Noah Smith, Columnist

Clinton Heads the Wrong Way on Immigration

It's a mistake to protect well-educated workers while exposing the middle class and poor to more competition from unskilled newcomers.

July 13, 2016 at 4:07 PM UTC

By Noah Smith

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

This guy could use a challenge.
Photographer: Andy Buchanan/afp/getty images

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One of Adolf Hitler’s many blunders was to kick smart people out of his country. His hatred of Jews led him to expel a large number of Germany's most accomplished scientists, many of whom went to the U.S. What was a bane to Hitler’s reich was a boon to the U.S. Economists Petra Moser, Alessandra Voena, and Fabian Waldinger estimate that patenting increased by an average of 31 percent in scientific fields dominated by Jewish refugees. And of course everyone knows the story of how Jewish scientists were crucial to the U.S. atomic-bomb program.

Of course, the U.S. received this unexpected reward because its leaders were smart enough not to turn it away. Unfortunately, the U.S. may have lost its wisdom in the years since. In a recent interview with Vox, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton indicated her strong opposition to an increase in high-skilled immigration.
QuickTake Skilled Immigrants