A new study by three academic economists, Giovanni Peri and Kevin Shih, both with the University of California, Davis, and Chad Sparber of Colgate University, shows that wages rise fastest in U.S. cities with the greatest influx of highly skilled immigrants.
The study found that U.S. cities with the greatest increase of immigrants specializing in the STEM professions (science, technology, engineering and math) between 1990 and 2010 saw an increase in wages for college-educated, native-born Americans by 7 percentage points, and 3 percentage points for the non-college-educated population. In other words, skilled immigrants are good for the economy and for your pocketbook.