Business
Opinion: It's time to tell the truth about how immigration affects the U.S. economy
If you’re a physician and a neighbor asks you a medical question, you’re probably happy to share your professional expertise. If you’re a heating and cooling contractor and a friend asks you about her furnace, you likely do the same. In that spirit, I think it’s time for business people to share what we know about immigration: that it powers economic growth and provides many other benefits to the country.
At a time when many politicians are falsely scapegoating immigration for society’s ills — crime, housing shortages, labor issues and more — people with experience working alongside immigrants, employing them and relying on them for the success of their business should speak up and set the record straight.
If that description fits you, here are some handy talking points:
- The United States has plenty of unfilled jobs. The Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, both signed by President Biden in 2022, offered incentives for firms to create manufacturing jobs. As of July, the country faces unprecedented labor shortages: The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports 8 million job openings, substantially more than the total number of unemployed workers, about 6.8 million.
- Immigrants act more as “job creators” than as “job takers.” A 2020 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that immigrants create jobs and enhance the economy for native-born workers. Foreign-born founders — including Google co-founder Sergey Brin (Russia), Intel co-founder Andrew Grove (Hungary) and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Brazil) — play pivotal roles in high-growth entrepreneurship. Because immigrants found companies at a higher rate than native-born Americans, they create more jobs than they take.
- Immigrants often fill jobs U.S. citizens don’t want. Most native-born Americans eschew low-paying, physically demanding work in agriculture, construction and food production and processing. Immigrants play a crucial role in supplying workers in these sectors, allowing employers to fill jobs without overheating the economy or accelerating inflation.
- Higher-skilled immigrant workers contribute to innovation and the workforce, boosting productivity. A study of U.S. patents granted from 1990 through 2015 found that immigrants made up 16% of U.S. inventors and produced 23% of innovation output.
- Immigrants are less likely to engage in criminal behavior than U.S.-born citizens. A recent study based on data from 1870 to 2020 found consistently lower incarceration rates among immigrants. Moreover, immigrant incarceration rates have declined since 1960 compared with those of native-born Americans: Today immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than their U.S.-born counterparts. The recent surge of immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in crime rates in sanctuary cities such as New York and Denver.
- “Zero sum” notions of a fixed number of American jobs are simply false. The more people work and spend their wages, the more our economy grows and provides jobs for everyone, regardless of where they were born. According to a July Congressional Budget Office report, an increase in immigration from 2021 through 2026 is projected to boost federal revenues as well as spending. This is expected to lower federal deficits by a net $900 billion over the next decade, primarily because new arrivals work, pay taxes and stimulate economic growth, increasing incomes and tax revenues for everyone. That will boost the gross domestic product by $9 trillion by increasing population, labor force participation and productivity.
Most business people who rely on American labor and consumers are well aware of many of these forces. They know that expelling immigrants would shrink the U.S. economy and make it less competitive with other nations.
We know the consequences of immigration bans from experience dating to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, enacted in an era of racial violence such as the 1871 massacre that killed 19 in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. A recent study showed that the act not only significantly reduced the number of Chinese workers of all skill levels in the country but also diminished the quality of jobs held by white and U.S.-born workers, the intended beneficiaries of the law. It led to a 62% decline in manufacturing output and hindered economic growth in the Western states most affected by the law for the next 50 years.
As a proud U.S. citizen who immigrated to the country in 1981, I urge other Americans who understand business and the economy to spread the good word about immigration.
Christopher Tang is a university distinguished professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Business
Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
Business
Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
Business
How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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