【英语国际】研究发现外来移民推高美国人收入

The San Francisco Fed is wading into the contentious debate over whether immigrants help or hurt employment for American citizens, in a paper that asserts new entrants to the nation help make almost everybody wealthier.

The report, published Monday, was written by Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis. He is currently a visiting scholar at the bank. The report counters those who believe immigrants to the U.S. take away the jobs of citizens and depress wages.

'There is no evidence that immigrants crowd out U.S.-born workers in either the short or long run,' Peri writes. Instead, the evidence suggests 'the economy absorbs immigrants by expanding job opportunities rather than by displacing workers born in the United States.'

Peri wrote, 'Statistical analysis of state-level data shows that immigrants expand the economy's productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization,' which he says 'produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker.'

The research offers a detailed analysis of how, rather than depressing the wages of native born workers, immigrants help to raise them over time, largely through immigrants' overall stimulation of economic growth.

Peri's work estimates that an inflow of immigrants equal to 1% of employment boosts income per individual by 0.6% to 0.9%. On a larger scale, 'total immigration to the United States from 1990 to 2007 was associated with a 6.6% to 9.9% increase in real income per worker.'

Peri says that gain 'equals an increase of about $5,100 in the yearly income of the average U.S. worker in constant 2005 dollars' for a gain that equals '20% to 25% of the total real increase in average yearly income per worker registered in the United States between 1990 and 2007.'

The paper didn't differentiate between legal immigrants and those who come to the U.S. without proper documentation, counting all of those workers equally.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2007 a 153-million-person U.S. labor force counted nearly 23 million workers who weren't born in the U.S. The Department of Homeland Security estimated there were nearly 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. at the start of 2009, more than half of whom were from Mexico. That compares against just over 20 million legal residents, according to the government data.

The San Francisco Fed paper is sure to find many detractors, in a political landscape where immigration remains a complex and contentious affair. The Fed's westernmost regional Fed branch hasn't shied away from hot-button issues in its research, having earlier this year taken on the issue of whether extended unemployment insurance benefits drive up joblessness by making it too easy to be out of work. That paper concluded extended benefits-they have been pushed out due to the persistence of high unemployment levels-push up unemployment by only a modest amount.

一份声称涌入美国的新移民使几乎所有美国人都更加富裕的报告中，旧金山联邦储备银行(San Francisco Fed)就移民帮助还是伤害美国公民就业状况的争议性话题展开研究。

这份周一发布的报告由加州大学戴维斯分校(University of California, Davis)经济学教授斐利(Giovanni Peri)撰写。他目前在旧金山联储做访问学者。报告反对那些认为移民抢占美国公民工作并压低工资的观点。

斐利在报告中说，无论是从短期还是长期来看，没有证据表明移民排挤美国本土工人的工作。相反，有证据显示，美国经济是以扩大就业的形式吸纳移民，而不是以取代美国本土工人的就业机会为代价。

斐利在报告中称，根据州级统计数据的分析显示，移民通过刺激性投资和促进专业化扩大了美国经济的生产力，从而提高了经济效率和人均收入。

这份研究报告主要从移民对经济增长的整体刺激作用入手，详细分析了移民如何潜移默化帮助美国本土工人提高工资，而不是将其压低。

报告估计，美国每引入相当于就业人口1%的移民，人均收入就会增长0.6%至0.9%。更广泛来看，1990年到2007年间，赴美移民总人口使实际人均工人收入增长了6.6%至9.9%。

斐利在报告中说，按2005年不变美元价格计算，这相当于普通美国工人平均年收入增长了约5,100美元，即1990年至2007年间，美国登记在册的工人人均年收入实际总增长20-25%。

但报告并未对合法移民和非法移民加以区分，而是将他们全部统计在内。

根据美国人口普查局(U.S. Census Bureau)的调查，2007年美国1.53亿劳动力中有近2,300万人在美国之外出生。美国国土安全部(Department of Homeland Security)估计，2009年初美国有近1,100万非法移民，其中逾半数来自墨西哥。相比之下，政府数据显示合法移民仅有逾2,000万人。

在移民问题仍然复杂且颇具争议的政治背景下，旧金山联储的这份报告无疑会招致诸多批评。作为位于美国最西部的美联储分行，旧金山联储做研究时从不避讳热点问题，今年早些时候还讨论了扩大失业保险救济是否会使失业成本过低而助长失业等问题。那篇报告总结认为，因扩大失业保险救济而增加的失业人数只会是非常少的一部分。由于美国失业率水平居高不下，扩大失业保险的提议最终落空。