One of the most hotly debated aspects of immigration policy is whether companies that bring skilled workers to the U.S. are lowering wages and driving down earnings for current residents.

So a trio of economists, including Giovanni Peri at the University of California, Davis, looked at immigration in 219 metropolitan areas from 1990 to 2010. They found that as immigrants in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — the so-called STEM professions – flocked to a city, the more wages grew for the native-born, college-educated population. Their findings were released this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.