Semafor, an influential globalist media outlet founded by former BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and former Bloomberg chief executive Justin B. Smith, has suggested the “border crisis might be a boon for the economy,” citing a former economist at Joe Biden’s White House.
Semafor’s Jordan Weissmann suggested it is “a bit like Biden ran an accidental experiment to test the economic impact of open borders – and it turned out better than anyone could have hoped,” citing post-pandemic economic growth.
However, while Ernie Tedeschi’s assessment of immigration figures post-pandemic “includ[ed] immigrants with both legal and non-legal status,” it made no mention of the southern border whatsoever.
Tedeschi also made almost no mention of the impact of immigration on economic growth per capita — that is, whether or not immigration makes individual Americans better off, instead of just increasing the size of the economy overall by increasing the number of people in it.
Only once, buried in the footnotes to his article, does Tedeschi mention economic growth per capita, admitting it “is less affected by immigration in the short-run” and “may even be temporarily lower, depending on the types of immigrants arriving.”
Economic nationalists and even some leftist labor leaders, such as the late Cesar Chavez, have long argued mass immigration makes Americans worse off at the individual level, by increasing the supply of labor and undercutting local workers who might otherwise be able to command better pay and conditions.
The former Biden staffer also fails to consider that some of the countries he compares unfavorably to the U.S. in terms of post-pandemic economic growth have also hugely increased immigration.
The United Kingdom increased net immigration from 184,000 in 2019 to an unprecedented 745,000 by 2022, yet growth remained sluggish and productivity stagnant.
show less
