This is genuinely contested, and the honest answer is "it depends on what kind, how much, and what you value." Here's a sketch of the real tradeoffs:

**Generally positive effects:**
- Fills labor shortages (both high-skill and low-skill)
- Boosts GDP and often offsets aging populations
- High-skilled immigration tends to increase innovation and entrepreneurship
- Second-generation outcomes are usually strong

**Generally negative or mixed effects:**
- Can depress wages for workers who directly compete with immigrants (evidence is debated, but effects on low-skilled native workers are real in some studies)
- Rapid or poorly-managed immigration can strain housing, schools, and public services
- Cultural and political friction, especially when integration is weak
- Fiscal effects vary—high-skilled immigrants are usually net contributors; low-skilled or refugee populations may be net costs initially

**Where reasonable people disagree:**
- How much weight to give economic efficiency vs. cultural cohesion
- Whether the obligation to citizens differs from obligation to potential immigrants
- How much immigration the political/social system can absorb without backlash
- Whether GDP growth matters more than GDP per capita or median wages

The empirical literature (Borjas vs. Card debates, for example) shows even economists disagree on key questions like wage effects. And "good for the country" smuggles in a value question: good for whom—existing workers, employers, future generations, the immigrants themselves?

Anyone who tells you it's clearly all good or all bad is selling something. Is there a specific angle you're trying to think through?
