America's Voice Blog

Posted 03/28/11 at 01:50pm By Van Le

Report Analyzes True Economic Effects of Arizona SB 1070

laborersA year ago this April, Arizona passed its now-infamous SB 1070 bill, which has polarized the immigration debate around the nation and spawned both counter and copycat bills.  The law itself yet remains unenforced, due to legal challenges to its constitutionality.  Ahead of the one-year anniversary, the Immigration Policy Center and Center for American Progress last week released a very interesting new report, entitled “A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie: The Economic Impact of Legalization Versus Deportation.”  The report analyzes two scenarios: what would happen if SB 1070 were carried out to its full intended effect and every single undocumented immigrant was purged from Arizona, and would happen if the state instead decided to pursue legalization.

The report points out that the US immigration debate has become so heated that public discussion tends to be lacking in substance, with facts left altogether out of the equation.  It seeks to explore what is best for Arizona economically in this post-recession, and the numbers are significant.

If every undocumented immigrant were expelled from Arizona, it would:

  • Decrease total employment by 17.2%

  • Eliminate 581,000 jobs for immigrants and native-born workers alike

  • Shrink the state economy by $48.8 billion

  • Reduce state tax revenues by 10.1%

However, if all of the undocumented in Arizona were instead legalized, it would:

  • Increase total employment by 7.7%

  • Add 261,000 jobs for immigrants and native-born workers

  • Increase labor income by $5.6 billion

  • Increase tax revenue by $1.86 billion

Why?  The report’s introduction explains:

Undocumented immigrants don’t simply “fill” jobs; they create jobs. Through the work they perform, the money they spend, and the taxes they pay, undocumented immigrants sustain the jobs of many other workers in the U.S. economy, immigrants and native-born alike. Were undocumented immigrants to suddenly vanish, the jobs of many Americans would vanish as well.

In contrast, were undocumented immigrants to acquire legal status, their wages and productivity would increase, they would spend more in our economy and pay more in taxes, and new jobs would be created. Simply put, Arizona’s current approach to immigration policy is economically self-destructive.

Click here to read more.
Posted 02/03/10 at 03:15pm By Mahwish Khan

The $4 Trillion Opportunity: Comprehensive Immigration Reform

The President announced his budget Monday, sending many members of Congress into an angry frenzy over $3.83 trillion that Obama had allotted for an array of programs – mostly to fight growing unemployment and strengthen our weak economy.

But some members of Congress -- many of the same who are complaining over the “huge” deficit-- are trying to keep this big secret under wraps:

There is a $4.1 trillion choice in Washington. We did the math, and put simply:

Comprehensive Immigration Reform = $1.5 trillion increase in GDP over 10 years

Mass Deportation = $2.6 trillion loss in GDP over 10 years

How's that, you ask?

A new report called “Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” by the Immigration Policy Center and the Center for American Progress shows that a policy of comprehensive immigration reform would grow U.S. GDP by 0.84 percent over 10 years, or a cumulative $1.5 trillion.

Click here to read more.
Posted 01/30/10 at 11:23am By Jackie Mahendra

Senator Graham: Deporting 12 Million Won’t Work, Need a Comprehensive Immigration Fix

Yesterday Lindsey Graham, Republican Senator from South Carolina, stood up for a comprehensive fix to our badly damaged immigration system. Graham has been crafting bipartisan legislation with Senator Schumer for some time now, and details of the bill are expected soon.

Senator Graham makes the case, in an interview with Brian Goldsmith, that the frenzied attempts to define comprehensive reform as "Amnesty" are as ludicrous as the enforcement-only alternative to real reform: the dangerous (and costly) notion that we can deport or jail twelve million people-- the number of unauthorized immigrants currently in the U.S.

Marc Ambinder reports for The Atlantic:

BRIAN GOLDSMITH: You're one of the few Republicans fighting for comprehensive immigration reform, which most Republicans have called amnesty. Where do you think that stands?

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well I think the idea of border security as a confidence builder is the way to start. Most Americans are very practical and reasonable. They're upset about broken borders and our out-of-control immigration system. They will buy into a comprehensive solution if we can prove to them, and only if we can prove to them, we don't have twenty million more illegal immigrants, ten years, twenty years down the road.

And when it comes to the illegal alien population, if the definition of amnesty is you got to deport twelve million people, or put twelve million people in jail, then we'll never have a comprehensive solution, because that's just not workable, it's not practical.

To me, amnesty would be forgiving people, like Ronald Reagan did, with no consequence, and not repairing the system. Amnesty is what we have today. What I would like to see is the illegal immigrant population come out of the shadows, be biometrically identified, be required to learn English, pay the fines for their crime, and get right with the law. If they want to be a citizen, get in the back of the line, not break into line.

And to my Republican colleagues, I can understand the politics of this is difficult. Big things are hard to do. But I believe in 2008, we lost a lot of ground with the Hispanic community because of the rhetoric and the tone we set on immigration.

The cost of deporting these 12 million unauthorized immigrants has been pegged at anywhere from $100 billion (an estimate by ICE, Immigration Customs and Enforcement) to $230 billion dollars over 5 years (according to a Center for American Progress analysis cited in  the Washington Post), with a loss of 2.6 billion to our GDP. On the other hand, new studies show that immigration reform would bring about a $1.5 trillion boon to our economy.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the progressive political blog Daily Kos, argues in "Immigration reform would be good for the economy:"

Anti-immigrant forces are hoping the bad economy gives them ammo to scuttle the common-sense legalization of 10-15 million undocumented workers in this country. The thinking goes, since so many Americans have no jobs, there would be little appetite to grant "illegals" the right to stay and work.

That may have some rhetorical power, even if few Americans are lining up to work in slaughterhouses or as day laborers. But fact is, normalizing their status would be a huge boost to the economy.

Bottom line is that the Senator is right: when it comes to immigration reform, we can't afford to wait. Or to take the simplistic "No Amnesty!" bait.

Posted 01/13/10 at 01:49pm By Mahwish Khan

Drum Major Institute: CIR ASAP “Makes the Grade,” Let’s Not Pass the Buck

A new analysis by the Drum Major Institute (DMI) found that the Comprehensive Immigration Reform ASAP bill introduced by Congressmen Solomon Ortiz and Luis Gutierrez late last year would "make the grade" for strengthening and expanding America’s middle class. DMI states the case succinctly:

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act sets the standard for an immigration policy, which will boost our nation’s economy and strengthen and expand its middle class. 

The Institute administered a two-part "middle class test," which the bill passed with flying colors. The legislation was given a soaring "A" for "bolstering the contributions immigrants make to the U.S. economy," and a solid "A-" for "its potential to end the exploitation of undocumented immigrants that threaten the wages and working conditions of America’s aspiring middle class."

That’s a pretty good-looking report card.

An additional study this week, from Manuel Pastor of the University of Southern California Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, examined the potential economic effects of comprehensive reform on the state of California.  The study finds that “newly legalized immigrants earned higher wages, spent more consumer dollars, paid more taxes and helped create jobs,” leading to an economic boon of $16 billion to the state.  

As Pastor stated:

People keep using our economic condition as an excuse to not do comprehensive immigration reform. It’s just the opposite: What we need to do to right our economy and move forward is create a path to legalization.

As California battles severe budget shortfalls, legislators should take note that real immigration reform would increase revenue, boosting the "state and local tax base by about $350 million in the short run."

That's no chump change. It’s also just the latest evidence supporting an already-compelling case for enacting comprehensive immigration reform ASAP.

Click here to read more.
Posted 01/12/10 at 05:27pm By Jackie Mahendra

Latest “Progress Report:” Immigration Reform Integral to Economic Recovery

The crew over at Think Progress devote today's "Progress Report" to the economics of immigration reform, stating:

President Obama's current focus is, understandably, "jobs, jobs, jobs." However, Hinojosa's findings show that the issues of immigration and the economy are far from mutually exclusive. While anti-immigrant groups use anecdotal evidence to erroneously claim that legalization would be disastrous for the American worker, passing comprehensive immigration reform would not only strengthen the labor market, it would promote needed economic growth. Polling released yesterday additionally shows that 66 percent of voters support a program that requires undocumented immigrants to register, meet certain requirements, and become legal taxpayers on their way to becoming full U.S. citizens.

They dig deeper into a recent study by University of California at Los Angeles professor Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, which "showed that comprehensive immigration reform with a path to legalization for the nation's undocumented immigrants could generate a cumulative $1.5 trillion in added U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) over 10 years." 

In addition, they cite recent research that together demonstrates the vast economic benefits of immigration reform, as well as the impact it would have on all workers. Among these:

  • The libertarian Cato Institute recently found that legalizing undocumented immigrants and creating future legal channels could increase household income by about $180 billion in the 10th year, or a welfare gain of 1.27 percent. (The recent Hinojosa study reached a similar conclusion: $189 billion).

  • Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated that the 2006 reform would have generated $66 billion in new revenue from taxes and fees, over a 10-year period.

  • A study by Giovanni Peri, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of California-Davis, further illustrated that immigrants "complement" the native-born workforce, boosting the productivity and wages of native-born workers.

Click here to read more.
Posted 01/07/10 at 02:35pm By Jackie Mahendra

New Study: Immigration Reform Would Bring $1.5 Trillion in Economic Growth

This morning I was live-tweeting from an event at the Center for American Progress (CAP), co-sponsored by the Immigration Policy Center, where economic experts from a wide range of institutions had come together to document the astounding economic benefits to the United States that would come from passing a comprehensive immigration reform package.

The event centered around a new study entitled,  “Raising the Floor for American Workers,” which was written by Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, a professor at UCLA.

As Congress prepares to debate immigration reform early this year, the report crisply lays out the economic argument for fixing our immigration system. Simply put, Americans ignore immigration at the peril of their pocketbooks: passing reform would usher in $1.5 trillion in economic growth. Conversely, we'd see a net drain on our economy of $2.6 trillion over 10 years if we decided to simply deport all undocumented immigrants currently here.

The report examined the impact of the 1986 immigration bill and used economic modeling to make three key findings:

  • Comprehensive immigration reform generates an annual increase in U.S. GDP of at least 0.84 percent. This amounts to $1.5 trillion in additional GDP over 10 years. It also boosts wages for both native-born and newly legalized immigrant workers.

  • A temporary worker program with proper labor protections generates an annual increase in U.S. GDP of 0.44 percent. This amounts to $792 billion of additional GDP over 10 years [...]

  • Mass deportation reduces U.S. GDP by 1.46 percent annually. This amounts to $2.6 trillion in lost GDP over 10 years, not including the actual cost of deportation. [...]

Click here to read more.
Posted 11/06/09 at 04:17pm By Frank Sharry

Q: How Much Taxpayer Money Will GOP Waste to Fire up an Anti-Immigrant Base?

CashA: Billions upon billions, if some Republicans get their way.

Fortunately, they didn't get their way on the Census yesterday.

The Vitter-Bennett census amendment to the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill became a moot point yesterday afternoon when the Senate ended debate on the bill in a nail-biting procedural vote of 60 to 39, which comes as a relief to advocates who worked non-stop, through hubs like DontWreckTheCensus.org, to help sink the unconstitutional, impractical, and expensive measure.  

Senators Vitter (R-LA) and Bennett (R-UT) were adamant that the 2010 Census ask about the citizenship and immigration status of respondents, a change which would have cost the government millions of dollars. All Republican Senators voted to keep debate going, save Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who was absent for the vote.

If the latest antics of Senators Vitter and Bennett are any indication, no cost is too high when it comes to stoking the immigration issue for an unquenchable hard-line base.  Their threat to derail our nation’s decennial census had been panned by nearly every census expert and would have cost billions of taxpayer dollars.  Senate Democrats deserve credit for standing up to the extreme wing of the Republican party that continues to bring up immigration as a wedge strategy in debate after debate-- like a bad broken record. 

Click here to read more.
Posted 09/02/09 at 12:37pm By Web Team

Immigration Reform as Economic Stimulus

Immigration Policy Center just released a new report by Senior Researcher Walter Ewing this week, which injects “a healthy dose of economic realism” into the debate over how the government should handle the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country.

According to Ewing, our current economic situation needs immigration reform that helps, rather than hurts, the US economy.  He goes on to list three potential changes in immigration policy and compares their economic impact – leaving aside the moral and civil issues that surround the various options. He asks:

Even more to the point in the current economic climate, how can we best tap these millions of unauthorized workers, consumers, and--yes--taxpayers as a force for economic recovery?

Here is Ewing’s analysis, shortened and in layman's terms:

One: Deport Them All

  • The deportation process alone would cost between $206-230 billion over 5 years.

  • With the loss of these workers, the amount of money generated by the US economy would decrease by $245 billion.

  • More than 2.8 million US jobs would be lost.

Two: Deportation through "Attrition through Enforcement." specifically through use of "E-Verify:"

  • Implementation of mandatory E-Verify would cost 12 billion over ten years.

  • $17.3 billion less would be collected in federal taxes over 10 years.

Three: Improved Process of Legalization:

  • The 2006 immigration reform bill would have generated 66 billion in revenue over 10 years, mostly from income and payroll taxes from new and newly-legalized immigrants.

These findings come on the heels of another recent report, from a slightly different perspective, which highlights how immigration reform is a key to revitalizing the economy. The report, entitled, "Restriction or Legalization? Measuring the Economic Benefits of Immigration Reform," was issued by the CATO Institute late last month.

This latest economic report by Immigration Policy Center concludes:

Legalization also acknowledges the fact that, since the US economy is now in recession, incorporating currently unauthorized immigrants into our strategy for economic recovery makes far more fiscal sense than spending untold billions of dollars, the middle of multiple budget crises, in a quixotic quest to force them all out of the country.

We hope this dose of economic realism will encourage lawmakers to move on real reform that's in our nation's best interest.

By Guest Blogger Nora Feely.

Posted 08/31/09 at 06:04pm By Mahwish Khan

U.S. Taxpayers Pay to Send U.S Citizens on Free Trips To Mexico?

So apparently, the US government has been spending its time -- and our money -- to send American citizens...on free trips to Mexico?

In April, our government admitted that it wrongly deported a North Carolina native, Mark Lyttle, who speaks no Spanish and is mentally ill -- a fact of which federal agents were allegedly aware.

The Charlotte Observer notes:

Lyttle is one of a growing number of people who have been swept up in the federal immigration detention system since 2001, when terrorist attacks prompted an unprecedented effort to find and deport illegal immigrants. The U.S. government deported 350,000 people in the fiscal year that ended in October 2008.

Mark Lyttle says he told agents that he was a U.S. citizen, but that nobody believed him.  According to Jacqueline Stevens, an Associate Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who has closely followed Mark’s case:

Mark says he remembers the interview. The woman told him he had brown skin, so maybe he was from Mexico. Or maybe he was "Oriental," whatever that means. She was going to alert ICE to follow up.

Click here to read more.
Posted 06/03/09 at 10:15am By Jackie Mahendra

WSJ: Economic Downturn Could Bolster US Immigration Overhaul, New Polling Finds

Wall Street JournalNew public opinion research by Lake Research Partners showed up in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, ripping to shreds the conventional wisdom that immigration reform can't happen in a down economy:

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Tough economic times may be a boon for supporters of a broad overhaul of the nation's immigration policies, according to pollsters who are testing the waters ahead of an upcoming White House summit on immigration.

"If anything, the economic climate has actually improved the environment for immigration reform, at least as far as the public is concerned," said Celinda Lake, who heads Lake Research Partners.

"A salient issue is that reform would make immigrants all taxpayers," Lake said during a telephone briefing.

Lake's research team, which released its findings yesterday, conducted a series of six focus groups across the country in advance of the Presiden't June meeting on immigration reform. They found that the bad economy has put voters in a problem-solving state of mind.

The participants, which included several key swing demographic groups from Kansas City to Phoenix, strongly favored the specifics of a comprehensive immigration reform proposal in which undocumented immigrants register with the government, pay taxes, learn English, pass a background check, and apply for citizenship. Participants broadly rejected proposals calling for mass-deportation or enforcement-only tactics in favor of pragmatic proposals that move America forward.

Check out the America's Voice polling roundup to learn more.

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