From the Article:
There’s evidence that a more diverse immigrant pool may even bolster the benefits of immigration. A new paper [PDF] by Alberto Alesina and colleagues from Harvard University suggests populations with a diverse stock of first-generation migrants see significant economic benefits. Building on previous studies suggesting companies with more diverse management gain higher market share and profits, the authors similarly find that countries with more diverse foreign-born populations have more patents granted each year and higher overall incomes.
Alesina and colleagues do suggest that the migrants with the biggest positive impact are college-educated and born in reasonably rich countries with an “intermediate level of cultural proximity,” as they put it (think of it as the distance from classical music to the Beatles rather than classical to thrash metal). Nonetheless, the relationship between immigrant diversity and output holds across all skill levels and countries of origin. Moving from a foreign-born population that looks like the one in Ireland (where the majority of new immigrants come from next-door England) to one that looks like the U.S.’s (with a stock of foreign-born that comes from many countries) increases long-term income per capita by 20 percent to 50 percent, Alesina suggests.
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