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Immigration policies that would allow more migrants to legally enter and work in the country could benefit the entire US economy, Northeast experts say.
“Immigration reform is a tricky business,” says Mindy Marks, associate professor of economics at Northeastern University, “because there are winners and losers and what we sometimes call ‘hidden winners.'”
It is difficult to link immigration policies to the resulting gains, as the positive effects are diffuse and hidden, while those harmed by immigration are concentrated and visible. At the same time, migrants choose to leave their country for political, social, and economic reasons that the US cannot resolve to stop immigration.
In mid-May, the Biden administration repealed Title 42, a provision of the Public Health Act of 1944 that allowed the Trump administration to halt immigration in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The US returned to decades-old Title 8 of the Code of Federal Regulations with some recent changes.
Title 8 allows immigrants to apply for asylum if they express fear of persecution or torture, or fear of being returned to their country. However, all asylum seekers must first apply for protection in the country through which they traveled to reach the US border.
If foreign nationals are caught crossing the border illegally, they will be deported and face a five-year ban, or a 10-year ban if caught illegally re-entering the United States.
According to Marks, immigration generally has more positive than negative effects on the economy, as shown by the few studies that have attempted to measure the impact of both legal and illegal immigration.
From an economic point of view, migrants are usually divided into low-skilled and high-skilled workers.
High-skilled workers face significantly less competition from American candidates, Marks says. The economy benefits because highly skilled individuals working legally in the US pay taxes and create demand for more expensive products and services. They accelerate innovation, she says, as many of them become patent holders, for example, and contribute to the diversity of ideas and views.
But most migrants at the border are currently low-skilled workers, says Marks.
But they can also generate demand for cheaper products and services. They fill jobs in sectors with labor shortages, such as agriculture and caring for aging populations in nursing homes. They also take childcare and cleaning jobs, Marks says, freeing some highly qualified women from household chores and increasing women’s participation rates in the labor market.
Immigrants are also more mobile and would like to move across the country to where there are jobs.
Marks says legal immigration is better than illegal immigration, both for the US and for the immigrants themselves. Their wages increase when they gain legal status. They can pay taxes and invest in acquiring more skills or education, knowing they can work for a long time.
A common argument in immigration debates is that American nationals do not want to work in certain occupations.
“And the counterargument is that Americans don’t want to make those jobs the prevailing wage rate,” says Marks.
That means employers would have to raise wages to limit immigration and fill the jobs with American workers. It might work in some industries, Marks says, but it will also make a sub-sector of the economy unprofitable.
“It has downstream implications for consumers,” says Marks. “If companies have to pay their workers more, they will eventually increase the prices of the goods produced.”
Imports will replace expensive local products, and some industries would disappear trying to stem the flow of immigrant workers.
A higher number of immigrants, particularly those who entered the country illegally or are unable to work, increases government spending on medical and social services.
“Low-income people, whether immigrants or citizens, don’t pay as much in taxes but they consume services,” says Marks.
She says that each state bears a higher tax burden on immigration than the federal government because illegal immigrants don’t claim federal benefits like Social Security at the federal level, while legal immigrants contribute to tax revenues.
However, some of these negative effects could be offset by comprehensive federal immigration policies.
“We could see that there are some costs and some benefits,” says Marks. “We could try to take some of the benefits and give them back to cover the costs.”
For example, the federal government could charge incoming legal immigrants fees for an opportunity or visa to work or bring relatives, she says, which can be much more appealing to them than making payments to smugglers. This income could then be redistributed to the states that bear the brunt of the migrants, and invested in food stamp programs, for example.
But the likelihood of an immigration bill being passed by the House of Representatives and Congress anytime soon, says Nicholas Beauchamp, an associate professor of political science.
He attributes this in part to the advent of the filibuster, or the possibility of delaying a vote on a bill due to the Senate’s tradition of open-ended debate. The other reason is the sharp disagreement between Republican and Democratic lawmakers on immigration.
“Anti-immigration rhetoric became a way of motivating voters rather than settling racial differences,” says Beauchamp.
When discussing immigration policy, both sides typically debate two issues: border security and the transition to citizenship for immigrants entering the United States
Beauchamp said the two sides of the aisle have a better chance of agreeing on border security proposals, but Republicans don’t think the Democrats’ proposals are restrictive enough. Democrats, meanwhile, do not support additional immigration fees, such as payments for the right to work in the United States
But some Democrats don’t want to appear weak in front of their constituents by backing less restrictive immigration policy proposals.
Beachamp believes the Biden administration may be able to pass new immigration policies two years from now if Democrats can come up with a bundle of immigration proposals that appeal to both sides of the ballot while giving up something for each other.
“I imagine that if Biden is back in the White House in two years and the Democrats gain control of both the House and Senate if they abolish the filibuster, you can imagine reform,” he says.
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