The American economy absorbs immigrant workers at the high and low ends of the labor market "because that's exactly where we have the hole" in worker supplies, economist David Card said March 15 in an ILR School lecture during his five-day visit to campus.

Many studies show immigrant workers have minimal wage and employment effects on native workers, Card told an estimated 140 people in Ives Hall.

Native-born computer scientists and biochemists are in short supply here, said Card, the Class of 1950 Professor of Economics at the University of California-Berkeley. So, foreign-born professionals fill the gap; 45 percent of workers with doctoral degrees under the age of 40 in the United States are from such nations as India and China.

At the other end of the wage spectrum, a similar phenomenon is occurring, said Card, whose research includes exploring how people think about immigration.

Demand for agricultural, child care and elder care workers has risen, while domestic supplies of workers to fill those niches declined, he said.

As a result, Mexicans and workers from other nations are attracted to the jobs that increasingly help middle-class American families raise their children and care for aged relatives, said Card. Although analysis shows that immigration has little impact on wages of native-born workers over the past 30 years, research shows that many natives are opposed to or highly ambivalent about immigration, he said.

Immigration policy views of most native-born people are not driven by economic impacts, he said, but by concerns about language and other differences newcomers bring to the nation.

Fourteen percent of the population in the United States is composed of immigrants, he said. In 1970 the figure was 5 percent.

As director of the Labor Studies Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Card received the coveted John Bates Clark Prize in 1995. The prize is awarded by the American Economic Association every other year to the economist under 40 whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field.

Card was also a co-recipient of the IZA Prize in Labor Economics in 2006 and was awarded the Frisch Medal by the Econometric Society in 2007.

During his week on campus, Card conducted a seminar for Cornell faculty members and participated in various graduate student and faculty meetings.

Card's March 15 talk was sponsored by Cornell's Institute for the Advancement of Economics; his visit was hosted by the ILR School's Department of Labor Economics.

Mary Catt is a staff writer for the ILR School.