Tucker Carlson is wrong. Refugees are good for the economy.

The reason we should care about refugees is because they are people.

But, unfortunately, for many people, this is insufficient moral affirmation. Even for the tens of thousands of Afghans who have put their lives at risk working alongside the US military for the past 20 years. Let’s put it another way: the evidence shows that welcoming refugees also benefits the host country.

That hasn’t stopped some from arguing that the refugees are somehow a burden on the United States, as the country watches the consequences of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.

On Fox News, Tucker Carlson ended up blaming refugees for our current housing crisis. Having correctly diagnosed the problem as insufficient housing supply, it fails to explain what most housing experts have clearly stated to be the solution (that America needs to build more housing to meet growing demand). Instead, he says the reason the country has a growing demand for housing is… immigrants?

“When the supply goes down, the cost goes up,†says Carlson. “One of the reasons this is happening is that America is becoming much more populated than it ever was and one of the reasons is that we are experiencing the largest influx of refugees in history. American. “

It’s wrong; the growing demand is due to historically low mortgage rates and the largest generation in American history (millennials) entering the housing market with force. (It’s all the more ironic since Carlson himself spoke out against the real solutions to the housing crisis on his show.) The claim that America has more refugees than ever is also false, as evidenced by Migration Policy Institute research says the country is actually letting in a record number of refugees.

The rhetoric that the nation is overcrowded is not confirmed in reality. Cities like London, Seoul, Tokyo are much denser than any major American city, making room for the current US population as well as immigrants is entirely under the control of policymakers.

But this desire to portray refugees as a burden is widespread. Even some supporters of opening America’s doors use language similar to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s statement in 2015 that the country should accept our “fair share” of Syrian refugees. In the White House, concerns that refugees could be politically expensive loom large: Politico reported that the Biden administration previously feared that the arrival of more refugees could provoke a conservative backlash and jeopardize their agenda domestic policy.

The point is, for altruistic and self-serving reasons, the United States should welcome more people. In small towns or cities in decline, they can help reverse depopulation trends that threaten the financial viability of the region. Even in growing regions where many people seek to live and work, refugees offer a clear economic advantage.

Refugees are a godsend, and they can help revive struggling cities

UC San Diego political scientist Claire Adida recently reviewed the economic literature in a Twitter feed, concluding that “refugees are an economic boon to their host communities”.

She cites research showing that refugees in Rwanda who received $ 120-126 in cash from the United Nations “increased the economy’s real annual income from $ 205 to $ 253”.

Evidence in the United States shows that “after 6 years in the country, these refugees are working at higher rates than the natives. … [Researchers] estimate that refugees pay $ 21,000 more in taxes than they received in benefits during their first 20 years in the United States.

Beyond their widespread impact, refugees can also help solve one of the most difficult urban policy issues facing the United States: how to induce growth in towns and villages outside of coastal superstars. and the growing solar belt. A 2019 report from the Economic Innovation Group (EIG) found that “uneven population growth leaves more room behind. 86% of counties are now growing more slowly than the country as a whole, up from 64% in the 1990s. â€

Several market forces have driven the majority of well-paying jobs into a handful of cities. This phenomenon is called “agglomeration economies,†which economist Enrico Moretti explained to Vox earlier this year: “agglomeration economies … [are] the tendency of employers and workers to cluster geographically in a handful of locations.

One factor is that employees who separate to start their own businesses often do so in the same cities where they worked. More generally, the regrouping of workers and industries in the same place increases employment opportunities for workers and increases the pool of skilled labor for employers. . In addition, many young university graduates have a preference for urban environments, and companies often follow valuable labor pools.

This has a disproportionate effect on the US economy, as more high-income workers congregate in the same cities, the demand for goods and services (from legal services to restaurants and plumbers) also changes. Encouraging businesses and young professionals to locate in your city is a difficult problem for mayors.

As highly educated workers move away, city populations may decline. This, in turn, leads to less taxes, which means less public services. It also means less demand for goods and services, leading to increased unemployment, as businesses don’t need as many workers to serve a declining population. It becomes a dangerous spiral as higher unemployment and a declining young population make these places even less attractive to new entrants and new businesses. It is one of the thorniest issues facing declining neighborhoods and cities.

One way to get around this problem? Resettlement of refugees.

The authors of the GIE report propose a similar and innovative policy proposal: location-based visas, called “visas of the heart,” which would bring immigrants to the United States to live in communities “facing the consequences of demographic stagnation. And in desperate need of new entrants. These visas would not limit where immigrants can visit or travel, but “would simply require that their residence and place of work be somewhere in a specific geographic area.” Similar visas have been successful in Canada and Australia.

There is a reason why several governors (both Republicans and Democrats) have indicated their support for the resettlement of refugees in their states.

While many have tried to argue that immigrants hurt the economic prospects of native-born Americans, the research is also clear on this: immigration does not reduce the wages of native-born people. Economist Noah Smith reviews academic literature on refugee waves and finds that immigration “is a positive shock to the demand for labor”; that “immigrants do not cause unemployment to nativesâ€; that there was “no labor market impact†of immigration to Turkey or Israel; that “immigration has increased the wages of natives in the long term”; and that didn’t even hurt the “high school dropoutsâ€.

The arguments for opening America’s doors are clear. Refugees and immigrants are not only good for the economy, they can help us reverse dangerous trends in stagnant towns and villages. Policymakers should stop seeing refugees as a burden and believe that the new Americans will benefit the nation.