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Article snippet: WASHINGTON — When the federal government banned the use of farmworkers from Mexico in 1964, California’s tomato growers did not enlist Americans to harvest the fragile crop. They replaced the lost workers with tomato-picking machines. The Trump administration on Wednesday embraced a proposal to sharply reduce legal immigration, which it said would preserve jobs and lead to higher wages — the same argument advanced by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations half a century ago. But economists say the tomato story and a host of related evidence show that there is no clear connection between less immigration and more jobs for Americans. Rather, the prevailing view among economists is that immigration increases economic growth, improving the lives of the immigrants and the lives of the people who are already here. “The average American worker is more likely to lose than to gain from immigration restrictions,” said Giovanni Peri, an economist at the University of California, Davis. The Trump administration is proposing sharp reductions in the number of skilled and unskilled workers who are allowed to become permanent residents, halving annual immigration from the current level of roughly one million people a year. “This legislation demonstrates our compassion for struggling American families who deserve an immigration system that puts their needs first,” President Trump said. The proposal revives elements of President George W. Bush’s effort to rewrite federal immigrat... Link to the full article to read more