Manhattan Institute’s Criticisms Vindicate Cato’s Report on Fiscal Effect of Immigrants: Part 1

David J. Bier

The Cato Institute published our comprehensive assessment of immigrants’ effects on government budgets over the last 30 years. My coauthors and I conclude that immigrants reduced deficits by about $14.5 trillion from 1994 to 2023. The Manhattan Institute (MI) published an article by MI fellow Daniel Di Martino—who has published two papers on this topic—that claims “our math doesn’t add up.” But the author did not do any math to refute our results.

Instead, MI misleads its readers about our methods...