Photo by Jenny Downing.
Last week, the White House reaffirmed President Obama’s commitment to working on immigration reform during his first year as president. While Obama has made clear that fixing the economy is his number one priority, a summary of recent research released by the Immigration Policy Center (IPC) shows that fixing the broken immigration system could bring us one step closer to economic recovery.
As right-wing pundits falsely claim that immigration reform would cost the American public ““billions,” available research suggests that — had the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 passed — it would have generated a much needed $66 billion in new revenue during 2007-2016 from income and payroll taxes, as well as various administrative fees. Workers with legal status earn and spend more, as evidenced by the effects of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). According to Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, Director of the UCLA North American Integration and Development Center, IRCA:
“…led to a boom in family investments in education and a rush to join the mainstream banking system, generating very high rates of home ownership and small business investments, providing long-term economic benefits of job creation, community development and strong net tax revenue growth…”
In fact, according to Giovanni Peri, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California-Davis, immigrants don’t even compete with the majority of natives for the same jobs because they tend to have different levels of education and to work in different occupations. In contrast to what Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs might be telling their audiences, immigrants usually “complement” the native-born workforce-which increases the productivity, and therefore the wages, of the native-born.
Comprehensive immigration reform would also eliminate the “trap door” that artificially suppresses wages and allow workers to compete fairly for the first time. Cristina Jiménez, an immigration policy consultant at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy has pointed out that “Consigning undocumented workers to a precarious existence undermines all who aspire to a middle-class standard of living.” In a recent post on the Hill’s Congress Blog, Jeanne Butterfield, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, explained:
Moving forward with comprehensive immigration reform will ensure that all workers are here legally, will punish unscrupulous employers who undercut their honest competitors, and will restore integrity to the labor market. It will lift wages for workers, ensure all workers are paying taxes, and restore fairness to our immigration system.
While a policy designed to deport approximately 10 million undocumented immigrants would cost at least $206 billion over five years, or $41.2 billion annually; immigration reform would pay for itself in the form of increased wages, buying-power, and tax contributions that would benefit all working men and women.
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3 comments
Herbert Hidalgo says:
April 14, 2009 at 3:36 pm (UTC -5 )
Immigrants made this country what it is, people who came from all over the world to work hard in the new world, to deny the positive side of immigrationn is simply selfish and unrealistic.
Gabe Sanchez, Maj, USAF, Retired says:
April 15, 2009 at 2:50 pm (UTC -5 )
Greetings:
I think one of the things we should mention, to all the paranoid Americans that think that putting up huge fences around the US would keep out terrorists, narco and gun-traffickers and the like is the following:
- People who are provided a legal status to come to work will come in the “front door” so to speak versus taking a chance of dying out in the hot Arizona desert.
- Narco-traffickers, terrorists and gun/other smugglers will not come in the “front door.” That would make them a lot easier to pick out at our borders versus the “good guys/gals” who come to work.
- Terrorists typically come in with valid Visas from places other than Latino America. Hence “911.”
- The money we spend on “defense” or “the fence” as some people would call it, and all the hardware, man power and other resources we spend daily, will not ever completely seal the borders. Persons will only find other ways to get here if they have a mind and a need to. That money would be better spent on assisting our economy and that of our neighbors to the South in bolstering their economy and thus creating jobs for the masses who flee here, every year.
- Persons who come here spend money on goods, food, rent, cars, homes and so forth. If you kick them out you lose that income and foreclose on more homes. If a person pays taxes and can buy a home, they should be allowed to have a valid ID so they can work, get benefits and a SSAN so they won’t be treated as criminals by the law enforcement types, particularly those who profile minorities.
- Persons with valid IDs and SSANs can have work benefits such as medical insurance, auto insurance and potentially a retirement check, someday; thus reducing the dollars spent needlessly on general hospitals, automobile repairs and medical bills from auto accidents, and welfare type programs for homeless/poor people who can/might turn to crime to feed their families.
If any of this makes sense, I think we should promote it more. It does to me and I served our country for 21 years as a defender of freedom. Along the way I picked up my bachelor’s and master’s degree in political science.
My forefathers, who were born in Texas, before the US was the US, came along and became citizens by default, i.e. the border moved south but they didn’t. And why should they? That was where they were born of the blood of the Native Americans and the Spaniards who first came to America in pursuit of a better place to live and work and intermarried with the Native Americans versus exterminate all the natives they found there in what some call “manifest destiny.” Could the Nazis use that expression too as they sought to “cleanse” the land?
My point is: If we could throw a switch and make all the “illegals” magically disappear, the loss to the economy and the work force would put the final nail in the so called “depression” we are experiencing, currently.
Miguel Atienzo says:
April 19, 2009 at 12:27 pm (UTC -5 )
I think economy bad or good has nothing to do with the posponed Integral Reform to legalized 12 or more millions of undocumented people. The reform is not about to bring to our country 12M more of new inmigrants is about the one are already here for years and years.They are working and will work anyway then they can not be part of the claims of racists that they will get their jobs, the job they don’t do
Reform is necessary and now! Classic Americans can not close the eyes and pretend that they will desapear on the air
Legalizing these segment of the population will bring benefits for everybody. Salaries will not be manipulated and employers will pays fairly and then the skilled workers (American or not) will get the job over those unskilled not in base or legals or illegals
Thank you