WHY THERE ARE FAR BETTER THINGS TO WORRY ABOUT THAN IMMIGRATION POLICY

RUSSIL WYONG, CAN POLITICS 1997 - Costs: Direct expenditures consist of (among other things) increases in AFDC and food stamps, SSI, health costs, and prison costs. . . Estimates of tax payer burden range from an annual surplus of $27 billion to a deficit of $40 billion depending on the assumptions made. A "reasonable" estimate of tax accounting provided by (immigration critic George) Borjas shows that immigrants received $23.8 billion in government entitlement and paid $85.4 billion in taxes. This statistic seems to suggest at first glance that immigrants are more than paying their way for welfare benefits. However, as Borjas points out, on average only 8.9 percent of taxes goes towards entitlement programs. Thus, only $7.6 billion of immigrant taxes went on average to entitlements. This results in a $16.2 billion fiscal burden on native taxpayers. Therefore, it is likely that immigrants impose a net burden on native taxpayers on the order of $16 billion annually.

Displacement costs occur when immigration either reduces the wages of native citizens or results in native citizens being laid off or forced to move from the area. The various estimates conclude that the elasticity of the native wage with respect to the number of immigrants is at most -0.1. This implies that a city with 10% more immigration than another will have wages that are 1 percent lower. In other words, a $10.00 per hour wage will fall to $9.90. . . If the number of workers in the US has increased by 10 percent due to immigration, then native wages and salaries fall by 1 percent to 62.37 percent of GDP. In a $7 trillion economy, this works out to just over $44 billion. In an economy the size of the U.S., this effect is small.

The same result is found for unemployment. The great majority of studies conclude that immigrants rarely force a native worker out of a job. The effects are statistically insignificant.

In sum, direct expenditures result in a net loss of $16 billion, and loss of native wages add another $44 billion for a total cost from immigration of $60 billion.

Benefits from immigration include increases in economic welfare, increase in cultural diversity, and increases in the standard of living of immigrants.

A 10 percent rise in immigration lowers native wages by up to 1 percent, or possibly $44 billion per year. However, these wage reductions don't just disappear. To the extent that immigrants provide low-cost labor, either more income accrues to the employers, or cost reductions are passed on to the consumer. Therefore, the host economy benefits by an equal amount that native workers lose from the cheap labor of the immigrants. In other words, the $44 billion is simply redistributed to other people in the economy, and the net effect washes out.

But the gains from the low wages go beyond the $44 billion from lower wages. The goods produced by immigrant workers also generate additional profits for employers because they are able to sell more of their products at the lower price. Borjas estimates this gain to be $7 billion per year.

Increase in cultural diversity: This aspect of life is difficult to quantify but consumers benefit at a minimum by the increase in product diversity (for example, ethnic restaurants, cultural centers in cities, and so on). However, diversity also leads to costs including more crime, ethnic violence, and so on. Since these aspects are so difficult to quantify, we will take the easy way out and simply assume that the positive and negative aspects of diversity cancel each other out.

The economy gains $44 billion is lower costs and/or prices from immigrant labor, and gains $7 billion more on top of that by generating more profits for employers. Thus the total benefits to immigration are on the order of $51 billion annually.

The cost-benefit analysis suggests that the costs ($60 billion) outweigh the benefits ($51 billion) by $9 billion annually. Therefore, current immigration policy is not as efficient as it could be, though the inefficiency is small.

What do we make of all this? First, immigration (legal and illegal) has become more costly in recent times because the number of immigrants has increased, and the relative skills of immigrants have decreased. Therefore, the economic burden of immigration has surely increased in the last two decades. Second, the "stealing of natives' jobs" is mostly a myth and simply does not happen on a large scale.

An important distinction must be made again between efficiency and equity. We have tentatively concluded that the costs of immigration outweigh the benefits by $9 billion annually. From an efficiency point of view, the solution is to reduce the number of immigrants until the benefits equal the costs. Another possibility is to only admit the more educated, wealthier immigrants. This is what some countries such as Canada has done. This lead to a more "efficient" immigration policy. But is such a policy fair?

From an equity point of view, even if the costs of immigration outweigh the benefits, this tells us nothing about what type of immigration policy the United States should have. There are strong moral arguments for allowing immigrants into the US given our history. After all we are a nation of immigrants. Moreover, immigration to the United States has improved the lives of most that have arrived here. Do we have the right to shut that opportunity off to those who live in poorer countries? Most of our ancestors took advantage of that opportunity. Why can't others?

Finally, though the tax payer burden of supporting immigration may be $16 billion annually, this is about one percent of yearly federal tax revenue. Therefore, while immigration may certainly contribute to federal budget deficits, they are not the major source of the fiscal deficits in the US.

USA TODAY - Foreign-born workers make up about 11% of the U.S. population and 14% of the labor force. But their impact is outsized, accounting for more than half of total workforce growth from 1996 to 2002. In the western Midwest, New England and Mid-Atlantic regions, foreign-born workers accounted for more than 90% of employment growth from 1996 to 2002. "When employment was growing, we wouldn't have been growing as quickly without immigration," says Pia Orrenius, researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

TPR - Between the 1880s and the 1920s immigrants represented 12-15% of the population. This sank to 5% in the 1960s but has been rising since.

USAT - The immigration agency estimates about 7 million people were in the country illegally in 2000, with the number of illegal immigrants doubling in the 1990s. Recent estimates peg illegal residency at 8 million to 10 million.

Paul Harrington of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, says a study this month found immigrants, legal and illegal, displaced U.S. workers during the past three years, continuing a trend. Harrington argues immigrants are taking jobs from teenagers in particular. . .

His research shows immigrants have revitalized cities that would have otherwise lost population. Despite the changes, nearly two-thirds live in California, New York and Texas. Two-thirds of illegal immigrants come from Mexico. . .

Immigration can hurt state and local governments by increasing demand for education, health care and some social service programs. At the same time, it can help federal budgets as workers pay taxes to shore up such programs as Social Security. . . Immigration could help Social Security, at least in the short term, given the relatively young ages of immigrants and the rapidly aging native population. . . .

The U.S. Chamber's Donohue argues that the U.S. economy is projected to create 22 million jobs by the end of the decade but has a projected workforce growth of only 17 million. . .

DONALD J. BOUDREAUX, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY - Each immigrant comes to America to make himself better off. Suppose government no longer redistributes income to immigrants. . . Absent government welfare payments to immigrants, immigrants who do not seek work burden no one other than family or friends who voluntarily assume this burden. I here ignore such non-working immigrants who receive no government handouts. These immigrants do not raise the ire of anti-immigrationists. Opponents of immigration object most vehemently to immigrants who are eager to work. . .

Productively employed immigrants invariably increase the nation’s wealth by intensifying competition and expanding the division of labor. Immigration restrictions, in contrast, reduce economic growth. . .

ANA VINAS, NM STATE U - Researchers and academics from several Texas universities agreed at a conference conducted by Federal Reserves Bank that immigration in the short run costs U.S. taxpayers, but in the long run the effect is beneficial for the country once immigrants start working and paying their taxes.

Immigration effects in the U.S. economy were analyzed by specialists, among them Jeffrey Passel, director for Urban Institute Migration Politics Research; Robert Cushing, academic at University of Texas in Austin; Jorge Santibanez, researcher for Northern Mexico Border College.

Santibanez commented that the big operations implemented at the borders, such as "Gatekeeper" in Tijuana, and "Hold the Line" in El Paso are not the answer to stopping illegal immigration. "They are just a key to control the flows," he added and explained that these operations in urban areas direct the flow of illegal immigrants to the mountains and the deserts. In turn, this causes women and children to stay behind and the ones who successfully make it to the U.S. are young males.

He also said, "The borders are the observatory for the immigration flow." According to the specialists, last year a total of 916,000 legal immigrants, while close to 300,000 came into the United States illegally.

According to George Borjas, public politics professor at Harvard University's School of Government, illegal immigration has a short period cost to each tax paying family in the U.S.--in states such as Texas the cost is about $1,000 per year. "However, in the long run the effect is reversed once the immigrant starts working and paying taxes," said Borjas.

For example, an immigrant without average education will cost the state about $13,000 per year; however, one who has at least two years of college education generates $198,000 in taxes over his lifetime. . .

ROGER LOWENSTEIN, NY TIMES 2006 - Borjas's seemingly self-evident premise - that more job seekers from abroad mean fewer opportunities, or lower wages, for native workers - is one of the most controversial ideas in labor economics. . .

Easily the most influential of Borjas's critics is David Card, a Canadian who teaches at Berkeley. He has said repeatedly that, from an economic standpoint, immigration is no big deal and that a lot of the opposition to it is most likely social or cultural. "If Mexicans were taller and whiter, it would probably be a lot easier to deal with," he says pointedly.

Economists in Card's camp tend to frame the issue as a puzzle - a great economic mystery because of its very success. The puzzle is this: how is the U.S. able to absorb its immigrants so easily?

After all, 21 million immigrants, about 15 percent of the labor force, hold jobs in the U.S., but the country has nothing close to that many unemployed. (The actual number is only seven million.) So the majority of immigrants can't literally have "taken" jobs; they must be doing jobs that wouldn't have existed had the immigrants not been here. . .

It baffles some economists that Congress pays so little heed to their research, but then immigration policy has never been based on economics. Economic fears played a part in the passage of the exclusionary acts against Chinese in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in the 1920's of quotas (aimed in particular at people from southern and eastern Europe), but they were mostly fueled by xenophobia. They were supplanted in the Civil Rights era by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended quotas and established a new priority based on family reunification. . .

With the exception of a few border states, the effect of immigration on public-sector budgets is small, and the notion that undocumented workers in particular abuse the system is a canard. Since many illegals pay into Social Security (using false ID numbers), they are actually subsidizing the U.S. Treasury. And fewer than 3 percent of immigrants of any stripe receive food stamps. Also, and contrary to popular wisdom, undocumented people do support local school districts, since, indirectly as renters or directly as homeowners, they pay property taxes. Since they tend to be poor, however, they contribute less than the average. One estimate is that immigrants raise state and local taxes for everyone else in the U.S. by a trivial amount in most states, but by as much as $1,100 per household per year in California. They are certainly a burden on hospitals and jails but, it should be noted, poor legal workers, including those who are native born, are also a burden on the health care system. . .

Americans who are unskilled must compete with a disproportionate number of immigrants. One of every four high-school dropouts in the U.S. was born in Mexico, an astonishing ratio given that the proportion of Mexicans in the overall labor force is only 1 in 25. . . .

But economists have had a hard time finding evidence of actual harm. For starters, they noticed that societies with lots of immigrants tend, if anything, to be more prosperous, not less. In the U.S., wages in cities where immigrants have clustered, like New York, have tended to be higher, not lower. Mississippi, on the other hand, which has the lowest per-capita income of any state, has had very few immigrants.

That doesn't necessarily mean that immigrants caused or even contributed to high wages; it could be they simply go where the demand is greatest - that their presence is an effect of high wages. . .

Card decided to study the 1980 Mariel boat lift, in which 125,000 Cubans were suddenly permitted to emigrate. They arrived in South Florida with virtually no advance notice, and approximately half remained in the Miami area, joining an already-sizable Cuban community and swelling the city's labor force by 7 percent.

To Card, this produced a "natural experiment," one in which cause and effect were clearly delineated. Nothing about conditions in the Miami labor market had induced the Marielitos to emigrate; the Cubans simply left when they could and settled in the city that was closest and most familiar. So Card compared the aftershocks in Miami with the labor markets in four cities - Tampa, Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles - that hadn't suddenly been injected with immigrants.

That the Marielitos, a small fraction of whom were career criminals, caused an upsurge in crime, as well as a more generalized anxiety among natives, is indisputable. It was also commonly assumed that the Marielitos were taking jobs from blacks.

But Card documented that blacks, and also other workers, in Miami actually did better than in the control cities. In 1981, the year after the boat lift, wages for Miami blacks were fractionally higher than in 1979; in the control cities, wages for blacks were down. The only negative was that unemployment rose among Cubans (a group that now included the Marielitos).

Unemployment in all of the cities rose the following year, as the country entered a recession. But by 1985, the last year of Card's study, black unemployment in Miami had retreated to below its level of 1979, while in the control cities it remained much higher. Even among Miami's Cubans, unemployment returned to pre-Mariel levels, confirming what seemed visible to the naked eye: the Marielitos were working. Card concluded, "The Mariel influx appears to have had virtually no effect on the wages or unemployment rates of less-skilled workers.". . .

PROGRESSIVE POPULIST, 2006 - It is no accident that an estimated 11 to 12 million people have come into the US in search of a better life in the 20 years since the last immigration reform, during the Reagan administration. That migration accelerated with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.

Ross Perot predicted in 1993 that as manufacturing in northern Mexico expanded, hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers would be drawn north. "They will quickly find that wages in the Mexican maquiladora plants cannot compete with wages anywhere in the US. Out of economic necessity, many of these mobile workers will consider illegally immigrating into the US," Perot wrote. . .

Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter noted in the [Progressive Populist] that the movement of US agribusiness into Mexico has pushed more than 2 million Mexicans off the farms and into the cities, looking for jobs. Retailers such as Wal-Mart have moved into Mexico, displacing an estimated 28,000 small and medium-sized Mexican businesses. And Mexican factory wages actually have fallen, as multinational firms force them to compete even cheaper manufacturing costs in China and other lower-cost nations.

The US economy largely absorbed those immigrants through the boom years of the 1990s. Even with the Bush recession after 2001, their presence was little noted outside service industries, building trades and meat-cutting industry, where immigrants were employed to keep down the pressure for higher wages. But this year Republicans were looking for an issue that could excite working-class whites, since it was apparent that tax cuts for the rich weren¹t doing anything for them.

WARREN HOGE, NY TIMES - Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the rapid growth in global migration should help, not harm, all countries but that broad international cooperation would be necessary to ensure it. "We now understand better than ever before that migration is not a zero-sum game," Mr. Annan said. "In the best cases, it benefits the receiving country, the country of origin and migrants themselves.". . .

From 1990 to 2005, the numbers of migrants in the world rose to 191 million from 155 million, the report said. It estimated that migrants sent $232 billion home in 2005. Of that, $167 billion went to developing countries, Mr. Annan said. The report said that migration sometimes reduced the wages of low-skilled workers in advanced economies, but that it more often freed citizens to perform high-paying jobs.

Listing demographic statistics that will make a continued rise in migration inevitable, the report said that in developed countries there is an average of 142 young entrants to the labor force for every 100 people about to retire, but that in 10 years, the ratio will be 87 young entrants for every 100 who leave the labor force. This trend, it argued, creates a deficit that only migrants can close. At the same time, developing countries will have 342 candidates for every 100 jobs that open up.

PATRICE HILL, WASHINGTON TIMES - Immigrant labor -- both legal and illegal -- has been an important force propelling U.S. economic growth for years. Growth in the native population has been in decline since the 1970s, so immigrant workers have filled in, providing half of the growth in the U.S. labor force since 1990. . .

While the role of immigrants in the U.S. economy already is substantial, it promises to be even more important in the future as baby boomers retire and the number of American workers shrinks more rapidly. "Immigration will be vital for long-run economic growth in the United States," said Augustine Faucher, analyst with Economy.com. He estimates that average yearly economic growth will fall to about 2 percent in the next 30 years from 3 percent today -- even with a continued flow of about 800,000 new legal and illegal immigrant workers a year -- because of retirements. . .

Periods of high immigration have been associated with periods of high economic growth in the United States. Most recently, during the late 1990s, when immigration surged to a peak of 1.5 million new entrants a year, economic growth picked up to more than 4 percent a year and the unemployment rate fell to below 4 percent, the lowest level in a generation.

By contrast, when immigration dropped dramatically after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to about 1 million a year, economic growth stagnated and the job market sank into a recession and sluggish recovery. The jobs recession finally receded in 2004 -- about the time that immigration picked up again to 1.2 million, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. . .

To prevent the economy from overheating, the Fed has raised interest rates almost four percentage points since 2004, citing concerns that inflation will pick up if not enough workers are available to fill jobs, driving up the cost of wages and benefits and ultimately the prices consumers pay.

Worker shortages already are apparent or projected in key areas that have attracted immigrants, including construction, restaurants, hotels, nursing and home care. Technology and life-sciences businesses that depend on foreign workers to fill key technical jobs also are reporting trouble finding workers, in part because of the tough new restrictions and delays imposed on legal immigration after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME A MEXICAN CUT YOUR PENSION?

SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 2006 - Whenever a new crisis develops in an election year and it's not nature's or the stock market's fault, the odds are pretty good that it's not a crisis.

Witness the sudden discovery of immigrants, a much more comfortable topic for some than Iraq, global warming, globalization, or runaway corporate greed.

The debate, however, has its bizarre aspects. For example, the Texas Rangers, who should know, list their last serious concerns with Mexican terrorists as occurring nearly 100 years ago when "when authorities in McAllen, Texas, arrest Basilio Ramos, Jr. Ramos is carrying a copy of the Plan of San Diego, a revolutionary manifesto supposedly written and signed at the South Texas town of San Diego. It calls for the formation of a 'Liberating Army of Races and Peoples,' of Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Japanese, to 'free' the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Colorado from United States. Versions of the plan call for the murder of all white citizens over 16 years of age. The goal is an independent republic, which might later seek annexation to Mexico.' Since then things have been pretty quiet, although some guerillas from another continent did considerable damage in 2001 by using the border crossing technique known as "buying airline tickets."

But it's not really about terrorism. It's about finding a scapegoat for America's increasing problems. What America's white elite is doing is just what its southern branch did under segregation: teach non-elite whites to blame their problems on a minority. It worked well then and it seems to be working now.

But those wishing to test the extent of the immigrant problem might want to conduct this quick test:

1. Has a Mexican ever fired or laid you off?

2. Was the plant you worked for until it was sent overseas been bought by Mexicans or is it still owned by the same people you used to work for?

3. Has a Mexican ever cut your pension or health benefits? Outsourced your job to India?

4. How much does Latin America contribute to global warming and its results - such as bigger hurricanes and more tornados - compared with the United States?

5. Was Enron run by Mexicans?

6. Are Mexicans responsible for NSA's spying you?

7. Do you think Mexicans or the pharmaceutical corporations are more responsible for high drug costs?

8. How much of the corruption in Washington has been instigated by the Mexicans?

9. Did the Mexicans' make us invade Iraq?

10. Are the Mexicans responsible for George Bush being so dumb?

Chances are most your answers will be in the negative which is a clue to stop spending so much time worrying about immigration and turn your attention to something else.

WHO'S AN AMERICAN?

1600s Most of various tribes scattered throughout the continent didn't know whether they were Americans as there was no one to tell them

1774 Continental Congress leaves it to each state to decide who shall be a voting citizen

1776 Full citizenship to white male property owners, with six states granting it to all white males whether they had property or not. Some states had higher property qualifications than others and some even required membership in a specified religion.

1781-89 Articles of Confederation accept in principle that the central government should regulate Indian affairs.

1789 Secretary of War is placed in charge of Indians

1790 Naturalization of foreign 'free white persons' permitted. Women carried the legal status of their husbands.

1795 Naturalization denied free whites unwilling to give up foreign titles of nobility

1812-21 Six western states join the union with full white male suffrage. Four of the original states abolish property requirements

1830 Indian Removal Act passes Congress, calling for relocation of eastern Indians to a territory west of the Mississippi River. Cherokees contest it in court, and in 1832, the Supreme Court decides in their favor, but Andrew Jackson ignores the decision. From 1831-39, the Five Civilized tribes of the Southeast are relocated to the Indian Territory. The Cherokee "Trail of Tears" takes place in 1838-39.

1853-56 United States acquires 174 million acres of Indian lands through 52 treaties, all of which it will subsequently break.

1856 North Carolina becomes the last state to abolish the property requirement. Previous barred Catholics and non-Christians are enfranchised and in a few states even immigrants not yet naturalized are allowed to vote.

1857 Under Dred Scott decision, no black person can be a U.S. citizen.

1858 Stephen Douglas debates Abraham Lincoln, arguing that "I believe the government was made on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity for ever, and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white men. . . instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians, and other inferior races." Lincoln disagrees.

1866 Civil Rights Act declares all persons born in the U.S. - except Indians - to be natural citizens

1869 Territory of Wyoming grants women suffrage in state elections

1870 15th Amendment is passed: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." South deals with the amendment by instituting polls taxes, literacy tests and grandfather clauses that limit the vote to the offspring of the formerly enfranchised. Naturalization of black immigrants (but not Asians) is permitted.

1871 Residents of the District of Columbia lose the right to vote for mayor and city council as a territorial form of government with appointed governor is installed

1871 - General Sheridan issues orders forbidding western Indians to leave reservations without permission of civilian agents.

1874 Supreme Court rules that it is not unconstitutional to deny women the right to vote.

1875 Page Law bars entry of Chinese, Japanese, and "Mongolian" prostitutes, felons, and contract laborers

1878 Chinese are ruled not eligible for naturalized citizenship

1882 Chinese Exclusion Law suspends immigration of laborers for ten years. Late 19th century exclusion from naturalization includes prostitutes, convicted felons, lunatics, polygamists and persons likely to be a 'public charge' Early 20th century exclusion from naturalization includes anarchists, communists, and the illiterate.

1902 Chinese exclusion is extended for another ten years.

1904 Chinese exclusion is made indefinite

1915 Eleven states have given women the right to vote

1918 Servicemen of Asian ancestry who served in World War I receive right of naturalization

1919 American Indian soldiers and sailors receive citizenship.

1920 The 20th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, is ratified

1923 Asian Indians ruled not eligible for naturalized citizenship.

1924 Congress gives the right to vote to original Americans, the Indians.

1940 Congress passes Nationalities Act granting citizenship to all Native Americans without diluting tribal authority.

1941 After declaring war on Japan, 10,000 Japanese-Americans along Pacific Coast states and Hawaii are rounded up and interned in Department of Justice camps.

1943 The Chinese Exclusion Act is repealed. The annual immigration quota for Chinese is set at 105.

1945 The War Brides Act permits immigration of Asian spouses and children of American servicemen in the war.

1946 Luce-Celler bill grants right of naturalization and small immigration quotas to Asian Indians and Filipinos

1949 5000 highly educated Chinese in the U.S. granted refugee status after China institutes a Communist government.

1952 One clause of the McCarran-Walter Act grants the right of naturalization and a small immigration quota to Japanese.

1957 Utah becomes the last state to permit Indians to vote

1965 Immigration Law abolishes "national origins" as basis for allocating immigration quotas to various countries - Asian countries now on equal footing.

1974 Residents of the District of Columbia regain the right to vote for mayor and city council lost over a century earlier but still lack voting representation in Congress or real power over their budget and criminal justice system.

[PROGRESSIVE REVIEW]