Big Data Insights on Immigration

Immigration has been one of the most heavily politicized issues of our time. Big data insights on immigration made it possible to come up with more factual and accurate conclusions. There are two categories of people, supporting and opposing immigration.

Opponents of immigration argue that immigrants take jobs that would otherwise go to Americans. It increases crime, drains public resources, struggles to succeed economically, and rarely assimilates into American society.

Advocates of immigration argue that immigrants are vital to economic growth. They emphasize this by citing folks like Elon Musk of Tesla, Sergey Brin of Google, and others. They are shining examples of entrepreneurship, innovation, wealth, and job creation.

Big Data Science on Immigration

Immigration should be political or not used to be a debate canceled by factual data science insights. In our age of big data and data science, we can look closely at the “facts”. It helps to gain greater insight into the immigrant’s experience and its impact on America.

Two economic historians, Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan, attempt to fill the gap in their book, “Streets of Gold”. It is an America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success. They used a huge dataset to paint a clearer picture of how immigrants have fared in America.

Moreover, they also added what immigrants have brought to the American experience. It is a book that is definitely worth reading that offers a relatively optimistic story.

Main Insights of Data on Immigration

• Immigrants actually assimilate faster than U.S.-born residents.
• Immigrants enhance economic opportunities for non-immigrants.
• Immigrants enhance and protect the economy from decline by filling the gaps left by an aging population.
• Immigrants don’t actually take away jobs from U.S.-born workers or reduce their wages.
• The children of immigrants have done better economically than the children of U.S.-born residents. Most of them are from poor countries. This data has been collected for over a hundred years.
• The “children of poor immigrants from nearly every country in the world make it to the middle of the income distribution.”

Cultural Insights on Immigration

Big data insights on immigration also entail cultural impacts. There is a lot more to the immigrant picture than simply its economic impact. They bring new tastes, sounds, traditions, and cuisines that enrich all our lives.

They also bring new ideas and energy. It can combine with the ideas and energy of non-immigrants to create even more remarkable possibilities. But we have to be open to them.

Immigrants as Key Innovation

If you follow my work and writing, especially The Necessity of Strangers. You would know that I have a strong belief in connecting with new and different people. It is a key driver of innovation and business growth.

The belief alone, in addition to the data, leads me to see immigrants very optimistically. They are a vital part of the wisdom and energy needed to grow our economy and the world we share.

Conclusion

Abramitsky and Boustan acknowledge that upward mobility takes time. It seems clear that immigrants add more to our economy than we often give them credit for, according to big data insights on immigration.

It is also important to note that folks like Musk and Brin, while significant business creators are anomalies, outliers in a nation of so many immigrants.