Like most proud Americans i hated the idea of illegals coming here to "take our jobs." However, the more I looked at the work they do and the impact of mass deportation, I realized just how important most of them are to the health of our economy.
undocumented workers make up around 67% of farm laborers. Their low salaries keep prices of crops and vegetables down.
The National Milk Producer's Federation forecasted a 61% increase in the cost of milk if their low cost labor pool dried up. But milk production is but one dimension of the low paid labor world where undocumented workers fill in the gaps.
They contributed close to 300 billion in payroll tax to the Social Security trust Fund.
From the perspective of any notable economist, the undocumented worker is helping to maintain our way of life more than they are hindering it!
"The benefit multiplies over the long haul. As the baby boomers retire, the post-boom generation’s burden to finance their retirement is greatly alleviated by undocumented immigrants. Stephen Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, told me that undocumented workers contribute about $15 billion a year to Social Security through payroll taxes. They only take out $1 billion (very few undocumented workers are eligible to receive benefits). Over the years, undocumented workers have contributed up to $300 billion, or nearly 10 percent, of the $2.7 trillion Social Security Trust Fund."
"The problem, though, is that undocumented workers are not evenly distributed. In areas like southern Texas and Arizona and even parts of Brooklyn, undocumented immigrants impose a substantial net cost to local and state governments, Shierholz says. Immigrants use public assistance, medical care and schools. Some immigrant neighborhoods have particularly high crime rates. Jared Bernstein, a fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, told me that these are also areas in which low-educated workers are most likely to face stiff competition from immigrants. It’s no wonder why so much political furor comes from these regions.
Undocumented workers represent a classic economic challenge with a fairly straightforward solution. Immigrants bring diffuse and hard-to-see benefits to average Americans while imposing more tangible costs on a few, Shierholz says. The dollar value of the benefits far outweigh the costs, so the government could just transfer extra funds to those local populations that need more help. One common proposal would grant amnesty to undocumented workers, which would create a sudden increase in tax payments. Simultaneously, the federal government could apply a percentage of those increased revenues to local governments.
But that, of course, seems politically improbable. Immigration is one of many problems — like another economic no-brainer: eliminating farm subsidies — in which broad economic benefits battle against a smaller, concentrated cost in one area. As immigration reform seems more likely than at any time in recent memory, it’s important to remember that it is not the economic realities that have changed. It’s the political ones."
Adam Davidson is co-founder of NPR’s “Planet Money,” a
podcast and
blog.
A version of this article appears in print on February 17, 2013, on Page MM17 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Coming to America.
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