The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has released a report showing immigration helps boost overall wages for US workers and improves worker productivity. From Bloomberg:

“There is no evidence that immigrants crowd out U.S.-born workers in either the short or long run,” Giovanni Peri, an associate professor at the University of California-Davis and a visiting scholar at the San Francisco Fed, said in the paper released today. “Data show that, on net, immigrants expand the U.S. economy’s productive capacity, stimulate investment, and promote specialization that in the long run boosts productivity.”

Immigrants, who tend to be less educated and lack English- language skills, allow U.S.-born workers with similar levels of education to shift toward more communications-intensive jobs, which generally pay better, Peri said. Also, a growing workforce prompts companies to expand and upgrade equipment, making the economy more productive, he said.

An inflow of immigrants equal to 1 percent of the increase in employment helps boost overall incomes by 0.6 percent to 0.9 percent, according to Peri’s research. That means that immigration pushed wages up by $5,100 on average from 1990 to 2007 after adjusting for inflation, accounting for 20 percent to 25 percent of the gain during those years, he said.

The paper comes as U.S. hiring shows signs of cooling. A Labor Department report on Sept. 3 may show that private payroll rose by 47,000 this month after a 71,000 gain in July, and the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The LA Times reports on the Nevada governor's race which has Latino Brian Sandoval seeking to become the next Republican governor of the state. Sandoval has risked alienating his Latino base by endorsing the Arizona law and tougher drivers license rules. The GOP is hoping that Latino voters will vote for someone who looks like them even if he or she supports policies that are the polar opposite of what they believe. I doubt very much that will happen. Voters vote their interests first and then may look at a person's ethnicity if two candidates are similar in their views. Here in Memphis, for example, Congressman Steve Cohen has easily won reelection despite the fact that he's white in a majority black district and despite having formidable black primary opponents. The reason - he's had a solid record voting the interests of his district. Hispanics are going to overwhelmingly vote for Rory Reid for governor in Nevada because he's pro-immigration. I'm guessing he'll get an even higher percentage of Hispanic votes than was the case in the last election for governor mainly because the national GOP has moved so far in to the anti-immigration camp.

USCIS reports that 1000 H-1Bs were receipted over the past week with 34,500 now counted. 400 masters cap cases were added bringing the total to 13,000 in that category. That's about on pace with the last several weeks and the exhaustion target in that category remains February 2011.

My methodology is simple. I take a rolling average of usage over the last four weeks and then project out in how many weeks the quota will be used up if that pace continues. Obviously, the pace can pick up or slow down and I'll adjust my target exhaustion date as we see that happening. Also note that in the past, when we get closer to the end, there will likely be a rush in filing and there is no reason to believe that won't happen again. That could push the date up a few weeks.