The Economic Concerns of Immigration

Sally Kohn: We have to address both sides of the immigration issue. She says there are economic and social concerns that people raise about it. But she points out how many companies were founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. Kohn: Take just nine and there's a huge list of them; they total $2.8 trillion, employ 1 million people.

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Immigration is, as happens fairly routinely, an important topic in the national conversation these days. It's generally well-accepted that the United States is "a nation of immigrants," and yet there remains a stubborn skepticism about new immigrants. These concerns generally branch into two broad categories: economic concerns and social concerns. Economically, citizens seem to think that immigrants are "taking our jobs" or "a drain on the system." Socially, citizens are of the belief that immigrants are "undermining American culture." But are any of these concerns warranted? Join James Harrigan and Antony Davies as they discuss this and more on this week's episode of Words and Numbers.

Quick Hits:

Denver hires homeless people

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/denver-hired-homeless-people-perform-day-labor-city-100-landed-regular-jobs/

Koch donating $400 million to candidates

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/27/politics/koch-republican-election-candidates-donate/index.html

https://nrf.com/resources/consumer-research-and-data/holiday-spending/halloween-headquarters

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/04/fourth-of-july-spending-by-the-numbers.html

https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topindivs.php

Foolishness of the week

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/24/580228837/a-dozen-camels-disqualified-from-saudi-beauty-pageant-over-botox-injections

Topic of the week

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Annual-Number-of-US-Legal-Permanent-Residents