Giving Compass' Take:

• The Conversation pulls past articles from its archives to determine if immigration is making a positive or negative impact on the United States and its economy.

• The authors argue that overall, immigration benefits the United States. How can philanthropists help fund more comprehensive research about immigration?

• Read about the five ways immigration enhances a country's culture. 

One of President Donald Trump’s main arguments for his “zero tolerance” immigration policy is that immigrants are bad for the economy and cost U.S. citizens jobs.  Is he right?

Economists and other scholars have been tackling this topic for years, resulting in many studies that explore the effect immigrants of different stripes have on the economy. All in all, scholars who have written for The Conversation have concluded immigration’s impact is actually quite positive.

A complex reality: It’s a common belief that immigrants hurt the economy, says Kevin Shih, assistant professor of economics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “A central issue is that it is easy to think that the labor market is a zero-sum game and the number of jobs available is fixed,” writes Shih. “The reality, however, is much more complex.” An immigrant interested in the same job as you might reduce your odds a bit, but another with a good idea might end up creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, he writes.

Value in diversity:  “The key thing to bear in mind is that the more homogeneous and similar immigrants are to natives, the greater the odds they’ll in fact have a negative effect,” Ethan Lewis, an economist at Dartmouth College explains.

Vital to the economy:  Speaking of undocumented immigrants, an estimated 11 million currently live in the U.S., and the vast majority have become vital to the U.S. economy and several key industries says Mary Jo Dudley, director of Cornell Farmworker Program at Cornell University.

Don’t forget about demand:  Economists estimate that if we deported all undocumented workers – as Trump has in the past proposed – GDP would fall 5.7 percent, Nelson writes. Instead, she suggests the U.S. give them a path to citizenship.

Read the full article about immigration by Nicole Zelniker and Bryan Keogh at The Conversation