Economic Impact of Immigration

While immigrants make up 18% of the U.S. workforce, they represent 28% of all physicians and 33% of the science and engineering workforce with a bachelor’s degree or higher. This outsized role in high-skill sectors accelerates scientific progress, healthcare access, and long-term growth.

Labor Market Dynamics: Do Immigrants Lower Wages? A common concern is that immigrants reduce wages for native-born workers. The evidence says otherwise. Research from the Brookings Institution and Pew Research Center finds overall effects are neutral, and sometimes even slightly positive.

Why?

• Immigrants often fill roles native-born workers avoid — agriculture, meatpacking, seasonal jobs, or niche tech roles.
• This “complementary labor” effect allows businesses to expand, creating new jobs rather than replacing existing ones.

Take the Midwest’s meatpacking towns like Garden City, Kansas. Between 2000–2015, native-born populations dropped 10–20%, but immigrant arrivals increased up to 25%. That workforce kept plants open, sustained schools and hospitals, and even reversed local population decline. Immigration, in this case, was the difference between stagnation and survival.

As Kelly Gauger, Deputy Director of the Office of Refugee Admissions at the U.S. Department of State, told me during my interview:

Taxes and Public Services: Do immigrants pay their way? The data suggests yes.

• In 2023, immigrants contributed $652 billion in taxes, including $275 billion to Social Security and Medicare accoring to research conducted by the American Immigration Council.
• That’s about 17% of total contributions, almost exactly their share of the labor force.

Yes, new arrivals require investments in schools, healthcare, and infrastructure. But lifetime contributions more than offset this. A 2024 CATO Institute study found the average immigrant adds $626,000 in net present value over their lifetime which is a fiscal win.

Enterpreneurship and Innovation: Immigrants aren’t just workers — they’re builders.

• They’re nearly twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans.
• Immigrant-owned restaurants alone generate $63 billion annually and sustain 1.1 million jobs.
• In construction, nearly 30% of workers are foreign-born.

And history is full of immigrant-founded companies that shaped America:

• Procter & Gamble (1837) – by English and Irish immigrants, now a $400B company.
• Pfizer (1849) – founded by German immigrants, today a $200B pharmaceutical leader.
• Google & Nvidia (1990s) – both co-founded by immigrants, now cornerstones of the digital economy.

Today, over half of America’s “unicorn” startups (private companies valued above $1B) were founded by at least one immigrant. Collectively, they employ hundreds of thousands and are valued above $1.2 trillion. Immigrants also drive intellectual property: in 2022, they accounted for 24% of U.S. patents.

As Guc Ozenci, Managing Director at the Founder Institute in Washington, D.C., explained in our conversation:

Challanges and Considerations: The benefits are clear—but so are the challenges.

• Education: In California’s Central Valley, 20% of students were English learners by 2020, straining local school budgets.
• Healthcare: In Texas border counties, hospitals faced $200M annually in uncompensated immigrant care.
• Integration: Europe’s recent experience highlights risks. Sweden and Germany saw slower language acquisition, social tension, and political backlash following large refugee inflows post-2015.

The lesson? Smart policy matters. With strong integration programs — language training, employment support, education funding — the benefits can far outweigh the costs.