Editing Openai/69640cff-e5e0-8003-a8d1-a78b118ca18b (section)

==== If we restrict attention to welfare of pre‑existing UK residents (a “natives’ welfare” lens), a reasonable synthesis of the UK evidence is: ====
# Average labour-market impacts are small, with some negative wage effects concentrated among the lowest-paid and in specific low-wage occupations. → This suggests the classic “immigration surplus” is likely positive but not large.
# Consumer price effects in immigrant‑intensive low-wage services appear negative (prices lower) at least in certain periods/sectors, which is a real-income gain for consumers. → This pushes the welfare assessment more positive than a wage-only view.
# Public-service and amenity impacts (NHS waiting times, schooling spillovers, crime) do not show large uniform negative externalities; where negative effects appear, they are localized, group-specific, or short-run, and sometimes reverse or dissipate.
# Housing price effects are not a simple “cost” story, and UK evidence (e.g., Sá) can even show negative local price effects via native mobility. Even when prices rise, the first-order effect is redistribution, with net welfare hinging on supply constraints and crowding rather than the price change per se.
# Productivity effects are the biggest swing factor. UK firm/sector evidence more often points to positive or ambiguous productivity links, with important concerns about sorting and identification. If productivity gains are real, net welfare gains from immigration (including low-skilled work) can be meaningfully positive; if the productivity channel were negative, it could overturn the otherwise small positive surplus.

===== The literature does not support the claim that low-skilled immigration has imposed large net welfare losses on the UK as a whole. Instead, it supports something like: =====
* Net welfare for existing residents is likely modestly positive (or near zero but not strongly negative) on average,
* but the distributional impacts can be meaningfully negative for some low-skilled native workers and for some localities,
* and the sign/magnitude hinge heavily on productivity spillovers and on dynamic trajectories (skill acquisition, occupational mobility, family formation).