On illegal/undocumented and legal immigration in the United States of America

I am a temporary legal resident of the United States of America. As long as I am employed with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) I am allowed to stay in this country. As such, I will not criticize the actions and policies of the US government and its agencies and the people in the country, unless invited to do so by them. This note is really directed at opening the discussion about legal/illegal/undocumented immigration in the United States and to the many statements both in favor and against, which in many cases are off-base or reflect a perception built by the media and/or political commentators, pundits or activist/grassroots organizations.

The major problem I see with this growing perception about immigration  is attempting to generalize about us immigrants and about the issues at hand. For me as a Honduran citizen, in many cases, illegal/undocumented immigration into the USA it is a matter of shame, as my country could not provide the opportunities to the people who decided to immigrate to the USA and Europe, so that they could prosper in our own country. This is a failure of us as a country, nobody else. This reflects on the motivations behind immigration movements to another country since humanity began.

Most people come to the USA or Europe, to earn a living and to be able to send remittances back to the country. In fact, up to recently, most stayed until they earned enough money to go back home. This was the usual behavior of most immigrants until recently. Some commentators proposed that the change towards “staying until I’m kicked-off” has been due to the crack down on immigration and the subsequent increase in the cost of entering the USA, both legally and illegally.

Certainly, most illegal/undocumented immigrants are not thugs, common criminals, nor members of the MS or other gangs. Most people are hard workers who are routinely underpaid and/or abused by employers as they have very little bargaining power…after all people can always make a call to “the migra”. We are not all maids or yard keepers, although people in those jobs contribute to society, so much so that Texas even considered a bill exempting them from deportation (http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/01/texas.immigration.bill/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn).

I personally do not want to get into the debate of whether legal and illegal/undocumented immigrants into the United States of America have a net positive or negative impact unto this society. Most, if not all, estimates have considerable issues with regard to assumptions used, methods, conflicts of interest, and perhaps the reality that there may not be a conclusive answer, as there are many tangible and intangible benefit from immigration into a country.  

In fact, parts of the polarizing views that have risen in recent years have been the results of such attempts at quantifying immigration into the US. Examining the range of reports can illustrate the fact that the debate needs to move on to a comprehensive immigration policy that will provide net benefits to US society, and for us as Hondurans, to finally come to grips with the failed policies, corruption, mis-management and overall debacle of our economy and our society.

A report produced by the Heritage Foundation (see the their testimony in Congress at http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/May2007/Rector070501.pdf) , representative of the opinions of conservative and/or so called “nativist” groups opposed to illegal and in some cases even legal immigration, state that each “low-skilled immigrant household” generates a negative fiscal deficit of US$19,588. This is the result of each household paying US$10,573 in taxes (including federal, state, and local income and property taxes as well as sales and excise taxes), while consuming an average of $30,160 of government expenditures in the form of welfare benefits, education and public safety expenses. A really good critique of the assumptions, methods and conclusions of this study is one authored by Harrell and Franklin http://works.bepress.com/emily_harrell/3/

The results of the Heritage Foundation study contrasts with those of perhaps organizations with less obvious stated agenda, including one by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the other done by Prof. Hanson of UC-San Diego. The NAS study (http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309059984) , although a bit dated, showed that In the NAS Study, the net effect of benefits consumed and the taxes paid at both the federal and local levels is that immigrants generate a total fiscal benefit of $23.5 billion (approximately $581 per capita).Although the NAS analysis reveals a net fiscal deficit attributable to immigrants at the state and local level, there is net positive fiscal effect at the federal level. 

On the other hand, Prof. Hanson’s study, a Council of Foreign Relations Special Report http://www.cfr.org/immigration/economic-logic-illegal-immigration/p12969), concludes that stemming illegal immigration would likely lead to a net drain on the U.S. economy, a finding that calls into question many of the proposals to increase funding for border protection.