Since the 1970s, the number of immigrants have increased in the United States due to the large-scale immigration from Asia and Latin America. But, recently due to the pandemic and the administration that wanted to reduce the immigration, had significantly affected the number of immigrants.
As shown by the graph, the number of immigrants have increased rapidly from 1970 to 2019.
One might ask why this is important. Take a look at the immigrants in the U.S civilian labor force. Immigrants compose 17% of the civilian labor force in 2019. Now, the immigrant contribution in the US labor force has more than tripled since 1970, when the immigrants composed about 5% of the labor force.
From this pie chart, Immigrants have jobs in the fields of management, business, science, and arts. From an article from Kellogg Insight, Northwestern University, they also state that the immigrants found companies and jobs create more jobs and the jobs are more attentive. Also they are more probable to have patents than U.S founder firms. Jones, the professor of entrepreneurship, also stated that immigrants found jobs pay higher wages compared to U.S founder firms. Jones also states that immigrants, the people who come to a new environment, are risk takers, which makes immigrants more exposed to entrepreneur's quality. Research asserts that immigrants start business at a higher rate compared to Americans. Not only immigrants add to the labor force, they also create jobs in the United States. Immigration also has an effect on higher per-capita incomes.
As seen in the graph, we can see the number of refugees declining rapidly from 2016 to 2018. That is because of one major factor: the Trump Administration. Annually, the president and Congress sets the refugee admission ceiling and allocations by region of origin. They have set the annual ceiling at 18,000 in FY (Federal Year) 2020, and 15,000 in FY 2021. Which was a significant decrease from the 30,000 ceiling of FY 2019, and makes the ceiling lowest since 1980.
Refugees could also play a significant role, such as promoting international trade and investment. Refugees know the business environment well, which means they can help as the mediator between the different business people from different countries. From Immigration Forum, they state a study that states refugees who arrived in the United States in 1980 were discovered that after ten years, they earned 20% more than immigrants during the same time period. The study also showed that refugees work harder and invest more in developing their skills that are necessary for higher wages and better employment opportunities. The study stated that they worked 4 hours more improving their English skills, which they saw 26% of increase in their wages. Similarly, refugees also have a higher entrepreneurship rate than the native population, and the forgien born population. According to the data, in 2015, more than 181,000 refugee entrepreneurs created $4.6 billion business income.
From the information that I provided above, here is a graph on the GDP per capita of the United States. GDP per capita is a measure of GDP divided by the size of the nation’s overall population. From 1970 to 2019, the GDP increased steadily, and as well as the number of the immigrants. GDP per capita increases because of two major factors: growth in the size of the workforce and growth in the productivity of the workforce. The two factors have an ability to increase the overall size of the economy, but strong productivity growth can increase per capita GDP and income. It could be reasonably inferred that the increase in the number of immigrants during the years could have been the factor of increasing the GDP per capita by creating more jobs.
Sources and Citations:
Batalova, Jeanne, Mary Hanna, and Christopher Levesque. "Frequently Requested
Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States." Migration
Policy Institute. Last modified February 11, 2021.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/
frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states-2020?gcl
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Blizzard, Brittany, and Jeanne Batalova. "Refugees and Asylees in the United
States." Migration Policy Institute. Last modified June 13, 2019.
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Forbes. "Immigrants Create More Jobs Than They Take." Accessed November 11, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adigaskell/2020/11/11/ immigrants-create-more-jobs-than-they-take/?sh=43b1e2b219ea.
"Immigrants as Economic Contributors: Refugees Are a Fiscal Success Story for
America." National Immigration Forum. Last modified June 14, 2018.
https://immigrationforum.org/article/
immigrants-as-economic-contributors-refugees-are-a-fiscal-success-story-for-ameri
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Love, Jessica. "Immigrants to the U.S. Create More Jobs than They Take." KelloggInsight. Last modified October 5, 2020. https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/ immigrants-to-the-u-s-create-more-jobs-than-they-take.