As the Trump administration continues to vilify immigrants, “Morning Joe” economic analyst Steve Rattner broke out his charts on Friday to explain immigrants’ positive effect on American prosperity.
Rattner began by showing viewers how the U.S. immigrant population has fluctuated over time in response to changing policies. Citing data from the Migration Policy Institute, the former Treasury official noted that after World War I, strict immigration requirements dropped America’s foreign-born population to as low as 4%.
However, in recent decades, more liberal immigration laws have allowed that number to increase and, in 2024, immigrants accounted for the largest share of the American population since the early 1900s.
As Rattner noted, this increase in immigration is much needed, since the U.S. population is expected to start shrinking by 2030. “Immigration has always been important to the growth of the American population, and it’s more important today than ever before, because birth rates here are declining,” he said.
“Without a growing population, of course, you have fewer and fewer people working per retired person, which makes the burden on the federal government’s finances all that tougher,” Rattner explained.
He also discussed the important role immigrants play more broadly in the U.S. economy, noting they “constitute a significant portion of the labor force,” especially in fields such as farm labor, construction and health care.
“Over a quarter, 27%, of our doctors are born somewhere else,” he noted. “So imagine if we did not have immigration, what would happen to our health care?”
The “Morning Joe” analyst also highlighted immigrants’ contribution to the business sector: “If you look at what we call unicorns, companies worth over a billion dollars — so these young, fast-growing tech companies, mostly — you can see 44% of them were started by people who were born somewhere else.” Rattner said the data was important to cut through the administration’s rhetoric and put the contributions of immigrants to the United States “in perspective.” You can watch Rattner’s full analysis in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
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