US Immigration Reform and Guest Workers – Michael Clemens

Summary

The CGD Podcast: “US Immigration Reform and Guest Workers – Michael Clemens”

Host: Center for Global Development (Lawrence MacDonald)
Guest: Michael Clemens, Senior Fellow, CGD
Date: April 22, 2013

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Overview

This episode critically examines the proposed US immigration reform bill (2013) and its provisions for expanding temporary “guest worker” programs through the new W visa. Host Lawrence MacDonald talks with Michael Clemens, a leading expert on labor mobility and development, about what these changes mean for both the United States and people in developing countries. The conversation delves into economic needs, political realities, misconceptions about migrants, and the potential for labor mobility to offer broad-based benefits.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Changing Political Landscape for Immigration Reform

• Post-2012 Election Shift: Both parties have started supporting immigration reform, spurred by electoral losses and demographic changes ([00:24]–[01:09]).
• Central Legislation: The bipartisan “Gang of Eight” bill includes a section for modest increases in low-skill temporary work visas—dubbed the “W visa” ([01:09]–[01:43]).

2. Economic Opportunities—W Visa and its Impact

• Scale of the Program:

  “It is for 200,000 time bound temporary low skill visas, employment visas per year. And it is an incredible opportunity for people outside the country to benefit from the US labor market.” — Michael Clemens ([01:43])

• Value for Migrants:
  • Crossing the border, even legally, can multiply earnings for workers five to ten times compared to their home country ([03:09]–[04:00]).
  • Example: H2A agricultural workers earn $9.70/hr in the US; in Mexico, minimum wage is $0.57/hr.

    "We're talking about life-changing revaluation of the labor of hard-working people." — Michael Clemens ([03:09])

3. Addressing Common Concerns: Employment and Downward Pressure on Wages

• Labor Shortages Unavoidable:
  • The US economy’s demand for low-skill jobs will outpace the number of Americans entering the labor force, meaning those jobs “are either not going to get done or people from other countries are going to do them.” ([04:39]–[06:18])
• Impact on US Workers:
  • Legal migration channels protect both US and migrant workers by ensuring enforcement of minimum wage and basic standards, reducing exploitations that flourish in the black market ([04:11]).
• Personal Story:
  • Clemens shares how high elder care costs exhausted his mother’s retirement savings, highlighting how labor scarcity directly affects American families ([06:47]–[08:22]).

  “There are real trade offs... doubling wages means that your retirement savings goes half as far.” — Michael Clemens ([06:47])

4. The “Shadow” Workforce and Policy Lessons from History

• Magnitude of Undocumented Workers:
  • There are millions of “informal temporary workers” (undocumented), compared to a fraction with legal, formal status ([09:25]–[10:23]).
• Failure of Past Reforms:
  • The 1986 Immigration Reform legalized many then-undocumented migrants but didn't provide legal channels for ongoing labor needs, leading unauthorized migration to rebound ([10:23]).
• Key Analogy:

  “It wouldn't have made sense to delay the end of Prohibition until we had achieved exactly zero alcohol consumption... The point of repealing Prohibition was to ensure the laws... were aligned to the best interests of Americans.” — Michael Clemens ([11:59])

5. Modesty and Limitations of Proposed W Visa

• Insufficient Legal Pathways:
  • The proposed cap (200,000/year) is less than historical unauthorized flows (350,000–500,000/year during strong economies); risk remains for renewed undocumented migration ([13:14]).

  “I fear... that difference will be made up by additional waves of unauthorized immigration heading us towards a new crisis.” — Michael Clemens ([13:14])

6. Myths about Migrant Intentions: Will Guest Workers Stay?

• Research Debunking “They’ll Never Leave”:
  • Tougher border enforcement decreases circular migration, making people less likely to return home ([16:18]).

  “There were people who stayed in the United States who would have been going back and forth... because it became harder to get in.” — Michael Clemens ([16:18])

• Development Angle:
  • Circular movement helps home countries, allowing migrants to return with new skills and resources ([17:17]).

  “It can only enhance their ability to... strengthen their home communities.” — Michael Clemens ([17:34])

7. Prospects for Legislative Influence and Outcomes

• Expanded but Politically Negotiated Numbers:
  • The bill raises the share of both high and low-skill temporary visas, notably opening coverage beyond seasonal work (e.g., elder care, non-seasonal agriculture).
  • The numbers are a compromise between business and labor, and Clemens believes they're too low for long-term needs ([19:29]).
• Possibility for System Expansion:
  • Success and public trust could make political expansion of guest worker quotas feasible over time ([21:12]).

8. Indirect Economic Benefits—Beyond the Wage Debate

• Migrants are Consumers Too:
  • “You’re never going to see the effects of that on investment... in job creation when looking at them and their friends or the people who are competing for their jobs.” ([23:50])
  • Migrant labor sustains entire industries—agriculture, service sectors, “taco trucks," etc. ([23:53])
• Empowering Working Women:
  • More low-skill migrant labor (e.g., childcare, elder care) enables educated American women to participate in the workforce, boosting overall productivity ([24:25]–[25:43]).
  • Patricia Cortes’ research supports the causal link between low-skilled immigration and higher labor force participation among high-skill native women ([25:43]).
• Educational Attainment:
  • Having more low-skill immigrants increases the incentive for native students to complete high school, as shown in Jenny Hunt's study ([26:33]–[28:45]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On value for migrants:

  “It is the opportunity for many of them to multiply their earnings by five times, eight times, ten times.” — Michael Clemens ([03:09])

• On protection for natives and migrants:

  “No US worker wants to be competing with people who are working on the black market where there's no effective minimum wage, no worker protections of any kind.” — Michael Clemens ([04:11])

• On the logic of reform:

  “What we do with the law in this country is adopt laws that are in the national interest. And it wouldn't have made sense to me to delay the end of Prohibition until we had achieved exactly zero alcohol consumption.” — Michael Clemens ([11:59])

• On the limits of the W visa:

  “It's not modest in that it is a huge expansion of... legal opportunities. It's modest with respect to... the needs of the economy.” — Michael Clemens ([13:14])

• On guest worker “abuse” myths:

  “The increased border enforcement... actually decreased circular movement between Mexico and the United States.” — Michael Clemens ([16:18])

• On indirect economic impact:

  “Migrants help to keep entire industries alive... When those sectors disappear, many more workers than just the harvest laborers are put out of work.” — Michael Clemens ([23:53])

• On the positive side for women & education:

  “In US cities that have received more low skill migrants, high skill US women are more likely to be working rather than not working.” — Michael Clemens ([24:50]) “In US States that have gotten more low skill immigrants over the past decades, high school dropout rates have been falling faster.” — Michael Clemens ([28:08])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction & Political Context: [00:10]–[01:43]
• W Visa Overview & Benefits for Migrants: [01:43]–[04:00]
• Labor Market Needs & Competition: [04:00]–[06:18]
• Personal Story on Elder Care Costs: [06:47]–[08:22]
• Scale of Informal Workers & Historical Lessons: [09:25]–[11:13]
• Policy Rationale & Prohibition Analogy: [11:59]–[12:37]
• Guest Worker Cap vs. Economic Demand: [13:14]–[14:45]
• Are Guest Workers Here to Stay? Circular Migration: [16:13]–[17:49]
• CGD’s Role & Prospects for the Legislation: [18:55]–[21:12]
• Indirect Economic Benefits & Women’s Labor: [22:04]–[25:43]
• Research on Causality & Education: [25:43]–[28:45]
• Closing Thoughts: [28:45]–[29:00]

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Conclusion

The episode rigorously challenges preconceptions about immigrants and guest worker programs, highlighting the wide-ranging benefits—economic, social, and developmental—of more flexible, humane labor mobility policies. Clemens argues that carefully designed temporary worker visas can be a “win, win, win, win” for the US middle class, US workers, border security, and migrants themselves, provided policy keeps pace with real labor needs. The politics are still challenging, but the potential for smart reform is clear.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Global Prosperity wonkcast.

[B]

I'm Lawrence McDonald.

[A]

My guest today in the studio is Michael Clemens. He's a senior fellow here at the center for Global Development and among his research interests is labor and migration. Michael, welcome to the show.

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

It's a big time for those who care about immigration reform in the United States. When you started working on labor mobility a few years ago, it looked like it was an interesting intellectual question, but in terms of policy change in the United States at least unlikely to see much movement. We've got the 2012 election, Hispanics turning out massively for the Democratic party, the Republican party beating an anti immigrant drum, taking a drubbing at the polls, and now all of a sudden both parties have religion and it looks like migration reform might actually be the next thing up in the political docket.

[B]

Yes, that's right. John McCain explicitly and many other Republicans have said that that was the reason for the sea change that you referred to.

[A]

And we've got legislation which was just introduced this week by a group of bipartisan group of senators called the Gang of eight. You tell me you have it on your desk that it's many hundreds of pages. I doubt very much that very many people will read it. But buried in there is a provision for modest increase in the number of temporary workers. Tell me why temporary workers in particular are of interest to you and others who care about the impact of labor mobility on people in developing countries.

[B]

Thanks. Yes. What you're talking about is the W visa in this senate comprehensive immigration reform bill. I would indeed call it a modest program. Not everybody would. It is for 200,000 time bound temporary low skill visas, employment visas per year. And it is an incredible opportunity for people outside the country to benefit from the US labor market. It's an incredible opportunity for the American economy to benefit from their labor, from low skilled labor, as it always has.

[A]

I want to get into the why it's an opportunity for Americans, why it's good for those of us who are already here. But before we do that, I want to cover the question of labor mobility and the opportunity that it offers for people who might come here and work. And I think that many people, certainly people in the development space are very familiar with the story of remittances. People come here, they work, they send money home. The money goes directly into the pockets of the wives and husbands that they've left behind. It may go to build a small business. It goes into consumption to improve education and health. Is that basically the whole thing? It's the Opportunity to come here and send money home. Is that what we're interested in?

[B]

Absolutely. And also benefits to the migrants themselves who are often forgotten. I mean, it's not just the remittances. Migrants have the opportunity for the first time to have a high value put on their labor. It's strange to me to see people refer to foreign workers as cheap labor when in fact, as you said, it is the opportunity for many of them to multiply their earnings by five times, eight times, ten times. I study Mexican workers in the seasonal, the current seasonal agricultural work visa called the H2A visa, where in many states their minimum wage is $9.70 an hour. The minimum wage in most of Mexico is 57 cents an hour. That's the kind of economic opportunity we're talking about. We're talking about life changing revaluation of the labor of hard working people.

[A]

So just by crossing the border, their earnings increase many fold. And if they were able to cross the border legally, of course, it would be much safer for them and safer for everybody involved.

[B]

Safer and also better for US Workers. No US worker wants to be competing with people who are working on the black market where there's no effective minimum wage, no worker protections of any kind, et cetera.

[A]

Unemployment is high in the United States. There's a lot of concern about it. Our economy is sluggish. People are going to look at this and say why in the world would we be letting in temporary workers when we've got a lot of Americans who can't find jobs? What do you say to that?

[B]

The big picture is that the US Economy needs lots and lots of low skilled workers and it's going to need even more over the next decade. And when you run the numbers as the Bureau of Labor Statistics has, they have projections for what the demand in certain occupations is going to be over the next decade. It is way more. The growth of, of low skill occupation demand in the US is way, way more than the entire entry of Americans into the labor force over the next decade.

[A]

You and lan Pritchett have done a terrific brief for those who want to see the numbers themselves. Time bound labor, access to the United States, A four way win for the middle class. By which you mean the US middle class, US low skilled workers, border security and the migrants themselves. And the first figure there shows basically four kinds of workers. There's high skill, non substitutable, that is you can't send it overseas. People like things like nursing and teaching that have to be done here. And then there's the stuff you can offshore that you, using economic jargon, call substitutable. So we're all familiar with talking to somebody on the phone who might be sitting in India and then you've got low skilled jobs that might be sent offshore in a similar way. Things like retail sales, again, we think call centers, the really big group. There is work that has to be done here. It's very low skilled, it's probably not going to pay very much. It's home health care workers, it's food service, it's janitors, it's landscaping, I guess, some forms of construction. Who's going to do those jobs?

[B]

Even if all of the Americans who are going to enter the labor force over the next 10 years, every single one of them did those jobs, even they would not be sufficient for them. So there really are only two options. Either they're not going to get done or people from other countries are going to do them.

[A]

You told me a story recently before we began the recording about your own experience as relates to the very high cost of home care. I wonder if you'd be willing to share that.

[B]

Yes. Elder care is an area in which many Americans become employers for the first time in their lives. And when people talk about the effect of low skilled workers on wages, wondering if there's any downward pressure on them, they are often thinking about the welfare of workers. When wages go down, workers are worse off. Employers are worse off when wages are high. And when you are an employer of an elder care worker, when you're paying that elder care worker out of fixed retirement savings, doubling wages means that your retirement savings goes half as far. And that has direct consequences for the welfare of elderly people who need that care. There are real trade offs. When you're talking about your career, are.

[A]

You talking here about your mother?

[B]

Yes. For much of 2012, I was the employer of elder care workers. And it's extremely difficult to manage that.

[A]

And basically you said to me it exhausted her savings and then she died.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But had she lived longer.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

It would have been your responsibility to come up with this money at $130,000.

[B]

A year, or she would have had to go on Medicaid and accept whatever care they were willing to provide. And that's an extremely difficult situation to be in and it's created by the scarcity of force and labor willing to do this work.

[A]

We're going to take our first break. When we come back, I want to hear more about how increasing the number of authorized temporary workers might impact the problem of undocumented workers who are currently coming to fill these jobs. This is the Global Prosperity Wonkast from the center for Global development. I'm Lawrence McDonald. My guest today is Michael Clemens and we're talking about the development implications of of the proposed new immigration reform bill that has been introduced this week here in Washington. We'll be back in a bit.

[C]

Hi, I'm Alex Gordon and I produce CGD's weekly Montcast. Did you know CGD sends out 10 different E newsletters to sign up for our weekly development update or topics business newsletters, just visit cgdev.org and click on subscribe.

[A]

Welcome back to the Global Prosperity wonkcast. I'm Lawrence MacDonald speaking with Michael Clemens about migration reform. In the brief that you co authored with lan Pritchett, Michael, you have, your figure four is very striking. You've got these little stick figures in which each person represents 100,000 people and you call it the world's wackiest guest worker program. And on the right hand side there's a lone single figure, formal temporary workers. I guess that means we've got 100,000 of them. And on the left hand side there's a whole bunch, rows and rows and rows. I counted them up and at one person per hundred thousand people, it looks like there's probably about 8 million. By informal temporary workers you mean basically undocumented people who've come here to try and make a living, who are doing all these jobs, especially the home health care jobs that Americans don't want to take, but they're doing it under the table.

[B]

Yes. We had comprehensive immigration reform about a quarter century ago, in 1986, under Ronald Reagan. Under Ronald Reagan. At that time There were about 3 million unauthorized workers in the U.S. most of them were offered a chance to regularize a path to citizenship at that time. But what was missing was a way to fill these rapidly expanding needs for low skill work in a legal way. And what happened was quite predictable. Employers got the labor that they needed on the black market. So just a few years after that, comprehensive immigration reform once again, there were 3 million and then 4 million and then 5 million and rapidly increased to 10 or 11 million unauthorized workers in the country.

[A]

It seems to me like this is a really central point about your work that is often missed in the media coverage of migration reform because you have those who say first we need to secure the border, then we'll deal with those who are already here. And that's presumed to involve some kind of regularization. I think there's general agreement that we're not going to round up these 8 million people, enforce them all to leave. But you seem to be suggesting that no matter how high we build the fence along the border and no matter what other measures we take at the ports and airports around the country, that if there's a huge economic demand for people to fill these jobs and Americans don't want them, that people are going to find a way to get in here and employers are going to find a way to hire them.

[B]

What we do with the law in this country is adopt laws that are in the national interest. And it wouldn't have made sense to me to delay the end of Prohibition until we had achieved exactly zero alcohol consumption. What would be the point of that exactly? The point of repealing Prohibition was to ensure that the Constitution and the rest of the laws in the country were aligned to the best interests of Americans. And that's the job. I don't see why there need to be preconditions like that on, on making the law beneficial to everyone. We should just do it today.

[A]

Let's take your prohibition analogy a little further. I like that. So you're saying that waiting until the border is 100% secure to allow temporary workers would be like waiting until we'd stomped out all alcohol consumption. But in fact, the border has become more secure. The number of people crossing the border is greatly reduced. And yet the proposal to increase temporary workers, as you say, is very, very modest. Is that going to reduce the number of undocumented who are coming in?

[B]

So right now, as you say, according to the estimates of Doug Massey, who's a top expert in this area at Princeton University, the net inflow of unauthorized workers to the US has arrived at about zero. The that's the net flow inflow minus outflow. And it's really because the economy has been in the hole for a little while that's slowly changing. The economy is recovering and good times are going to return. And given that immigration reforms happen every quarter century, apparently we need to make sure that the law is apt for good times and bad times. So the reason I say that the guest worker provisions are modest is that there is this cap of 200,000 per year on participation in this low skill W visa program in the middle 2000s, which was just a few years ago when the economy was hot, according to the Migration Policy Institute estimates, there were 350,000 to 500,000 new permanent unauthorized arrivals every single year. Now we have this law that says the most the economy could ever need. Hypothetically, when it's white hot is 200,000. And in fact, I fear and suspect that that difference will be made up by additional waves of unauthorized immigration heading us towards a new crisis. That's why I say the program is modest. It's not modest in that it is a huge expansion of the current legal opportunities to work in the US it's modest with respect to There are good reasons to suspect that it's modest with respect to the needs of the economy.

[A]

We're going to take our second break. When we return, Michael, I want to ask you if there are any innovations in the designs of these programs that would reassure those who say these people say they're coming temporarily, but we all know they really want to come and stay. This is the Global Prosperity Wonkast from the center for Global Development. We'll be back in just a bit.

[C]

Hi, I'm Alex Gordon, based in Washington and interested in development policy. If you don't already receive invitations to our lively events, you'll want to sign [e-mail].

[A]

Welcome back to the Global Prosperity Wonk cast. I'm Lawrence MacDonald, speaking with my friend and colleague, Senior Fellow Michael Clemmons, one of the leading researchers on the relationships between between labor mobility and development and global poverty reduction. Michael, those who worry about too many of them coming here would say these people don't want to come temporarily. They want to come here and sponge off our generous welfare system and set up camp and have babies, and there's no way they're going to go back because life is miserable wherever they came from. And so once they're here, they're here to stay. What do you say to that?

[B]

Wow, I don't even know where to begin with that sentence.

[A]

They say it much more crudely than I did.

[B]

That's true, unfortunately, in many cases. So first of all, I mentioned Doug Massie at Princeton before. He and other researchers have shown very convincingly that the increased border enforcement that occurred after the 1986 immigration reform actually decreased circular movement between Mexico and the United States. That is, there were people who stayed in the United States who would have been going back and forth, who would have been going home, precisely because suddenly it became harder to get in. And they, having already gotten in, didn't want to risk leaving because they might not be able to get back in.

[A]

So if you make it harder to get in, you also make people more likely to stay. You weaken the ties between them and their communities and in the countries that they left.

[B]

Yes. And that's not hypothetical. That happened in the late 80s after the big step up in enforcement, after the 1986 reform. And it's very likely that that will happen again in the presence of this new enforcement.

[A]

And that's not only bad for Americans who worry that these people are going to come here and stay. It's also bad from the standpoint of development, isn't it? I mean, don't you want people who are here to go back with their money and their skills and the knowledge they gained here and strengthen their home communities?

[B]

It can only enhance their ability to do exactly that. It means less separation of families. It means better pay for the people who are working in the white market rather than the black market. It means all kinds of things that are good for development.

[A]

So you want this circularity?

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

I'm reminded one of the words that we almost never talk about around here having to do with skilled migration is brain drain. And lan Pritchett's point that, you know, that idea caught on in part because it rhymed. And so he prefers to talk about the cortex vortex, this circularity, the idea that when people move from one place to another and are able to then go back, that ideas travel, capital travels, good things happen when people move around.

[B]

Yes, absolutely. I mean, today we're mostly talking about low skill workers. So people have fewer concerns about brain drain with that. But even through low skilled workers, ideas travel. There's some research showing that fertility norms pass through women who have spent time outside their country. That is, people who have spent time outside and come back are likely to have fewer children. And the women they interact with, such as their sisters, are likelier to have fewer children. There are all kinds of ways in which ideas move internationally and through low skill workers as well.

[A]

Tell me about your involvement, if you can, with this legislation. I know there's been some discussion back and forth. The brief, I think was produced specifically in response to some requests we've had on Capitol Hill to provide the latest in research as it relates to the guest worker program. In your dream, how would you see your role, CGD's role and the outcome of what looks like it's going to be a big legislative fight.

[B]

I appreciate many aspects of this bill. So we used to have maximum 85,000 temporary high skill visas that could go to workers from outside the US I'm talking about the H1B visa. That's going to 180,000 in this bill. So more than double. We used to have around 100,000 low skill guest workers and they could only work in seasonal areas. So this leaves out non Seasonal areas of agriculture like dairy. It leaves out many parts of construction. It leaves out essentially all elder care and childcare. Now we have this new W visa that is much larger, As I said, 200,000 a year and it embraces these non seasonal occupations.

[A]

Non seasonal, including the elder care problem?

[B]

Including, yes. And those are great steps in the right direction. What's unfortunate is that the numbers involved emerged from a negotiation, a political negotiation between business and labor, between the US Chamber of Commerce and the AFL cio. And I don't believe that they are sufficient to meet the labor market needs of the country going forward. That means that they're either we are going to need to change the provisions at some point or we are going to be impoverished by lacking the low skill labor that we need. And the US economy of the 21st century massively needs low skill labor, make no mistake about it.

[A]

Or.

[B]

The labor is going to come, but in a way that is irregular. Unauthorized workers.

[A]

Is it possible that this bill would pass, and I think I share your hope that it will pass in some form with the expanded provision of these W workers, the time bound temporary, some people would say guest workers, and that over a period of years people would confidence they would see that yes indeed, people are coming here, they're working legally, they have basic worker right protections and then when the time comes they go home and others replace them. And there was some confidence in that system that it might then be expanded.

[B]

I do believe that yes, the sky does not need to fall. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the benefits of those workers to the US economy are indirectly, they're not obvious. And that really will present a permanent political problem for the economic benefits of movement of this kind.

[A]

Talk to me about those indirect benefits. So.

[B]

Much is made of economic studies showing that foreign workers of this kind, low skill foreign workers who are in competition with the portion of the American labor force that is also doing these kind of jobs, decrease the wages of those American workers.

[A]

So if I'm a high school dropout in southeast Washington D.C. i probably don't want to see more temporary workers because they might come and get the job that I would have had.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

As a parking attendant, for example.

[B]

Exactly. And that's something that's very easy to see. If you see a job that went to a Mexican who was here on a. And you wanted it. Then there's. There is. It's very clear what happened there under the microscope in that particular situation on that day. You lost a job because of that guy.

[A]

I think in our building here. It seems like most of the parking attendants are Ethiopians. And I have a pretty good feeling that there are people in Southeast Washington, D.C. native born African Americans who could probably do that job, whatever reason they don't have it.

[B]

Yes. So that is right there in front of our eyes. You can see it. There are tons of forces, however, that it's more difficult to see. So the migrants who come here, work on W visas are also consumers. They are certainly sellers of their own labor. They are also consumers of other people's labor in that they buy all kinds of stuff while they are here. You're never going to see the effects of that on investment in the businesses that provided those services, et cetera, et cetera, in job creation when looking at them and their friends or the people who are competing for their jobs. But those are nevertheless.

[A]

So if I was in Los Angeles, I would say way more taco trucks.

[B]

Right indirectly through that channel, and there are many, many other channels, migrants help to keep entire industries alive. There are sections, certainly subsectors of agriculture, entire crops that would not be viable without migrant labor picking them. And when those sectors disappear or go overseas, many more workers than just the harvest laborers are put out of work. But again, that's not something that you see when you're looking just at the people filling or not filling one job.

[A]

Our colleague Beth Schwanke made a nice link with Lean in Sheryl Sandberg's book, saying that increased temporary workers are probably a good thing for American women in the labor force because then they can hire the services they need to maintain their households, they and their husbands. But of course, it's often the woman who winds up doing double duty, taking care of the home and trying to hold down a job.

[B]

Exactly. We discussed this in the brief as well. One way to phrase exactly what you just said is that a lot of the migrant workers are in competition not with workers who are in the labor market, but workers who are not in the labor market. People who are doing work at home, such as childcare, elder care, disabled care. There's a great researcher at Boston University School of Management Patricia Cortes, who has a groundbreaking study showing that in US cities that have received more low skill migrants, high skill US women are more likely to be working rather than not working. So women with law degrees, PhDs, masters, are more likely to be in the labor force. And that makes the whole economy more productive. It generates high skill jobs, it generates low skill jobs. But again, this is something that's invisible if you're just looking at who's taking a particular Parking attendant job.

[A]

I've been trained here to ask, does that study disentangle which way causality runs?

[B]

Yes, that does. Yes. Patricia Cortes is a top researcher and she has an identification strategy.

[A]

So it's not just that the women who are professional women and in a position to hire help have managed to find the workers to help them. It's that they have greater access to workers and therefore they're more able to pursue their professional goals and raise their incomes.

[B]

Exactly. A lot of the point of some of the best economic research on immigration is exactly to disentangle correlation and causation. And that's what makes particular study notable, is that it has a credible strategy for doing that.

[A]

I've said to Beth that maybe we should call the W visa the women's visa because it would be good for women. She's cautioned me not to go that far. What do you think?

[B]

I think that's one of many channels. I mean, homework is the channel. And as you said, de facto, a lot of it is done by women. And for, for the foreseeable future, the majority of home jobs of this kind will continue to be done by women. That's a fact of the economy. There are others that I could get to. Today I was at the Department of Labor with Jenny Hunt, who's their brilliant new chief economist. She is usually at Rutgers University when she's not away being the chief economist of the Department of Labor. And just before she went on leave, she issued a paper demonstrating for the first time the positive effect of low skill immigration on US Education attainment. So what's going on here is that when a lot of immigrants are coming in, putting downward pressure on the wages for very low skilled jobs, what does that do? It raises the return to education, because what is the return to staying in high school? It's the difference between the wage you get if you're a dropout and the wage you get if you are a high school graduate. That difference is increased to the extent that there is downward pressure on the wages of high school dropouts. This is what you think.

[A]

If I'm in Southeast and I'm thinking, ah, I'll drop out, I can always get a job as a parking attendant. And then I look around and I say, they don't pay very well and they're all filled by people who have very low skills and at least I speak English and they don't, I better stay in school.

[B]

It makes perfect sense. And last year, for the first time, very convincingly, Jenny Hunt showed that that has been going on. In US States that have gotten more low skill immigrants over the past decades, high school dropout rates have been falling faster. Which means that one important reason for the across the board fall in high school dropout rates across social classes. That and ethnic groups in the US over the last few decades has been precisely immigration. That's making the whole US Workforce more productive and again generating higher skill jobs and lower skill jobs in ways that are invisible.

[A]

It does indeed seem, Michael, as you say in a brief, that it's win, win, win, win. The politics of it is still tough, I guess I would say. Stay tuned, huh?

[B]

Exactly. Yes.

[A]

Thanks very much for joining me on the show.

[B]

Thank you very much.

[A]

This has been the Global Prosperity Wonkcast from the center for Global Development. My guest today is Michael Clemens. We've been talking about the new migration reform bill recently introduced here in Washington and the potential implications for poor people in developing countries who would like to come here and work. You can find the Wonkast online on itunes and on Stitcher. Just search for wonkcast or CGD and subscribe to hear a new interview every week. Until next time, I'm Lawrence MacDonald. Thanks for listening.