PART 3 of 4: Immigration & Economic Impacts
By Rebecca Fox
Graduate student in Human Rights & Migration Studies
America is often described as a proud nation of immigrants, and both Democrats and Republicans can be heard justifying their positions on immigration in economic terms. Does immigration actually cost a receiving country that much? Do immigrants actually provide that much economic power? These questions posed by each side reflect broader national concerns about economic insecurity and financial livelihoods. Reassuring people that immigrants will help bolster their economic well-being and warning people that immigrants will threaten it are both partisan positions that recognize the overlap and interdependency of immigration and the national economy.
There are an estimated 52 million immigrants in the U.S. today. The economic value, benefit, and contributions of immigration are well known, but the focus in America has become more on the cost of immigration, specifically to the U.S. taxpayer and laborer, regardless of the economic benefits immigration may entail. Rhetoric often decries the strain on social security, healthcare, public education, and other welfare and government services by immigrants as far more detrimental than the upsides of encouraging immigration.
However, in reality, only legally authorized workers are accessing things like social security benefits, few immigrants qualify for Medicaid, unauthorized immigrants cannot apply to receive food stamps, and exceptions to these policies are reserved for vulnerable populations like women and children. The real cost of the U.S.’s current stance on immigration can be seen in the costs of preventing it.
Preventing, restricting, and blocking immigration to the U.S. not only causes the nation to lose out on the economic value immigrants bring, but is exorbitantly expensive. This administration helped pass a $30 billion budget for ICE, put an additional $46 billion toward border wall construction, and allotted $45 billion for the construction of immigration detention centers. Following these expensive threads also leads back to government contracts with companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group, who build these detention facilities and operations. Companies like this have contributed large sums of money to anti-immigration politicians, PACs, and causes – and, of course, this administration specifically. This is the cycle of financial politics in the U.S.– rarely, if ever, are positions based on principles and real beliefs; rather, positions are dictated and molded by the economic interests of financial backers.
Denying or disregarding the economic benefits of immigration can also be attributed to misinformed beliefs and prejudice, because globally and domestically, evidence suggests otherwise. Immigrants contribute billions of dollars to the American GDP, tax revenue, and overall economic growth. Jeff Bezos, of Amazon wealth, makes almost $2 million per hour, while the federal minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour.
The same corporations benefitting from tax breaks, rollbacks of federal oversight and regulation, opposition to anti-trust laws, and increasing financial burdens on consumers are the ones bankrolling the campaigns and political careers of the politicians most eager to be their mouthpieces on these fronts. They are the same corporations profiting off of undocumented, exploited, and underpaid labor while investing in increased militarization, incarceration, and individual debt (see student loans, medical debt, private prison contracts, investments in weapons-based AI, etc.).
The hard-working immigrant families earning minimum wage, supporting federal tax revenue, and making our society function are not the ones benefitting at your expense – the oligarchs are.
More Perfect Union’s recent short film showing discussions with Trump-supporting rural voters in Kentucky demonstrates the success of the effort by the rich and powerful sector of America to divert blame from themselves and onto the most appealing scapegoats, generally migrants. Instead of looking more closely at how American corporations overwork, underpay, and exploit employees, how they are responsible for both unemployment and underemployment of Americans, and how they work to make things like our healthcare, childcare, housing, food, medicine, education, and other necessities less regulated and more expensive, they make a tremendous effort to attribute these systemic and designed failings to immigrants.
Many of the voters interviewed parrot these xenophobic talking points, while the interviewers push past the dissonance between these stereotypes and fears, and the economic realities caused by billionaires and corporations. As evident in this documentary, the vast majority of Americans have more in common with, and live their lives more similarly to, the poorest immigrant entering the U.S. than with the poorest billionaire.
Recognizing how much we non-billionaires have in common (there are about 8 billion of us!), rather than resorting to the few identity traits or other superficial things we may have in common with billionaires (of which there are only around 3000!) is the key to addressing the climate crisis, rising xenophobia and prejudice, and economic justice. If having a multicultural and diverse population instead of billionaires is a side effect of a society that is more equitable, sustainable, and economically robust, that is a side effect I will gladly sign up for.
###