This week, the Senate passed comprehensive immigration legislation. Legalizing our undocumented immigrant population will put all workers on a level playing field, exerting upward pressure on the wages of both American and immigrant workers.
It also brings more workers into our tax system, which will increase government revenues, grow our economy and benefit a range of industries. And we know it will create jobs, as 40 percent of Fortune companies were founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.
Comprehensive immigration reform will enhance our global competitiveness by ensuring we continue to meet our workforce needs and promote innovation. Those immigrants who would be affected are already in the country, working and contributing to our economy. Immigration reform helps the native-born move up the economic ladder. Researchers have found that African Americans and women are the most likely to move to higher-skilled jobs as a result of immigrants entering the labor force.
Allowing undocumented immigrants to apply for temporary work permits will result in them finding jobs that best match their skills in intensive manual labor jobs that often are rejected by native-born workers. In fact, as the studies show, when those low-wage, low-skill jobs go to immigrants, native-born workers tend to move up the occupational ladder, filling jobs with higher language skills and greater education requirements.
Immigrants complement American workers. Immigration helps, not harms, the wages of American workers. Immigrants are employees in important industries that support the infrastructure of this country and have been essential during the COVID pandemic — farmworkers , meatpacking plants , health care workers, and childcare, to name a few.
One could make the human-rights claim that the U. As a nation, we are responsible for the harm that our international policy escalates. But I will make a simple case: Humans move.
I initially moved from Liberia to North Carolina as a child as a result of a civil conflict. Our next move to Massachusetts was because we wanted to be closer to family. My spouse and I have moved numerous times across the U.
However, if you are inclined to disagree, know that a new immigration policy that gives people genuine pathways to residency and citizenship would increase the gross domestic product as it did in the s after amnesty. It would allow an entire generation of people to live fully realized lives in the country they have lived in all their lives.
Stopping deportations would improve public health globally. Most importantly, for the families like mine that had been separated for decades due to the negative impacts of restrictive and regressive immigration policy, reform would reunite people. Given the stagnant minimum wage, it is good news that DAPA increases wages for all workers, citizens and immigrants alike. By , annual wages for citizens will rise 0. This includes workers on the lower end of the pay scale.
DAPA helps support vibrant local economies by bolstering the spending power of immigrant consumers. This spurs our local economies and small businesses.
As immigrants participate in the economy more fully and move freely across the labor market, their ability to spend increases. DAPA means more tax revenue for the federal government. Legislative reform would generate even more economic benefits —in addition to being a sustainable, long-term solution.
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