Immigration is a hotly debated issue in the United
States due to the supposed economic impact it has. The left and the right often
debate whether it will actually hurt or help the economy. The center of
immigration studies produced a report for the Joint Economic Committee in May
of this year. The report has some interesting points.
First the report states that the aggregate size of
the economy has an 11 percent (1.6 trillion) increase in GDP yearly to the
economy, though 97.8 percent of the GDP growth goes back to the immigrants and
not the natives. Secondly the wages in the country due to immigration drop
native wages by an average of 402 billion a year, while increasing the users of
immigrants wages by 437 billion dollars. Thirdly the from early 2000 till
present we have seen a decrease of native workers by 1.3 million in the work
force compared to an increase of 5.3 million immigrants in the work force of
the same period of time. Fourth the National Research Council has concluded
that immigrants (legal and non) great a financial burden of 11.4 billion to
20.2 billion dollars annually on tax payers. The average household run by an
immigrant uses more than 14,000 dollars in government services than it pays in
taxes as well. Lastly the CIS has concluded that if the US would legalize all
current immigrants in the country it would increase the taxpayers burden to 29
billion dollars a year. The closing arguments for the report state that illegal
immigrants aren’t actually the biggest burden on the country but rather
un-educated legal immigrants because they are entitled to many more government
programs.
What are your thoughts on immigration and how reform should come about?
As we discussed in class, and as you pointed out, workers in the home country, the country people are moving to, will lose in this situation. Capitalists in the home country will win. Landlords in the home country will win. And the gains from capitalists and landlords will outweigh the losses from the workers.
ReplyDeleteThis paints a picture of immigration being good for the home country. This is very difficult to apply to the real life situation though. As you stated above there are many issues with the burden of taxes on the current non-immigrant population when people come to the country. The report talks about how illegal immigrants aren't actually the biggest burden but the un-educated legal immigrants are because they are entitled to government programs. This makes sense as the government is aware of their presence in the country.
The question you posed is very difficult to answer. There are many arguments for how to deal with immigration. In one view they work lower wage jobs that can be seen as undesirable for the average American worker, but they also cause a large burden for tax payers. I'm not quite sure how reform should come about, so I'll leave it for the politicians to argue over.
GDP is growing, which is great for the U.S. economy but for the individual's perspective, they realize more losses than gains. They lose money by having to pay higher taxes and time by having to take a longer search in job hunting. People who want to work are not finding jobs because the low-wage jobs are being filled by the immigrants. Then they will have to be supplemented with government welfare along with the uneducated immigrants. This is also adding up taxes for the individuals. GDP keeps growing because there are more in the workforce but maybe there are too many in the workforce. Under the law of diminishing returns, maybe our country is growing so much because the country cannot hire the full workforce. This is assuming all people in the workforce are labor workers. I don't know what I would do about the immigrants' and natives' work situation other than that both workers should intensify their skills sets to give them a better chance at finding a job and getting away from government welfare.
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