名稱：93 The Influence of Immigration
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晨讀英語(yǔ)美文 真題閱讀
[00:02.94]At the heart of the debate over illegal immigration
[00:04.03] lies one key question: are immigrants good or bad
[00:06.87] for the economy? The American public overwhelmingly
[00:15.57] thinks they're bad.
[00:17.48]Yet the consensus among most economists is
[00:20.50] that immigration, both legal and illegal,
[00:23.78] provides a small net boost to the economy.
[00:27.18]Immigrants provide cheap labor,
[00:30.04]lower the prices of everything from farm
[00:32.93]produce to new homes,
[00:34.78]and leave consumers with a little more money in their pockets.
[00:39.06] So why is there such a discrepancy
[00:41.84]between the perception of immigrants' impact
[00:44.35] on the economy and the reality?
[00:47.09]There are a number of familiar theories.
[00:49.59]Some argue that people are anxious
[00:52.68]and feel threatened by an inflow of new workers.
[00:56.75]Others highlight the strain
[00:58.90] that undocumented immigrants place
[01:01.09] on public services, like schools, hospitals,
[01:04.86]and jails. Still others emphasize the role of race,
[01:08.54]arguing that foreigners add to the nation's fears
[01:12.63]and insecurities. There's some truth to
[01:16.15]all these explanations, but they aren't quite sufficient.
[01:19.17]To get a better understanding of what's going on,
[01:21.97]consider the way immigration's impact is felt.
[01:25.18]Though its overall effect may be positive,
[01:29.24]its costs and benefits are distributed unevenly.
[01:32.37]David Card, an economist at UC Berkeley,
[01:35.93]notes that the ones who profit most directly
[01:39.07]from immigrants' low-cost labor are businesses
[01:42.61]and employers-meatpacking plants in Nebraska,
[01:45.67] for instance, or agricultural businesses in California.
[01:50.47]Granted, these producers' savings probably
[01:54.07]translate into lower prices at the grocery store,
[01:56.85]but how many consumers make that mental
[02:00.87]connection at the checkout counter?
[02:02.09] As for the drawbacks of illegal immigration, these, too,
[02:06.28]are concentrated. Native low-skilled workers
[02:10.03]suffer most from the competition of foreign labor.
[02:13.65]According to a study by George Borjas, a Harvard economist,
[02:18.17]immigration reduced the wages of American high-school
[02:21.67] dropouts by 9% between 1980~2000.
[02:24.59]Among high-skilled, better-educated employees,
[02:29.67] however, opposition was strongest in states
[02:33.03]with both high numbers of immigrants
[02:35.47] and relatively generous social services.
[02:37.25]What worried them most, in other words,
[02:40.54]was the fiscal burden of immigration.
[02:43.32]That conclusion was reinforced by another finding:
[02:46.71]that their opposition appeared to soften
[02:49.82] when that fiscal burden decreased,
[02:51.76]as occurred with welfare reform in the 1990s,
[02:55.20]which curbed immigrants' access to certain benefits.
[02:59.36]The irony is that for all the overexcited debate,
[03:03.40] the net effect of immigration is minimal.
[03:06.29]Even for those most acutely affected-say,
[03:09.37]low-skilled workers, or California residents—
[03:12.96]the impact isn't all that dramatic.
[03:15.35]“The unpleasant voices have tended to
[03:18.45]dominate our perceptions,”
[03:20.07] says Daniel Tichenor, a political science professor
[03:23.98] at the University of Oregon.
[03:25.99]“But when all those factors are put together
[03:29.69]and the economists calculate the numbers,
[03:32.51]it ends up being a net positive, but a small one.”
[03:36.49] Too bad most people don't realize it.