The measuring instrument, not the labor market, decides what immigration did.
From the CPS's ±1 million error bars, reweighting, and nonresponse in counting the migrant reversal to the OLS-versus-shift-share estimator choice that systematically reshapes results across 88 studies, methodological artifacts — not market fundamentals — set the sign and size of reported immigration effects.
The same conclusion keeps arriving from across the workspace's research — 1 topics independently instantiate this theme. Filter the evidence by where it came from:
The native-wage effect swings from −0.7% to +1.3% purely on instrument construction, weighting, and geography choices — not on any observed labor-market outcome.
Across 88 studies, the estimator and design choices — not labor-market fundamentals — set the sign and size of reported immigration wage effects.
The CPS's own weighting machinery manufactures population changes that never happened, the clearest demonstration that the instrument — not the market — decides what immigration did.
The field's primary measurement instrument is now suspended by an administrative privacy order, so what immigration economics can report is gated by data infrastructure rather than by labor-market outcomes.