An immigration policy that would allow more immigrants to enter the country legally and work could benefit the overall U.S. economy, Northeastern experts say.
“Immigration reform is hard,” he says Mindy Marksassociate professor of economics at Northeastern University, “because it has winners and losers, and what we sometimes call 'hidden winners'.”
It is difficult to link immigration policy to its gains because the positive effects are diffuse and hidden, he says, while those affected by immigration are concentrated and visible. At the same time, immigrants decide to leave their country for political, social, and economic reasons that the U.S. will not be able to fix in order to stop the migration.
In mid-May, the Biden administration repealed Title 42, a provision from the Public Health Act of 1944 that allowed the Trump administration to halt immigration in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The US is back to the old days Title 8 of the Code of Federal Regulations with some recent amendments.
Title 8 allows immigrants to claim asylum if they do express fear persecution or torture or fear of return to their country. However, all asylum seekers must first apply for protection in a country from which they have traveled to reach the US border.
If foreign nationals are caught illegally crossing the border, they will be removed and subject to a five-year ban or a 10-year ban if caught re-entering the US illegally.
Immigration generally has more positive effects on the economy than negative, Marks says, as evidenced by the few studies that have attempted to measure the effects of both legal and illegal immigration.
From an economic point of view, immigrants are usually divided into low-skilled and high-skilled workers.
Highly skilled workers have far less competition than American candidates, Marks says. The economy benefits because highly skilled people working legally in the US pay taxes and create demand for more expensive goods and services. They accelerate innovation, he says, as many of them become patent holders, for example, and contribute to the diversity of ideas and opinions.
But most immigrants at the border right now are low-skilled workers, Marks says.
They can also create demand for less expensive products and services. They fill jobs in sectors facing labor shortages, such as agriculture and care for the aging population in nursing homes. They also take jobs in childcare and cleaning services, Marks says, which relieves some highly skilled women of domestic responsibilities and increases women's labor force participation rates.
Immigrants are also more mobile and willing to move across the country to where the jobs are.
Legal immigration, Marks says, is better than illegal immigration for both the US and the immigrants themselves. Their wages go up once they get legal status. They can pay taxes and invest in acquiring more skills or education, knowing that they will be able to work for a long time.
An argument often used in immigration debates is that American citizens do not want to work in certain jobs.
“And the counterargument is that Americans don't want to do these jobs at the prevailing wage,” says Marks.
That means employers will have to raise wages to curb immigration and fill positions with American workers. It may work in some industries, Marks says, but it will also make a subsector of the economy unprofitable.
“This has downstream implications for consumers,” says Marks. “If businesses have to pay workers more, they will end up raising the prices of the goods they produce.”
Imports will replace expensive local products and some sectors of the economy will disappear as a result of trying to cut off the supply of migrant workers.
Higher numbers of immigrants, especially those who entered the country illegally or are unable to work, increase states' fiscal costs for medical and social services.
“Low-income people, whether you're an immigrant or a citizen, don't pay as much in taxes, but they use services,” Marks says.
Individual states bear a higher immigration tax burden than the federal government, he says, because at the federal level illegal immigrants don't claim federal benefits like Social Security, while legal immigrants add to tax receipts.
Some of these negative effects, however, could be offset by a comprehensive federal immigration policy.
“We could recognize that there are some costs and there are some benefits,” says Marks. “We could try to attack some of the benefits and return them to cover the costs.”
For example, the federal government could charge incoming legal immigrants for the opportunity or visa, to work or bring relatives, he says, which might be much more attractive to them than paying smugglers. This income could then be redistributed to the states that take the biggest burden of migrants and invest in, for example, food programs.
But the likelihood that any immigration bill will pass the House and Congress anytime soon is very low, he says Nicholas Beauchampassociate professor of political science.
This is partly explained by the rise of the filibuster, or the ability to delay a vote on a bill due to the tradition of unlimited debate in the Senate. The stark difference of opinion between Republican and Democratic lawmakers on immigration is the other reason.
“Anti-immigration rhetoric became the kind of avenue to activate voters instead of racial discord,” says Beauchamp.
The two sides typically discuss two aspects in immigration policy debates — border security and the transition to citizenship for immigrants coming to the U.S.
There is a better chance for the two sides of the aisle to agree on border security proposals, Beauchamp says, but Republicans see the Democratic proposals as not restrictive enough. Democrats, meanwhile, won't support additional immigration fees such as right-to-work payments in the U.S.
But some Democrats don't want to appear weak to their constituents by supporting less restrictive immigration policy proposals.
Beachamp believes that if Democrats can come up with a package of immigration proposals that would appeal to both sides of the aisle while giving up something for each other, the Biden administration might be able to pass a new immigration policy in two years.
“I can imagine, two years from now, if Biden is back in the White House and the Democrats win control of both the House and the Senate, you can imagine reform if they get rid of the filibuster,” he says.
Alena Kuzub is a reporter for Northeastern Global News. Email her at a.kuzub@northeastern.edu. Follow her on Twitter @AlenaKuzub.
