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Chapman: Immigrants give more than they take

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

(Updated Sunday, July 20, 2008 - 10:43 pm)

The law of supply and demand complements most legislation, and vice versa. In the immigration system, we have annual numerical limits for some visa categories. We do not limit other categories because demand is low, or the economic benefits offset possible job losses for U.S. workers.

Closed-border advocates argue that using a supply-and-demand system for manual laborers is just like supporting the sale of alcohol to 16-year-olds, or the sale of illegal drugs.

Not so: There is social and economic value in having a foreign worker fill an empty U.S. job. There is no social value in letting 16-year-olds consume alcohol, or in the use of illegal drugs. (Even in those areas we use cost/benefit analysis: Alcohol is controlled by age and usage; drugs can be obtained with prescription. It's all in where you draw the line.)

Close the borders, we are told, because immigration costs too much. Anyone can complain about costs; a thoughtful analysis compares costs with benefits. The 2007 report of the President's Council of Economic Advisers found:

The long-run fiscal impact of immigrants is likely to be positive.

Entrepreneurial activity is nearly 40 percent higher for immigrants than the native-born.

For men between 18 and 40, immigrants are much less likely to be incarcerated than natives.

Per capita, immigrants and their descendants over their lifetimes contribute $80,000 more in taxes than they receive in public services.

Some 70 percent of first-generation Latinos use Spanish as their predominant language; only in 7 percent of the second generation is Spanish predominant.

Immigration results in annual wage gains for native-born U.S. workers of $30 billion to $80 billion.

A 2006 UNC Kenan Institute report found the yearly economic impact of the Hispanic population on North Carolina to be more than $9 billion; the net cost to state government (education, health care and corrections) after taxes paid, $61 million.

Consider this cost: After years of mule-headed congressional refusals to increase the number of H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, Microsoft recently opened a research facility in Vancouver for such workers. We immediately lost significant tax revenues, as well as ready markets for housing and other U.S. goods and services.

Translation: a loss of U.S. jobs because of restrictive immigration policies. It is misleading to suggest (as columnist Charles Davenport Jr. recently did) that passing recent reform legislation would have brought in 10 million additional workers. The 2007 bill addressed the status of the undocumented workers already in the U.S. It was just as misleading to cite 1996 figures for public assistance; since 1996, use of those benefits by immigrants has plunged dramatically because of restrictive federal laws.

With a national unemployment rate of less than 5 percent (i.e., full employment), it would be insane to deport another 5 percent of the work force. Clearly, workers who have entered without permission or who have overstayed their visas have violated U.S. immigration law. The issue is whether we blindly expel essential workers, solely for violating outdated immigration laws. A cost/benefit approach tells us the answer is "no."

Mr. Davenport recently claimed that immigrants destroy our culture but gave no examples of exactly what "our culture" is. He should have repeated his explanation from the 2005 "One City, One Book" program at the downtown library. There he gave several examples of cultural icons that were under attack by excessive immigration, two of which were Thanksgiving and the Super Bowl.

Well, everyone has the right to entertain wrong ideas -- Benjamin Franklin fiercely opposed immigrants from Germany because Philadelphia street signs were written in English and German. The U.S. somehow survived that wave of immigration. The current group of immigrants simply represents another chapter in the American story. We should welcome their talent, energy and desire for a better life.

Gerry Chapman has been a board-certified immigration law specialist since 1997. He is a trustee of the American Immigration Law Foundation. His office is in Greensboro.