By Karen Rubin, News& Photo Features
With Trump purging the Department of Homeland Security – actually firing Kirstjen Nielsen because she wasn’t cruel enough or questioned the legality of defying court orders to carry out Trump’s human rights violations against refugees, and giving the White Supremacist Stephen Miller control over implementing a “hardline” immigration policy that starts with the premise “We are full” and follows with the notion you tear gas desperate people, incarcerate them without due process, and once again separate and traumatize children from their families, forcing the parents into a Sophie’s Choice to ever see them again, and do it all with breathtaking ineptitude and cruelty, you will stop the flow of refugees, it is worthwhile to actually consider the economic value of immigration to a nation that was built by immigrants.
Trump, who has complained that he needs to get rid of the courts because judges have gone against his policies for separating families (starting with “Judge Flores”) and keeping asylum-seekers caged in Mexico, and has referred to refugees seeking asylum as “animals,” doesn’t just want to stop illegal immigration, but legal migration, including barring refugees, asylum-seekers, stopping what he calls “chain migration” (like Melania’s parents) and wasn’t that Muslim Travel Ban supposed to be temporary, an emergency (otherwise unconstitutional) remedy to give the administration time to make the vetting process more effective (which it already was?).
Trump only likes to present the idea undocumented workers who are exploited with below-minimum wages and even screwed out of their earnings altogether (Trump knows something about that!). He also suggests that immigrants are taking jobs that Americans would otherwise do, but that has been debunked.
New American Economy (NAE), a bipartisan research and immigration advocacy organization, just launched this year’s edition of Map the Impact, an interactive map that quantifies immigrant contributions at the national, state, city, and congressional district levels, and across industries. Map the Impact shows the latest data from the 2017 American Communities Survey on immigrant tax contributions, spending power, entrepreneurship, demographics, voting power, and more.
Key findings (see maptheimpact.org) include:
- In 2017 alone, households led by immigrants earned $1.5 trillion in total income and contributed $405 billion in tax revenues to federal, state, and local governments, leaving them with $1.1 trillion in spending power.
- About 3.2 million immigrants ran their own businesses, making up one in every five entrepreneurs in the country.
- Immigrant-owned businesses employed almost 8 million American workers and generated $1.3 trillion in total sales.
- Immigrants contributed to 28 percent of the population growth in the United States between 2016 and 2017.
- Between 2016 and 2017, the number of immigrant homeowners grew by 4.6 percent, from 9.1 million to 9.5 million.
“This data shows the central role immigrants play in every state in the union as workers, consumers, entrepreneurs, and homeowners,” said John Feinblatt, President of New American Economy. “The findings show that immigration creates an economic opportunity -- creating jobs, filling workforce gaps, and helping communities thrive.”
This year’s Map the Impact features new analysis showing how TPS holders and DACA recipients are especially important contributors to the U.S. economy, finding that:
- In 2017, close to 1.3 million DACA-eligible people lived in the US.
- DACA-eligible residents earned $23.4 billion in total income in 2017, paying $2.2 billion in federal taxes and $1.8 billion in state and local taxes, leaving nearly $19.4 billion in spending power.
- More than 43,000 DACA-eligible residents were entrepreneurs in 2017, providing jobs for American workers and supporting local economies.
- In 2017, there were more than 318,000 immigrants with Temporary Protected Status.
- TPS holders earned almost $7.3 billion in 2017, paying $891 million in federal taxes and an additional $654 million in state and local taxes. They held nearly $5.8 billion in spending power.
Trump’s anti-immigration policies might have resonated during periods of high unemployment but that is not the case now. (Indeed, the unleashed hatred and violence against “others” at a time when Trump trumpets a booming economy, as opposed to the Great Depression of the 1930s that fueled the rise of fascism, is inexplicable.)
The New York Times reported: “’The recent shortage of immigrant workers is impacting housing and housing affordability,’ said Jerry Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Phil Crone, who runs the association’s Dallas chapter, said the labor bottleneck was adding about $6,000 to the cost of every home built in the area and delaying completion by two months.
“Were it not for immigrants, the labor crunch would be even more intense. In 2016, immigrants accounted for one in four construction workers, according to a study by Natalia Siniavskaia of the home builders’ association, up from about one in five in 2004. In some of the least-skilled jobs — like plastering, roofing and hanging drywall, for which workers rarely have more than a high school education — the share of immigrants hovers around half.” (“Short of Workers, U.S. Builders and Farmers Crave More Immigrants,” April 3, 2019).
Meanwhile, New York State, in contrast to the Trump administration, is moving in the right direction:
New York State passed its own DREAM Act, which differs from the federal DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). It allows for tuition assistance for undocumented immigrants who attended high school in New York and graduated with a diploma or obtained an equivalency diploma. Families who have a taxpayer identification number will be allowed to also save for tuition under the New York State College Tuition Savings Program (New York State's 529 College Savings Program).
New York’s budget includes a measure to protect immigrants from deportation following a minor interaction with the criminal justice system, by reducing the maximum sentence for misdemeanors by one day, from 365 to 364 days. Under federal law, any immigrant who is convicted of a crime punishable by a sentence of a year or more may be deported, even if the individual ultimately receives a lesser sentence.
The budget provides $10 million to support the expansion of the first-in-the-nation Liberty Defense Project, which since 2017, has provided more than 25,000 vital legal services to immigrants and communities targeted by harsh federal immigration policies. Program expansions include Project Golden Door to provide crucial services to immigrant children and families and a Regional Rapid Response program to quickly respond with effective legal services on the ground, including in response to targeted raids and arbitrary arrests by ICE.
See also: Suozzi-King Plan for Immigration Reform is Spot On and Long Overdue
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