By James Feigenbaum, Jesse Baker and Austin Brooksby  

  This paper provides a macroeconomic perspective on the costs and benefits of two very different immigration policy changes—mass deportation and legalization—in comparison to the status quo of allowing illegal immigrants to broadly remain in the country under precarious circumstances. A macroeconomic analysis can capture the economy-wide impact of immigration policies on wages, employment, the government budget, and the stock of productive capital. To provide intuition, the paper begins with a simple analysis before adding layers of complexity that capture how immigration affects the economy. Although the results are sensitive to the assumptions used in the analysis, we find that over a broad range of parameters mass deportation creates worse economic outcomes for US citizens relative to both the status quo and to a policy providing for legalization.  

Logan, UT: The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, 2020. 18p.