Immigration projected to make the US $7 trillion richer: Congressional Budget Office

07 February 2024

Despite Republicans' fear campaign over the continued flow of migrants across the Southern border, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently stated that immigrants may actually be one of the main contributors to the US' healthy economy.

On Wednesday, the CBO issued a statement on the estimated economic outlook from 2024 to 2034 and estimated that the US economy would grow significantly over the next decade, and that federal tax revenues would also see a similar increase. The main driver of this growth is, according to the CBO, the US continuing to add immigrants to its pool of able workers.

"In our projections, the deficit is also smaller than it was last year because economic output is greater, partly as a result of more people working. The labor force in 2033 is larger by 5.2 million people, mostly because of higher net immigration," CBO director Phillip L. Swagel stated. "As a result of those changes in the labor force, we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise."

The CBO's statement that immigrant labor is adding to the GDP as well as federal tax revenues alludes to a relatively unknown fact: Undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars in taxes every year, just as US citizens do. According to a CNN report last year, immigrants who don't have Social Security numbers typically pay taxes using what's known as an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), which in 2019 accounted for more than $6 billion in tax revenue.

Undocumented immigrants view paying taxes as advantageous, as it proves work history, compliance with tax law and "good moral character" that helps them when they apply for US citizenship. And aside from paying federal taxes, undocumented immigrants also end up contributing a significant amount to the Social Security trust fund through payroll tax deductions. A Social Security Administration report from 2013 found that those deductions accounted for roughly $12 billion in revenue just in 2010 alone.

Aside from their contributions to tax revenues, immigrants are also a significant contributor to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). A 2019 study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) showed that immigrants without college degrees made up a full 36% of workers in the farming, fishing and forestry industries. They also make up 36% of workers in the building, grounds cleaning and maintenance fields. The CBPP added that immigrant labor also makes up 27% of hotel workers and 21% of workers in the home healthcare provider industry.

"[I]mmigrants contribute to the US economy in many ways. They work at high rates and make up more than a third of the workforce in some industries. Their geographic mobility helps local economies respond to worker shortages, smoothing out bumps that could otherwise weaken the economy. Immigrant workers help support the aging native-born population, increasing the number of workers as compared to retirees and bolstering the Social Security and Medicare trust funds," the CBPP wrote. "And children born to immigrant families are upwardly mobile, promising future benefits not only to their families, but to the U.S. economy overall."

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