…today cites a study that shows Hispanics, many of them immigrants, are a fiscal boon to North Carolina. I checked in with Robert Rector quickly who says he’s familiar with the study and that it undercounts the benefits received by this population and uses a dubious formula–”pixie dust,” he says–to inflate its economic contribution.
More broadly, Rector says its odd how supporters of lax immigration say things about the wondrous economic benefits of low-skill immigrants that they would never say about native low-skill workers. But if low-skill immigrants are a great benefit to the economy, low-skill natives should be as well. This kind of thinking, Rector says, is like a “fiscal Lake Wobegone, where everybody is a net fiscal contributor.”