The Impact of Immigration: Comparing Two Global Eras

This paper asks whether history can inform modern debate about immigration’s impacton high wage economies. It examines the relationship between migration’s labor marketimpact and capital flows before 1914, the first global era. It then assesses the effects ofimmigration on wages and employment with and without international capital mobilitytoday, in the second global era. It then explores the links between these economicrelationships, welfare burdens, and immigration policy. It concludes with an explanationfor the apparent difference in immigration’s impact in the two global eras, and thus onpolicy.