Gianmarco Ottaviano Professor of Economics Country: Italy

Professor of Economics

In August 2005, a solid study titled "In Rethinking the Gains From Immigration: Theory and Evidence From the U.S." was published. The authors of this study are economists Gianmarco Ottaviano from the University of Bologna and Giovanni Peri from the University of California. This work can be seen as a serious response to another well-known study by Professor George Borjas from Harvard, which claimed that American workers and employees lose their jobs and wages due to an influx of immigrants. Ottaviano and Peri cast doubt on Borjas' conclusions. Moreover, they provide their own calculations and calculations, which show that thanks to immigrants, the wages of Americans in the 1990s did not decrease, but on the contrary, increased on average by 2.7 percent. As for competition, both educated and uneducated immigrants work where the presence of American workers and employees is not so noticeable. "Thanks to mass immigration in the 1990s," emphasize the scholars, "the wages of American high school and college graduates, as well as people with incomplete higher education, increased. Only those who did not even graduate from high school lost wages. Thus, more than 90 percent of all American workers were winners." I think it would not hurt the economic advisors to Bush to familiarize the president, at least briefly, with the work of Ottaviano and Peri. Then it would be easier to convince those who do not believe that the danger allegedly posed by the mass immigration process to our country is greatly exaggerated.