New Report Highlights Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform

January 7, 2010

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Contact: Madeline Meth
Phone: 202.741.6277
Email: mmeth@americanprogress.org

Washington D.C.– As the United States slowly pulls free from a deep recession, a groundbreaking new study concludes that comprehensive immigration reform would provide just the type of boost our economy needs.

Today, the Center for American Progress and Immigration Policy Center released a joint report, "Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform," which shows that legalizing the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants through comprehensive immigration reform as well as making future flows more flexible would grow the economy by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. The stark number cuts into the credibility of claims by immigration restrictionists that immigration reform during an economic recession is implausible.

According to research by Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, founding director of the North American Integration and Development Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, creating a legalization process for unauthorized workers would, in the long term (10 years) yield $1.5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product, and in the short term (three years) generate $4.5 to $5.4 billion in additional tax revenue and consumer spending sufficient to support 750,000 to 900,000 jobs.

Dr. Hinojosa ran several different economic scenarios and found that enacting a comprehensive immigration reform plan which creates a legalization process for unauthorized workers and sets a flexible visa program not only raises the wage floor for all American workers, but is an economic necessity. Conversely, the deportation prescription that is offered by immigration restrictionists would poison the already anemic U.S. economy by draining $2.5 trillion from the economy over 10 years, even before factoring in the costs to deport 12 million people and permanently seal the border.

"These are stark and significant numbers that lawmakers should commit to memory," said Angela M. Kelley, Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy at CAP. "We have got an issue where we know we can improve the economy. It would be to their peril for lawmakers to be short sighted and not pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation that will reverberate and rev up the economy and help all Americans."

“This report underscores an important opportunity for positive input to an economy that needs it,” said Benjamin Johnson, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council. “The report further highlights the need for immigration reform that is focused on what’s good for the American economy and what’s good for American workers.”

As Dan Griswold, Director of Trade Policy Studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, noted during today’s press conference, “Enforcement only is a policy that is not only failed, but has imposed significant cost on Americans as taxpayers. If Congress and the president want to create better jobs and stimulate the economy, then comprehensive immigration reform should be very high on their agenda.”

Resources:

• Raising the Floor for American Workers: The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CAP/IPC Report, January 7, 2010)

• Immigration and the Economy (Video of press conference hosted at Center for American Progress, January 7, 2010)

• New Report Quantifies Benefits of Immigration Reform to U.S. Economy (Immigration Impact, January 7, 2010)

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