts of immigrants are still negative at the state and local level, they are generally positive at the federal level.

The full reports of both studies, “The Integration of Immigrants into American Society” and “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration,” are available for download in full from the National Academies of Sciences.

Waters is the co-author of the RSF book Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age. Blau is co-author of the RSF book At Home and Abroad: U.S. Labor Market Performance in International Perspective.