What? Can I juggle grenades? Of course!

This is a difficult question because it isn’t clear exactly what should and shouldn’t be measured. If an immigrant comes to this country and has children, those children are no longer immigrants. If they provide benefits or costs, should that be counted? Fortunately, if you group immigrants and their descendants, it becomes fairly easy to track their contributions and costs. This report gives us an accounting of the economic benefits of immigrants and their descendants. This, this, and this account for most of the costs.

If you want a narrower study, perhaps only for current resident aliens, or illegal aliens, or H-1B visa holders, or something like that, it becomes difficult for a number of reasons. The most significant reason is that the INS, which was previously a part of the Department of Labor, transferred to the Department of Justice and then to the Department of Homeland Security, where it became U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This breakdown makes everything a complete mess. There are some DHS statistics reports here. USCIS has their reports. That’s probably not what you are interested in. Before the move to DHS, the DoL had a whole office that studied this stuff. Unfortunately, there are no links, only citations here. That’s probably more in line with what you are interested in. FYI, you can get there from here, but that’s no longer specific to immigration. Feel free to look at various GAO studies here and here.

But back to what should be measured. There are huge measurement problems, even if you know what you are looking for. For example, the H-1B visa has a number of requirements. Supposedly each of these requirements are fulfilled by every accepted application. However, there are probably as many allegations of fraud (both that adherence to the prevailing wage rule is ignored and that the specialty occupation rules are violated) as there are applications. There are a lot of studies on the H-1B program in particular, and the outcomes of those studies are quite varied. But now, let’s assume you have something you want to measure and have reasonable assurances that the measurements are accurate. What are the unseen benefits and costs? My current job was created entirely by the research / invention of an immigrant. To complicate matters, his research was largely funded by the US taxpayer. Could the taxpayer money have been spent on a non-immigrant and created an equal outcome? Perhaps, but how the heck could you possibly determine that? Maybe in the alternate reality where that happens, the guy is a total douche, and though he’s just as capable as my boss, nobody in their right mind wants to start a company with him. Opportunity costs are important, but they are frequently impossible to measure.