Immigration reform would help economy
Guest Voz: JAY BYERS and MARK ROSENBURY are Iowa Immigration Education Coalition Steering Committee members. Contact: info@iowaimmigrationaeducation.org
With the economic crisis foremost on everyone's mind, it is hardly a surprise that the issue of immigration reform has taken a backseat. While it is imperative that Congress act quickly to address this economic and labor crisis, what might come as a surprise is that immigration reform - seemingly unrelated - may actually be a key facet in invigorating our stagnant economy and creating jobs for Americans.
A recent report by UCLA's Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda calculates the economic effects of the three most often discussed immigration scenarios:
(1) comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to legalization;
(2) a temporary worker program, with no pathway to legalization; and
(3) mass deportations coupled with sealing the border.
The study shows:
- comprehensive immigration reform would produce the greatest economic benefits for Americans, finding that: - It would generate an additional $1.5 trillion in U.S. GDP over 10 years. Within three years, it would boost wages for native-born and newly legalized immigrants, increase tax revenues up to $4.5 billion to $5.4 billion and increase consumer spending - enough to support 750,000 to 900,000 new U.S. jobs.
- The temporary worker program is estimated to increase U.S. GDP by $792 billion over 10 years, while decreasing wages for both native-born and newly legalized immigrants.
- Mass deportation
would reduce the U.S. GDP an estimated $2.6 trillion over 10 years - providing some increase in wages for less-skilled native workers but reducing wages for higher-skilled natives and causing widespread job loss. This does not account for the cost of deportation, which has been estimated at over $200 billion.
Iowa-specific studies echo these findings. According to the Iowa Policy Project, unauthorized families in Iowa paid between $40 million and $62 million in taxes in 2007 alone. Another study, by the Perryman Group, found that if all undocumented immigrants were removed from Iowa, local economies would lose $1.4 billion in potential revenue, $613.4 million in economic output, and approximately 8,800 jobs. A study by the National Milk Producers Federation confirms the essential role of immigrant labor. A loss of 50 percent of immigrant dairy farm-workers nationally would lower sales annually by $6.7 billion and reduce total economic output by $11.2 billion, while removing all immigrant dairy workers would produce a net loss of nearly 133,000 U.S. jobs.
This validates what numerous other reports have stated in the past year. Organizations ranging from the libertarian Cato Institute, to the widely acclaimed Brookings Institute, to the bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations have all weighed in on the economic ramifications of reform, and all agree - America needs comprehensive immigration reform.
Much of the recent discourse concerning reform has been divisive in nature, and falls out of line with the fact that comprehensive immigration reform has traditionally garnered bipartisan support. Some might even be surprised at the fact that comprehensive immigration reform enjoys vast public support. According to a January 2010 poll by the Benenson Strategy Group, 62 percent of Republican voters and 87 percent of voters overall support an earned path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. In the coming months, Congress has a chance to make real, positive change for our country. We all agree that our economy needs to be fixed and we all agree that our current immigration policies are broken. Why not make the decision that benefits everyone?
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20 comments:
Please, Dee, explain to me how illegal immigration is a good thing.
I'd like to know how it's good for any nation to allow everyone that can enter the country to do so.
Enlighten me, please. Give me examples of countries that were made better when they allowed tens of millions of people to enter their country without any controls whatsoever.
Are there any?
Please, don't use our country's early history as an example. Once it became clear that unlimited immigration was a bad thing, our leaders wised up and began regulating immmigration.
Again, are there any countries that can be improved by opening the flood gates and letting tens of millions of people enter, no matter what their reasons, goals, educations, health, etc.?
I'd really like to know!!
Rusty,
To not remember our very own country's history of immigration in this discussion is like starting a debate with duct tape over your mouth.
Our history is the very reason we are where we are with the Immigration Debate. We welcomed all people until we instituted exclusionary laws based on race, starting with the Chinese Exclustion Act.
I will have more of a response for you after a dinner break.
I have some ideas for how Immigration can help the economy:
1) Tax (or 'apply a fee' as the Dems call it) all money being wired outside the US at a rate of 40%.
2) Impose an 'excise tax' on becoming a citizen/legal resident of the US.
3) If they choose not be a legal resident/citizen, and choose to remain here, they must pay a penalty of $2000 a year per person in the household.
4) For those who can't afford to be a resident/citizen, subsidize the process costs.
5) Tax air travel and 'immigration devices' at a rate of 10% to help pay the the resident/citizens subsidiary program.
6) Write a law requiring immigrants to purchase 'coyote insurance', with a minimal amount of coverage mandated to cover things that they probably will never need.
*ideas taken from the recently passed HC bill.
Rusty,
I thought about your argument over dinner. Let's go back to your argument. You say, "Tell me which countries were made better when they allowed tens of millions of people to enter their country without any controls whatsoever."
I will give you one. The USA.
Now let me ask you a question. "Tell me which countries partnered with the elite in their neighboring country(s) allowing their Big Businesses to hire tens of millions of "south of the border illegal aliens" maintaining a cheap labor pool, while underpaying them in unsafe working conditions while carefully excluding other ethnicities, in order to successfully nation build the Number 1 Country in the World?"
I think you know the answer.
So here we are, with 20M (according to your math) people (the size of the state of NY) in our country. It is clear we only have 2 choices:
1. We can implement Immigration Reform and allow those that are felony free of the 20M to get in line and apply for citizenship.
OR
2. We can MASS DEPORT the 20M. And even if we did it over 5 years = 4 M per year. This means empty out the state of Kentucky each year over 5 years.
No logical person wants to do that Rusty. It would cost us Trillions and devastate our country. The people are here. They are working and contributing. Look what happened to Pottsville, IA when they mass deported 600 workers. They put their entire town out of business. Kaput!!
Anon-AZ,
Immigration Reform means the 12 - 20M here who are felony free would be allowed to get in line and apply for citizenship. They would pay the fees. They would be counted, taxed, etc. The USA already makes billions in revenue taxes and paid in SS taxes (with no returns). Having them documented, counted would mean even more revenue for us. And we could end, once and for all, all of this racial profiling of all brown people and costly imprisonment of these workers. And maybe Apraio and his goons would finally retire! More savings.
The USA already makes billions in revenue taxes and paid in SS taxes (with no returns). Having them documented, counted would mean even more revenue for us.
It would also increase costs to SS and medi-care as they age, in turn shortening the life of SS and medi-care even further.
And we could end, once and for all, all of this racial profiling of all brown people and costly imprisonment of these workers.
This would continue because there would be more coming thinking they would get the next amnesty.
Your arguments haven't changed, even after they are shown to be useless for your claims. Come up with some new stuff.
"The USA already makes billions in revenue taxes and paid in SS taxes (with no returns)."
How are they paying SS taxes if they don't have SS numbers? Are you implying they are engaging in identity fraud?
How many would be felony free when you take into account the number that have committed I.D. or SS number theft? Millions would have to be sent home then so you have just shot yourself in the foot on that one.
Immigration Foolishness and Jokes : Build a twenty-foot fence and hundred-foot moat on the southern border, and then hire some brown guys cash-in-hand to do maintenance and garden work - Inside Turtle Polics
Politics is the Art of Hypocrisy :
Tom Tancredo, the Minutemen and Teabaggers : Do they move votes ??
Shaking the tree with a lot of noise but poor collecting of nuts !
Do as Lindsey Graham and John Mc Cain : say one thing in English and the Contrary Thing in Spanish ! ( Clever guys !!! )
Do as “Lindsay Grahamnesty” and Lou Dobbs that square the circle and duplicate the cube ( They have more Great Paradoxes than the books of Greek Philosophers ! )
They apply the Gospel Maxim : "that the Left Hand Does not know what the right hand is doing".
Immigration Lawyers kneel all days at 5 am and pray for the Good Health of Anti Immigration Wackos so that Illegals are scared and pay to be defended or legalized.
“My mom is against illegals” : But how many votes does your mom move ??
Turtle Politics recommends : Democrats can go as safe as turtles and vote the "Dream Act", that is so logical that it can not cause an uproar anywhere.
Immigration is Kryptonite for Super Obama, he should learn to manage Kryptonite with lead aprons and robes, so that he is not left sterilized in his testicles.
Youth, Minorities, Politics :
Milenials.com
Vicente Duque
Anon,
Clueless. They do not steal identities. When needed, they make up numbers. They pay soc sec taxes. They never collect a refund. They pay all sales/revenue/property taxes. Several studies indicate they contribute Billions in Tax Revenue.
They most they are guilty of is a civil crime of crossing the border.
They come here to work.
Dee wrote, "A recent report by UCLA's Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda calculates the economic effects of the three most often discussed immigration scenarios:"
URL?
Does anyone really expect this prof to have an unbiased point of view. I will make some preliminary comments that may or may not apply until I have a chance to read and analyze the study.
I see nothing in Dee's rendition to indicate that Ojeda's study make similar estimates of the cost in terms of unwanted population growth, environmental damage, depletion of natural resources, traffic congestion that leads to more expensive highway construction,more school construction needed, more ADC, food stamps, Medicaid, Etc. If he omitted this from his study then his bias is clearly indicated and unworthy of an academician who should be seeking only the truth and never publish a one-sided analysis lik this appears to be.
Admittedly there will always be a need for some farm workers and to be honest about it some will be needed the year around and cannot return to their homelands in the winter. I said some, not all. Surely everyone knows there is more work on a farm during the growing and harvest seasons than there is in the winter. What do these folks do in the winter -- live on food stamps etc.?
El Duque wrote, "They apply the Gospel Maxim : "that the Left Hand Does not know what the right hand is doing"."
That must be the same maxim that Alinskyites follow right behind their leader, Obama. Did anyone notice how he stole a page out of the GOP playbook today by allowing off shore drilling for oil. Drill, Baby, Drill!
We all know the history of immigration in this country but some have forgotten that times have changed. We are no longer a nation of a few millions with much in the way of natural resources. Surely no one thinks policies of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries are appropriate for today.
Thr Brit and Germans are even beginning to think about a stable population as a good thing. It will not be painless but the alternative wpuld be much worse. It's time for America to step up to this problem with the best economic minds in the country -- at least those who understand that our natural resources, one of the things that made our country great, are not without limits. Our immigration and illegal alien policies need to be structured around that reality.
In the case of immigration, more is less, less for each of us.
The link is in the post (at the top) in Blue.
Of the 2 cities of Houston and Dallas.They had 26.000 births.Of them 70% were children born to women that were Illegal.At a unsecured cost to the cities,hospitals and taxpayers of 92 million dollars.
The study by UCLA Social Sciences Professor Dr. Hinojosa-Ojeda is a great example of junk science. Since he is not an Economics Professor he misuses economic analysis to come to his conclusions. No effort was made to study the overall job market effects of Illegal Immigration. The study focused on people who received amnesty in the 1986 CIR. Thus the truly obvious conclusion is if you legalize Illegal Immigrants they will have higher wages.
This study does not look at those people who could be working but are not because an Illegal Immigrant took their job then was legalized. Studies that focus on American Workers in the same job markets as Illegal Immigrants show the American Workers experience much higher unemployment rates and an average 8% decline in wages, which hurts GDP.
The most problematic aspect of this study is that it uses international trade models to analyze the domestic job market. It’s like using a flat blade screw driver on a Phillips screw head.
Here are the worst problems with the Cato Study:
1. They assume that if a working Illegal Immigrant becomes a working Legal Resident their productivity goes up.
2. They assume that if the oversupply of Labor represented by Illegal Immigration dries up companies would hire more Lawyers, Accountants, and HR People to keep from getting sued.
3. They assume every Citizen Worker displaced by an Illegal Immigrant can find a job as a supervisor or higher level professional.
4. This study directly links the supply of Capital to the number of workers. The supply of Capital is actually connected to the size of wages.
5. The study uses the disproved assumption that Illegal Immigrants are doing jobs Americans won't do and ignores the cost of unemployment and welfare paid to unemployed American Workers.
6. They assume a smaller economy is bad and a larger economy is good. Canadian GDP is smaller that Mexican GDP. Who is better off?
Cato adjusts the data to fit the conclusion.
If people put their personal prejudices aside, they could understand the facts that Iowa's immigrant population is less than 2%, but if you listened to the pro-illegals, you would think that the removal of some of the 2 % of illegal aliens would destroy Iowa's economy rather than make it stronger. Population-driven economic growth is ultimately unsustainable. Doesn't anyone understand the concept of finite natural resources, including farm land in Iowa?
Obama will spend millions of your dollars to save the Great Lakes from "invasive species" yet he continues to thwart efforts to secure our borders and save our country from another invasive specie.
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action Plan (FY2010 - FY2014) directs aggressive action under five priority "focus areas" the task force has identified as vital for restoring the Great Lakes, which includes combating invasive species. The plan includes efforts to institute a "zero tolerance policy" toward new invasions, including the establishment of self-sustaining populations of invasive species, such as Asian Carp.
What if we had a zero tolerance policy for illegal aliens? Would that help to secure the borders?
I thought you wanted to have a converstion about effective measures to secure the border. Do you have any ideas beyond amnesty for the illegals and punishment for the employers? Do you really think the latter will work without E-verify to ID the miscreant employers? Do you think illegals will be deterred or encouraged by amnesty?
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