Well done, Dan. It is very surprising that Murray takes this position. I was especially surprised to read, in the middle of his remarks, his support for allowing firms to use labor-saving technogy. What, I wonder, is the difference — from Murray’s perspective — in a low-skilled American worker being discouraged because some robot or chemical process is doing at lower cost a job that that worker would otherwise have been hired to perform, from a low-skilled American worker being discouraged because some low-skilled immigrant is doing at lower cost a job tha that worker would otherwise have been hired to perform?

Also, a volume that AEI put out a few years ago has an economic historian, (whose name I cannot now recall) that reports that industrial investment in 19th-century America was highest in those geographic places that had especially large proportions of low-skilled immigrants. The details slip my mind — it’s been eight or so years since I read that paper — but I recall, I think correctly, that the author corrected for causality. That is, it wasn’t that the high investment caused high inward immigration of low-skilled workers but, rather, that the high inward immigration of low-skilled workers help to spur the investment.