Economic Impact
Immigrants are essential to the U.S. economy, filling roles from high-skilled tech sectors to agricultural labor and driving economic growth. They also contribute to the tax base and consumer spending. We champion reform that will maximize this effect and create a more diverse and competitive workforce.
The Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX III)
How U.S. Integration Policy Stacks Up Against Other Countries Integration is an often overlooked but key component of U.S. immigration policy. Successful integration of immigrants fuels their success, strengthens communities, and builds bridges between newcomers and other community members. Time and again, the influx of immigrants into a community has been shown to reverse economic decline and breathe new life into urban areas, small towns, and rural communities. Moreover, integration can be a key to entrepreneurship and future economic growth. For example, research by Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander found that nations which focus more on immigrant integration have higher levels of economic competitiveness, are more innovative, and have higher rates of entrepreneurship. Understanding how federal and state laws facilitate or hinder integration is therefore an important component of setting integration policy. Read More
Revitalizing the Golden State
California is home to nearly 10 million immigrants, more than one quarter of the state’s population. Of those, 2.7 million are undocumented, and the vast majority of them have been living in the United States for more than 10 years. California’s immigrant contributions to the Golden State cannot be overstated. From Cesar Chavez, the pioneering agricultural labor-rights leader in the 20th century to Sergei Brin, the Russian entrepreneur behind one of the 21st century’s most revolutionary companies, Google Inc., the foreign born and their descendants are woven into the state’s cultural and economic fabric. Still, that reality has not prevented some Californians, frustrated with our broken federal immigration system, to call for an Arizona-style “papers please” approach. The stated goal of this new wave of state-based enforcement legislation is to trigger a mass exodus of undocumented immigrants, by making “attrition through enforcement” the policy of state and local government agencies. The threshold question that proponents of S.B.1070-style legislation have failed to answer is whether that goal serves the economic interests of the state’s constituents. Read More
Are SSA No-Match Letters Putting American Jobs at Risk?
BY TYLER MORAN, NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER The Social Security Administration (SSA) just announced it will resume its practice of notifying employers of discrepancies in employee paperwork through “no-match letters”—a mechanism which threatens countless American jobs. Despite the Administration’s clear assertion that the letter “makes no statement” about a worker’s immigration status, employer confusion over the letters has led to erroneous firings and lost wages in the past, and threatens to be the case now. It is anticipated that over 1 million workers will be the subject of these letters. Read More
By the Numbers: How the FY 2011 Budget Impacts Immigration
After the threat of a government shutdown last week, Congress finally managed to approve a budget that will keep the government running through the 2011 fiscal year. Included in that budget, however, are a host of cuts that will impact immigrants and immigration programming in the fiscal year to come. As policy experts and economists continue to pour over the 175 page document, here are a few program areas impacted by the FY 2011 budget. Read More
Unauthorized Immigrants Pay Taxes, Too
Estimates of the State and Local Taxes Paid by Unauthorized Immigrant Households Tax Day is an appropriate time to underscore the often-overlooked fact that unauthorized immigrants pay taxes. The unauthorized, like everyone else in the United States, pay sales taxes. They also pay property taxes—even if they rent. At least half of unauthorized immigrants pay income taxes. Add this all up and it amounts to billions in revenue to state and local governments. The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has estimated the state and local taxes paid in 2010 by households that are headed by unauthorized immigrants. These households may include members who are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. Collectively, these households paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes. That included $1.2 billion in personal income taxes, $1.6 billion in property taxes, and $8.4 billion in sales taxes. The states receiving the most tax revenue from households headed by unauthorized immigrants were California ($2.7 billion), Texas ($1.6 billion), Florida ($806.8 million), New York ($662.4 million), and Illinois ($499.2 million) {See Figure 1 and Table 1}. These figures should be kept in mind as politicians and commentators continue with the seemingly endless debate over what to do with unauthorized immigrants already living in the United States. In spite of the fact that they lack legal status, these immigrants—and their family members—are adding value to the U.S. economy; not only as taxpayers, but as workers, consumers, and entrepreneurs as well. Read More
Restrictionist Group Blames the Children of Immigrants for America’s Budget Woes
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released another report today attempting to blame our economic woes and budget shortfalls on immigrants—this time using the children of immigrants, most of whom are U.S. citizens, as scapegoats for benefits usage (here Medicaid, food assistance, cash assistance, and housing programs). As are most restrictionists’ attempts to blame immigrants for all of America’s problems, the report is rife with methodological problems. Despite the headline that 57 percent of households headed by an immigrant with children used at least one benefits program, compared to 39 percent for native households, the results actually show that when controlled for income, immigrant households use benefits at the same rate as native born households. Read More
House Subcommittee Continues Assault on All Forms of Immigration
Washington D.C. – Opponents of immigration reform are often quick to differentiate their disdain for unauthorized immigration from their alleged support of legal immigration. However, finding any evidence of that support has always been elusive and, over the past several months, the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement has… Read More
House Subcommittee Hearing Highlights U.S. Need for Foreign Scientists and Engineers
Today, a House Immigration Subcommittee hearing underscored the U.S. economy’s reliance on scientists and engineers from abroad. The hearing, entitled “H-1B Visas: Designing a Program to Meet the Needs of the U.S. Economy and U.S. Workers,” was characterized by considerable disagreement among witnesses and subcommittee members as to how the H-1B program for highly skilled foreign professionals should best be structured in terms of wage protections and job portability. But virtually everyone, including Subcommittee Chairman Elton Gallegly (R-24th/CA) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-21st/TX), agreed that foreign-born scientists and engineers, including many who come to the United States on H-1B visas, make critical contributions to the U.S. economy. Read More
Statistical Hot Air: FAIR’s USA Report Lacks Credibility
Many politicians who champion the deport-them-all approach to unauthorized immigrants have been relying upon a bloated and deeply distorted report issued by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in July 2010. That report, The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers, is not a credible source of data, yet its numbers have been cited repeatedly in this year’s debates over immigration legislation in the states. The report relies upon flawed and empirically baseless assumptions to inflate its estimate of the costs which unauthorized immigrants impose on federal, state, and local governments. Much of what FAIR counts as the cost of unauthorized immigration is actually the cost of education and healthcare for U.S.-citizen children. In fact, over half of FAIR’s cost estimate consists of educational and healthcare expenditures for the children of unauthorized immigrants, of whom nearly three-quarters are native-born U.S. citizens. These native-born children are counted as a “cost” of illegal immigration if they are under 18, but as U.S. citizens if they are working, taxpaying adults. In its rush to place a price tag on unauthorized immigrants, FAIR is unable to see that investing in children today pays off economically tomorrow. FAIR also neglects to mention the enormous fiscal and economic costs that would be incurred by attempting to remove unauthorized immigrants from the United States. As the negative impact of anti-immigrant legislation on the fiscal bottom-line becomes more apparent, many taxpayers may begin to see that the “costs” cited by FAIR do not tell the whole story. Read More
A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie
Washington, D.C. – As Arizona approaches the one-year anniversary of the passage of SB 1070, the Immigration Policy Center and Center for American Progress release a new report, A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie: The Economic Impact of Legalization Versus Deportation in Arizona, by Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda… Read More
America's story is an immigrant story.
