A Path to Legalization for Immigrants Would Help the Economy

Posted by Cristina Jimenez, DMI Blog at 4:10 PM on February 9, 2009.

Ira Mehlman, media director of the LA office of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)--a hate group that seeks to reduce immigration to the U.S--argues that legalizing undocumented immigrants would hurt the economy.

FAIR and other hate groups like NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies have been promoting the same flawed argument. History, however, shows us the opposite--a recent report from the UCLA North American Integration and Development Center finds that the legalization program of 1986:

"Produced both wage and consumption gains, and enhanced tax-revenue collection in the midst of a recession of the late 1980's and early 1990's, as well as decades of very high rates of educational, home and small business investments by newly legalized families."

In terms of projecting the gains of immigration policy that legalizes undocumented immigrants, the author of the study states:

"If Congress and President Obama legalized the current 10-12 million undocumented persons in the U.S. an economic stimulus of $30-36 billion in personal income, 750,000-900,000 new jobs, and $4.5 to $5.4 billion in net tax revenue would result"

In addition to helping the economy, as DMI has argued before, bringing undocumented workers out of the shadows will raise wages and labor standards for all workers.

Tagged as: immigration, economy, jobs, job creation, workers' rights, immigrant entrepreneurs