Question

Do you think immigration reform is needed? Do you think tightening immigration standards will improve jobs for Americans or reduce them? Do you think immigration reform will prevent terrorism on U.S. Soil? Would reform also make it easier for government entities to tax those that are here illegally? Would you be in favor of granting an amnesty for those people that are here illegally?

Answer 1

Why Does the U.S. Need Immigration Reform?

People come to the United States for the promise of freedom and opportunity. But the current immigration system in the United States is broken: Families are separated, immigrant workers are exploited, people die trying to cross the border, and there is rampant discrimination against immigrants.

How we treat newcomers should reflect the values of fairness and equality that define the United States as a country. We need a commonsense immigration process, one that includes a roadmap for people who aspire to be citizens.

For the vast majority of undocumented immigrants there is no “line” available. As the Immigration Policy Center points out, most undocumented immigrants lack the necessary family relationships to apply for legal entry, and those who do face years or decades waiting for a visa.

For America’s enormous economy, current limitations on the number of total green cards available are unreasonable. Even if a prospective immigrant meets green card requirements, the wait can be everlasting, according to the Immigration Policy Center.

The Impact of Immigrants on Employment and Earnings

Although many are concerned that immigrants compete against Americans for jobs, the most recent economic evidence suggests that, on average, immigrant workers increase the opportunities and incomes of Americans. Based on a survey of the academic literature, economists do not tend to find that immigrants cause any sizeable decrease in wages and employment of U.S.-born citizens), and instead may raise wages and lower prices in the aggregate reason for this effect is that immigrants and U.S.-born workers generally do not compete for the same jobs; instead, many immigrants complement the work of U.S. employees and increase their productivity. For example, low-skilled immigrant laborers allow U.S.-born farmers, contractors, and craftsmen to expand agricultural production or to build more homes—thereby expanding employment possibilities and incomes for U.S. workers. Another way in which immigrants help U.S. workers is that businesses adjust to new immigrants by opening stores, restaurants, or production facilities to take advantage of the added supply of workers; more workers translate into more business.

Because of these factors, economists have found that immigrants slightly raise the average wages of all U.S.-born workers. As illustrated by the right-most set of bars in the chart below, estimates from opposite ends of the academic literature arrive at this same conclusion, and point to small but positive wage gains of between 0.1 and 0.6 percent for American workers.

But while immigration improves living standards on average, the economic literature is divided about whether immigration reduces wages for certain groups of workers. In particular, some estimates suggest that immigration has reduced the wages of low-skilled workers and college graduates. This research, shown by the blue bars in the chart above, implies that the influx of immigrant workers from 1990 to 2006 reduced the wages of low-skilled workers by 4.7 percent and college graduates by 1.7 percent. However, other estimates that examine immigration within a different economic framework (the red bars in the chart) find that immigration raises the wages of all U.S. workers—regardless of the immigrants’ level of education.

Almost Every Type of Immigration Has Been Exploited by Terrorists

In this section we examine the immigration status of terrorists to see what means they used in the last decade to enter and remain in the country. The analysis below will show that practically every immigration status can be found to have been exploited by the terrorists. Foreign Islamist terrorists have entered as students, tourists, and business visitors. They have also been lawful permanent residents (green card holders) and naturalized U.S. citizens, allowed into the country because they had a family member in the United States. Illegal aliens also figure prominently in almost every major terrorist attack of the last decade. Additionally, terrorists have even used America's humanitarian tradition of welcoming those seeking asylum as a means of remaining in the country so they could attack the United States.

Many Who Entered on Temporary Visas Later Became Illegal Aliens. Excluding the seven of 16 who were legal permanent residents by the time they took part in terrorism, the nine remaining terrorists who had originally entered on temporary visas had become illegal aliens or asylum applicants by the time they took part in terrorism, including: four of the 9/11 hijackers; Mir Aimal Kansi, who murdered two CIA employees in 1993; Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who lead the plot to bomb New York City landmarks; Mohammed Salameh and Eyad Ismoil, two conspirators in the first Trade Center bombing; and Lafi Khalil, who was involved in the plot to bomb the Brooklyn subway system in 1997. Kansi and Rahman were both asylum applicants when they were arrested.

Sheik Rahman, who used a tourist visa, is probably the most important terrorist prior to 9/11 to enter the country originally as a nonimmigrant. He subsequently obtained permanent residency by qualifying as a minister of religion using a false name. His permanent residency was revoked because he lied on his applications. He then applied for asylum to prevent deportation. His application was pending at the time of his arrest. Rahman inspired both the first World Trade Center attack as well as the plot to bomb New York City landmarks. Moreover, he is widely considered to be one of the spiritual leaders whose ideas helped to found al Qaeda.

Many Terrorists Have Been Lawful Permanent Residents. Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) who were not yet citizens have also played an integral role in terrorism. In all, 11 LPRs have been convicted or pled guilty to their involvement in terrorism, including Mahmud Abouhalima, one of the leaders of the first World Trade Center bombing, who became a legal resident after falsely claiming to be an agricultural worker, allowing him to qualify for a green card as part of an amnesty passed by Congress in 1986. Another LPR was Mohammed Saleh, who provided the money and the fuel oil needed to create the bombs for a massive terrorist plot around New York City, one that included plans to bomb the United Nations building, FBI headquarters, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, and the George Washington Bridge. The plan, had it been carried out, not only would have killed many Americans but also would have completely disrupted commerce in and around New York City. Nine other foreign-born terrorists involved in the same plot were also green card holders.

Truth about immigrants and taxes

Every year, the Social Security Administration collects billions of dollars in taxes that it doesn’t know who paid. Whenever employers send in W-2 forms that have Social Security numbers that don’t match with anyone on record, the agency routes the paperwork to what’s called the Earnings Suspense File, where it sits until people can prove the wages were theirs, allowing them to one day collect retirement benefits.

The Earnings Suspense File now contains Social Security tax forms that date back to 1937 and are linked to the taxes that were paid on nearly $1.3 trillion in wages. Some of the W-2s in it belong to people who got married and never reported changing their name. Others are people who filled out their tax forms incorrectly. As of 2014, efforts to track these taxpayers down allowed the Social Security Administration to match 171 million tax forms to their rightful owners.

But there are still about 340 million unclaimed tax forms recorded in the file, compared to 270 million nearly a decade ago. A good portion of those forms were filed by employers on behalf of some of the most unlikely funders of Social Security: undocumented immigrants. In fact, illegal immigration is considered largely responsible for the mushrooming of the file, with undocumented workers paying billions in taxes for retirement benefits they will likely never receive.

It works like this: Many immigrants who aren’t authorized to work in the United States buy fake Social Security cards and present them to their employers, who either don’t know they are fake or don’t look too closely. When the employer submits a W-2 form and a tax payment on those workers’ behalf to the Social Security Administration, the federal government holds onto those payroll taxes, even if the Social Security number isn’t linked to anyone on file. And then, a large chunk of that money ends up in the Social Security trust funds, from which retirement benefits are doled out to aging Americans.

The Social Security system has grown increasingly reliant on this stream of revenue, particularly as aging Baby Boomers start to retire. Stephen Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, estimates that about 1.8 million immigrants were working with fake or stolen Social Security cards in 2010, and he expects that number to reach 3.4 million by 2040. He calculates that undocumented immigrants paid $13 billion into the retirement trust fund that year, and only got about $1 billion in benefits. “We estimate that earnings by unauthorized immigrants result in a net positive effect on Social Security financial status generally, and that this effect contributed roughly $12 billion to the cash flow of the program for 2010,” Gross concluded in a 2013 review of the impact of undocumented immigrants on Social Security.

Ironically, it was a piece of legislation aimed at curbing the hiring of undocumented immigrants that created this steady source of revenue for the Social Security system. In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act set penalties for employers who knowingly hired undocumented immigrants. It was the first time the federal government had made it a crime to employ undocumented workers. Yet instead of destroying the underground labor market, this new law just made it more sophisticated, producing a thriving market for fake U.S. birth certificates, IDs and social security cards, which undocumented workers presented to their employers when asked for their papers. Undocumented workers started filling out W-2 forms, and the federal government began receiving and holding onto payroll taxes, even though the fake social security numbers didn’t match anyone in the system. The Social Security Administration sends no-match letters to employers to alert them of the problem and urge them to resolve it.

As rhetoric about illegal immigration dominates this election cycle, it’s hard to argue that undocumented immigrants drain the system. It’s true that not all undocumented workers pay federal income and social security taxes; many are still paid in cash and never fill out W-2 forms, so it’s unclear how many of them independently file tax returns as self-employed contractors. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C., think tank, estimates that about half of undocumented workers in the United States pay income taxes. They also help fund public schools and local government services by paying sales and property taxes like any other resident. This added up to about $10.6 billion in state and local taxes in 2010, according to an analysis by the institute.

Would you be in favour of granting an amnesty for those people that are here illegally?

A liberal columnist depicts them as “living in the shadows.” A conservative commentator calls them a “huge, subterranean population” that exists in fear of one day being “whisked away by government agents.” A Los Angeles religious leader bemoans their exploitation at the hands of “unscrupulous employers” who know they “are reluctant to seek legal recourse.”

But are they? Contrast those characterizations of illegal immigrants in the United States with these actual events: Outside Phoenix, dozens of female illegal immigrants march in protest against their employer, whom they accuse of sexual harassment. An illegal immigrant and labor activist from Houston travels to Washington to meet openly with Sen. Ted Kennedy and Justice Department officials. In Los Angeles, the labor movement comes back from the brink of extinction by successfully organizing illegals employed as janitors and hotel service workers. Countless news stories highlight illegal immigrants as proud homeowners, successful businesspeople and ambitious high school graduates openly seeking admission to California’s public universities.

Which of these two starkly different perspectives on the lives of the estimated 6 million to 9 million illegal immigrants now living in the U.S. is more accurate? Almost certainly the second. Yet in the weeks and months ahead, it is the first that will be emphasized as some promote amnesty to the American public as the key to bringing order to our immigration policy. This is troublesome, because amnesty is a bad idea both as policy and as politics.

Amnesty—the granting of formal legal status to those who live here illegally and are therefore subject to deportation—is being pushed by those who stand to benefit the most from it, chiefly immigrant advocates, unions and the administration of Mexican President Vicente Fox. Democratic leaders in Congress are also enthusiastic about some sort of legalization program. Yet to many illegal aliens, amnesty offers less than meets the eye. And to Americans anxious about the illegal influx into the country, it is more like a poke in the eye.