Suman Raghunathan

Giving Thanks for Immigrants Pulling Their Fair Share in Our Economy

Amidst all the furor in the past two months over extending (more secure and verified) driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, thank goodness for this week’s study outlining how important immigrants are to the New York State economy, and how their fiscal contributions actually outweigh their numbers.

Turns out statewide, immigrants (including the undocumented) generate almost a quarter of New York State’s economic output (or gross domestic product for you economics wonks) while they’re only 21% of the population.

In hard numbers, immigrants’ economic output totaled $229 billion in 2005. Sounds like a sizeable chunk of change to me considering immigrants (regardless of their legal status) are all supposed to be freeloaders. They’re also 26% of workers or those who are seeking work statewide – again outweighing their share of the state’s population. Somehow this looks like yet another example of the nation’s economic reality debunking the most popular knee-jerk anti-immigrant argument (usually served up with a hefty dose of vitriol and frenzied inaccuracy every night courtesy of Lou Dobbs): they take more than their fair share. Let’s step back here: if immigrants’ economic contributions outweigh their share of population, how is that taking more than their fair share? Perhaps there’s some new math that I’m not up on.

Looks like we should start giving thanks for immigrants’ economic output - the week after Thanksgiving. Better late than never, I suppose.

Immigrants have played a starring role (perhaps one of the few ones New York’s seen for three weeks – sorry television writers and stagehands) in the growth of New York State’s economy. What makes this report even more interesting is how it echoes what I’ve been saying all along (joined by many many others, thank you): immigrants are crucial to our economy - and not just in low-wage jobs, but across the economic spectrum. One in four CEOs in New York City was born outside the US, as were one in two accountants. And it’s immigrants who increasingly are the future of New York City’s middle class– immigrant families are more likely than native-born ones to have mid-range incomes. There’s indisputably a ripple effect that accompanies immigrants, particularly immigrant entrepreneurs: Latino and Asian-owned businesses are growing at some of the state’s fastest rates. Two-thirds of immigrants in upstate and downstate New York suburbs own their own homes.

And given all this, tell me why we don’t want to maximize immigrant contributions to the economy? Because the current high doses of anti-immigrant sentiment being served up daily by a diverse host of visionaries - ranging from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL) to Senator (and Presidential hopeful) Tom Tancredo (R-CO) to former football star and freshman Congressman. Heath Shuler (D-NC) - isn't exactly extending the proverbial welcome mat to immigrants nationwide.

Pulling the plug on extending driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants in states ranging from New York to California to Tennessee isn’t exactly bringing in those immigrant benjamins either – a strategy that would appear to serve many states well given the Fed’s predictions of impending economic doom.

So to all the doomsdayers and naysayers who drew a direct line between extending driver’s licenses to the undocumented and helping terrorists, I say: bully for you. Too bad your demagoguery isn’t going to help the economy.

In your opposition to allowing undocumented immigrants to get to work, take their children to school, and be a part of society just like anyone else, you’re actually not helping the economy at all. In fact, you’ve now hamstrung a sizeable chunk of the state’s economic producers, and all in the name of being tough on immigration – a tactic which hasn’t really served politicians well from Tom Tancredo (who recently announced he’s not running for re-election to his House seat when his term expires next year) to Hillary Clinton, whose numbers are still sliding in the Iowa polls after she flip-flopped to oppose extending driver’s licenses to the undocumented. Instead, Barack Obama - who favors a path to citizenship and issuing licenses to the undocumented – continues to gain steadily in the polls.

Even the federal government is finally beginning to see the light on how an enforcement-only strategy is a losing one. The feds recently decided to abandon their plan to require employers to resolve questions about employees’ work authorization brought up by the Social Security Administration’s so-called ‘No-Match’ notices. Never mind that the Social Security Administration’s database has an error rate of nearly 50%, and that most employees who are flagged as potentially undocumented because of blips in their records are generally US citizens or green card holders – I mean really, what’s an error every other record anyway??

The decision comes after a federal judge already put a temporary injunction on the plan, citing its proven harsh impact on up to 1.4 million workers nationwide when placed in the hands of unscrupulous employers in the past.

Come on, people. Read the economic tea leaves. Immigrants are here to stay, and we need ‘em in more than ways than one.

Suman Raghunathan: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 8:33 AM, Nov 28, 2007 in Immigration
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