Minimum wage laws do harm in the short run and in the long run. People acquire lots of valuable human capital in their first jobs. The longer those first jobs are pushed out of reach, the longer it takes low-skill workers to develop crucial capacities that can put them on a promising career path.

What we need to do now is to create more openings for high-skill immigrants while reducing the number of slots for extended family reunification for low-skill immigrants, and Congress (though no the Obama administration) seems to be taking some steps in that direction. The Economist, while not addressing low-skill immigration, seems to be taking a similar view.

The offshoring debate of the past few years has obscured some basic insights from economics and about economic policy in a globalising world.

The illegal immigration problem is going away.That's the conclusion I draw from the latest report of the Pew Hispanic Center on Mexican immigration to the United States.Pew's demographers have carefully combed through statistics compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Homeland Security and the...

In January of this year, the number of manufacturing jobs increased by 50,000. Yet this vibrant sector is being held back—and not by imports.

Up on Capitol Hill, there appears to be progress--bipartisan progress, even--toward changing our immigration laws to reflect current and emerging realities.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen liberal commentators look back with nostalgia to the days when a young man fresh out of high school or military service could get a well-paying job on an assembly line at a unionized auto factory that could carry him through to a...

While Obama complained about "politicians" blocking comprehensive immigration bills, he was one of them himself. Some new approach is needed, and Obama did little to point the way. El Paso was all about election 2012, not serious immigration reform.