Jeffrey Miron and Jacob Winter
Debates about immigration often emphasize the alleged harms. President Trump, for example, has claimed that illegal immigrants take jobs from native-born Americans, a belief that is fueling his crackdown.
Research finds, however, that immigration has large benefits for the destination country. For example, a recent study of agricultural immigration to Brazil (Cato Research Brief no. 426) finds that
municipalities with a higher population share of European immigrants in 1920 had greater farm values per hectare, suggesting greater development of the agricultural sector .… This effect existed for total farm value and each of its three components—land, infrastructure, and tools and machines.
The authors investigated the reasons and discovered that
[a] greater share of European immigrants in a municipality led to a higher proportion of its farmland being cultivated rather than left fallow or as forest.
Finally, the authors explored the effects of immigration on Brazil’s transformation from an agricultural economy and found that
immigration did not slow Brazil’s structural transformation—it may have accelerated it. Immigration reduced the agricultural share of Brazil’s labor force and increased the literacy of native and foreign-born individuals. Furthermore, our study finds evidence that immigration increased industrial employment.
Immigration debates should recognize that immigrants grow a country’s economy, which benefits all residents.
This article appeared on Substack on March 28, 2025.
