Exploring the impact of immigrants on the labor market, the podcast discusses the Mariel boat lift in Miami, challenging beliefs on immigration's effect on jobs and wages. It highlights disagreements among economists, including David Card and George Borjas, and concludes with experts affirming immigrants' positive economic contributions.
David Card's Mariel boatlift study showed immigrant influx had minimal impact on Miami's wages and job availability.
George Borjas' research contradicted Card's findings, indicating negative wage effects on low-skilled workers post-Mariel boatlift.
Deep dives
The Mariel Boatlift Experiment
The podcast delves into the Mariel boatlift natural experiment that occurred in Miami in 1980, where 125,000 Cuban immigrants suddenly entered the workforce. Despite expectations, economist David Card's research revealed that the influx had virtually no impact on wages or unemployment rates. This unexpected outcome challenged traditional theories of immigration's effects on the labor market and ignited a heated debate among economists.
Borjas's Challenge to Card's Findings
Economist George Borjas disagreed with Card's conclusions and conducted his own research on the Mariel boatlift, focusing specifically on high school dropouts in Miami. Borjas found a significant negative impact on the wages of low-skilled workers, contradicting Card's initial findings. This led to a public disagreement between the two economists, with Borjas becoming a prominent figure in anti-immigration policy discussions.
Economic Consensus and Continued Debate
Eventually, a consensus report by leading experts in the field concluded that immigration has little to no long-term impact on average wages in the U.S. Despite this consensus, economists continue to explore the effects of immigration on labor markets. Recent studies reaffirm the notion that immigrants are generally beneficial to the economy, challenging anti-immigration narratives perpetuated in political discourse.
We wade into the heated debate over immigrants' impact on the labor market. When the number of workers in a city increases, does that take away jobs from the people who already live and work there? Does a surge of immigration hurt their wages?
The debate within the field of economics often centers on Nobel-prize winner David Card's ground-breaking paper, "The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market." Today on the show: the fight over that paper, and what it tells us about the debate over immigration.
This episode was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk and Jeff Guo. It was produced by Willa Rubin, edited by Annie Brown, and engineered by Valentina Rodríguez Sánchez. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.