By Sarah Henry
From the article:
What is the role of migrants and refugees in the American economy? A Brookings Institution panel held four days before the midterms aimed to answer that question against a backdrop of election-tinged rhetoric around President Trump’s longed-for border wall and a misinformation campaign surrounding the group of Central American asylum-seekers making their way through Mexico. The conclusion was relatively simple, given the complex nature of the ongoing national conversation. Migrants and refugees boost the American economy, and we couldn’t be a world superpower without them.
In many so-called high-talent cities or regions, the San Francisco Bay Area for example, the labor force is divided into two tiers. One is made up of “fundamental work”—work that’s necessary for other kinds of work to continue—including janitorial or custodial work, construction, food service, and bus transportation through Silicon Valley tech campuses. In the other tier are highly educated and highly paid workers, like the engineers and developers stretching out across those bus seats. As panelist Michael Clemens, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, put it, “American master chefs literally do not have a job without dishwashers. American cardiac surgeons literally have no job without the people keeping the hospital clean and sanitary.”
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