“Giving up on value is a sin,” is one of the well-known basic rules of investing in stocks. It simply means that investors must keep the stocks that have worth and will possibly return more earnings in the future. Unless the investor wanted to lose money, his or her decision would not sell the valuable stocks. The US as a whole country is currently divided on making a similar decision whether to sell one of their most fruitful stocks: its undocumented youth. Although comparing the value of human beings to that of stocks might be subject to criticism, it is not uncommon to use money measurement for making significant decisions. The division can be easily observed from the comment section of the article “If ‘Dreamers’ are protected, would the economy benefit?,” in spite of the abundant factual information in the article. One reader exclaims, “Deport the dreamers and their families. NO AMNESTY” (Brown), but another one claims, “The history of this country is immigrants” (Fred). One side is claiming that the young undocumented immigrants should not be granted the right to live in the US simply because they are harmful to the country and its citizens. On the other side, advocates for either mild or progressive immigration policies are trying to prove to the masses that giving the undocumented immigrants permission to live in this country is the “right thing to do.” One of the most important and common ways to approach this issue is by analyzing the effects of immigrants on the US economy. Based on a number of comprehensive studies, it is evident that the economic arguments put forward by the advocates of protecting undocumented immigrants are much more sound and true. Because young undocumented immigrants in the US are an indispensable part of the country’s economy, passing acts that would reform the immigration system and provide the young illegal residents with the opportunity to contribute more to the economy is absolutely fundamental to uplift the lives of both immigrants and natives in the US.
Even though economists use simulations to generate answers for simplified situations, evaluating a real-life situation, which also needs political answers, from an economic point of view cannot be finalized without complex research on different types of sources. This paper aims to go through a cycle of news related to the topic. The cycle consists of current news sources, policy sources, book sources, and journal articles. However, the main components of my supporting arguments and facts come from book sources and journal articles, since they include the most comprehensive and in-depth data on the issue. It is necessary to note that the purpose of this paper is not to make calculations and discover an economic theory, but to derive a conclusion with the help of credible sources and economic arguments, despite their causation of and correlation to other issues, and thus persuade the audience. Also, my bias towards the issue of immigration must be acknowledged, despite my efforts not to make assumptions and to stay neutral. I perceive personal advantage from espousing one side of the controversy of immigration because of my “alien-status” in the US, which proves that it is impossible for me to stay one hundred percent unbiased. As a German physicist Georg C Lichtenberg once said, “Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.”
It is imperative to absorb the integral and basic details of the Dream Act before analyzing the righteousness of it. As Wendy Cervantes, a senior policy analyst at CLASP, explains in her article “Federal Policy Implications for Immigrant Children and Families,” The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) is a proposed act of which the main aim is to provide “a path to citizenship for certain undocumented youths who came to the United States as children.” Since it was introduced in 2001 by Dick Durbin and Orrin Hatch, it has only passed the House of Representatives, but not the Senate (67-68). The article “Overview of the U.S. Immigration System,” written by Elizabeth Frankel, tells that “Dreamers” is used to refer to the potential recipients of the DREAM act. The core eligibility requirements include having come to the US before the age of 16, having resided in the US for at least five years, and having graduated from a high school or obtained a GED (47). According to the Migration Policy Institute, there are 3.245 million people who could benefit from the 2017 version of the DREAM Act, and 2.1 million of them would be eligible for immediate legal status, and the rest would likely become eligible by meeting the secondary school education requirement (Batalova et al. 7). This shows that the majority of Dreamers are in progress of or have completed some degree of education. Just as all other issues related to immigration are extremely complex due to the presence of political ideologies and fallacious arguments, the Dream Act has grown to a national movement that left the country with three divisions: pro-Dreamers, anti-Dreamers, and the “undecided” in the gray area. It is crucial for the people with lack of knowledge about them to seek more details and deeper understanding rather than flowing with the masses.
If a number of financial advisors complain about a loss resulted from a stock and its potential loss in the future, finding out if their claims are true or not is critical. Likewise, in order to analyze the economic benefits of immigrants, it is also important to check the validity of anti-immigration arguments, such as a decrease in native workers’ wages and an increase in unemployment caused by immigrants. For example, Jeffrey Murphy, a student at the University of Notre Dame, writes, “What could possibly compel us to legalize hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of additional foreign workers to compete with our own American citizens already experiencing severe labor saturation?” Despite the name of his article “The Statistics on Dreamers are a Nightmare,” he fails to mention actual statistics to support his argument mentioned above. Most importantly, whether this type of argument complaining about the loss caused by immigrant workers has statistical support or not, it is important to point out that higher education, which is the gateway to high-skill jobs, is “one of the three pathways to LPR [Legal Permanent Residency] status under the Dream Act,” as Francesc Ortega, an economics professor at Queens College, and his peers highlight in their report “The Economic Benefits of Passing the Dream Act,” (4). It means a large number of beneficiaries of the Dream Act would be workers with at least a high school education. However, the wage effect caused by immigrants is only influential when a new, large influx of immigrants without any capital and any education hit the labor market, but the Dreamers are already living, studying, and working in the country. Even if all Dreamers were low-skilled immigrants who were recently entering the labor market, they wouldn’t destroy the economy but rather enlarge it. According to The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration, a report written by professors at Ivy League institutions, “even if immigrants arrive without capital, domestic savings and investment will rise as a result of the higher return to capital. Once the capital-labor ratio is restored, the adverse wage effect of immigration and the immigration surplus disappear” (Blau and Christopher 175). It implies that the downward pressure on wages is only temporary because immigrants eventually accumulate assets, reversing the wage effect. Moreover, in the journal article “The Economic Benefits of Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” as an expert on the political economy of migration, Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda writes, “The enhanced enforcement regime moves unauthorized workers further underground, lowering their pay and, ironically, creating a greater demand for unauthorized workers” (180). In other words, the hostility against currently illegal Dreamers from an economic stand is self-contradictory because without a comprehensive immigration reform, the demand and supply of illegal workers will continue rising and the economy will face the opportunity cost – the loss of potential gain from other alternatives – of benefiting from legal workers. Therefore, it is misleading and unreasonable to oppose immigration reform acts by cutting the other side out and making the wage effect seem to be an everlasting and inevitable effect of passing the Dream Act.
Just as the projection of financial outcomes is necessary before selling, buying, or keeping shares of stock, the use of basic simulations to project possible economic outcomes of an incident is essential in order to make an economically beneficial decision. The Dream Act, currently the most plausible piece of legislation for improving immigration issues in the US, should be passed because simplified economic theories prove that it could lead to several long-term positive impacts on the US economy. Using a figure that involves the law of demand, The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration explains that the influx of new immigrant workers will theoretically cause more productivity and increased income for business owners and high-skilled workers. It also applies the same economic laws to analyze the wage effect by immigration, from which it concluded that the new influx of low-skilled immigrants can affect the wages of low-skilled native workers temporarily (Blau and Christopher 170). Simply put, it shows that basic rules of economics could be used to point out the cost and benefit of immigrant workers: raised wages for complementary labor market and suppressed wages for substitute labor market. Blau and Christopher go on to compare the weight and longevity of the two impacts, and they write “natives’ incomes rise in aggregate as a result of immigration” (171), and the long-term change in the production of goods caused by immigration “further reduces any adverse impact of immigration on wages” (189). Simple economic simulations prove that the legalization of Dreamers will lead to an overall growth of the US economy in terms of income that would far outweigh the short-term effect on relative wages.
Any important economic decision needs not only applications of theories but also examinations of empirical evidence and statistics from the past for the purpose of generating actual numbers. Successful traders look through the historical reports of stocks in order to have more realistic expectations. There are instances when the US government took steps that had economically positive effects on the individual lives of undocumented immigrants and has seen numerous gains from those effects, such as the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 which made 3 million undocumented workers legal. Hinojosa-Ojeda lists the surprising fiscal consequences of this act that include a 13.2 percent increase in hourly wages for men and a 20.5 percent increase for women, which directly raised tax revenues. Also, a recent research project at UCLA concluded that the IRCA led to tremendous long-term difference in the economic life of immigrants by encouraging them to spend more on education, open bank accounts, own homes, and launch businesses (Hinojosa-Ojeda 182). It implies that the Dream Act can both directly and indirectly expand the US economy because all Dreamers are either young workers or students, which makes it similar to the IRCA.
Moving from economic effects derived from individuals, it is important to analyze and predict the overall changes in the economy using macroeconomics. Immigrants’ contribution to the US economy through different types of direct payment is noteworthy because as Darrell M. West, vice president of governance studies at Brookings Institution, mentions in his book Brain Gain: Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy, “between one-half and three-quarters of undocumented immigrants pay federal and state income taxes,” and immigrants make up an annual tax revenue of $162 billion (11). By making certain undocumented immigrants legal to live and work, these statistics can rocket up. In their analytical report, Francesc Ortega et al. calculate potential economic impacts by legalizing the 1.9 million Dreamers that are already in the workforce. They state that those 1.9 million workers alone would generate a $281 billion increase in the GDP in 10 years (6). The figures they used hint that the rate of the contribution to GDP by the Dreamers would increase as years pass, which means passing the act earlier would play a key role in getting the most out of it. In addition to the contribution to tax revenue, in the article “The Costs and Benefits of Immigration,” West points out the fact that young immigrants have more tendency to be taxpayers and homeowners than service recipients (433). He indicates that the concern over the public service spending for Dreamers is illogical, and the focus on their positive capacity should be enhanced because Dreamers are all young undocumented immigrants. Since records from the past and statistical projections firmly prove that the legalization of young, unlawful immigrants will boost up the economy, passing the Dream Act would be the most profitable choice.
Moreover, implicit economic benefits can be derived from the Dream Act, such as the educational bump. Not many Americans are open to the idea of providing public higher education to immigrant youth. Darrell M. West states, “only 35 percent [of survey respondents] approve of entrance to state colleges at in-state tuition rates for children of illegal immigrants if these children are citizens” (Brain Gain: Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy 104). It is reasonably necessary for those against higher educational opportunities for immigrants to be informed about the long term economic benefits. Granting legal status to young immigrants with at least secondary education means enabling them to enroll in college with in-state tuition. Even though not all Dreamers would seek higher education due to their already established working lives, studies show that in-state tuition could appeal to many of them. In the book, A Cost-Benefit Framework for Analyzing the Economic and Fiscal Impacts of State-Level Immigration Policies, economists at RAND Corporation, Lynn A. Karoly and Francisco Perez-Arce claim, “an estimated 435 unauthorized immigrants in each annual cohort would attend college,” due to the Maryland Dream Act which promises in-state college tuition for certain undocumented immigrants. With the premise that 435 people would benefit from this act each year, they predict a benefit of “$24.6 million in net savings to local, state, and federal governments from higher tax payments and reduced incarceration costs” from every annual cohort (70-71). It substantiates that an astronomical savings would occur through the enactment of the Dream Act, which would give the same educational opportunities for 776,000 under-age Dreamers by encouraging them to finish high school and pursue higher education. Numerous economic gains from the educational effect of the Dream Act, such as increased revenues, savings, and presence in high-skilled labor market, play a major role in the effectiveness of the act.
In conclusion, with no regards to other avenues of the issue, it is both sound and true that the Dream Act should be passed on the grounds that it will lead to extraordinary impacts on the US economy. It is proven that objections to this kind of immigration reforms, such as ones related to the wage effect, are easily refuted and both the explicit and implicit positive consequences are supported by theoretical figures and empirical evidence. Even with those pieces of evidence and arguments, the US is still not taking any effective progress to protect the backbone of this country, and it remains fiercely divided on the issue. It is similar to a narrow-minded stock owner who is trying to sell his most valuable stocks that will return high yields. Although one might not be comfortable with the comparison between stocks and immigrants, it is necessary to present the issue in terms of money and economy because other ways do not possess strong influence. In the article “If We Are Deported, Who Benefits?,” Jessica Colotl, who is a DACA recipient, writes about her traumatic experience of growing up with a fear of deportation and facing a danger of losing her DACA status and all other opportunities, such as graduating from Kennesaw State University, due to driving without a license. This type of purely personal and emotional stories do not seem to be effective in spreading empathy and initiating significant policy reforms. This is the reason why a large number of scholarly books and articles, including this one, aim to examine the truth about the economic effects of immigration. In the article “Dreamers contribute to our economy,” Senator Martin Heinrich from New Mexico advocates for Dreamers by stressing how vital a role they play in the US economy. It is unsettling for me as a writer to compare the lives of people to their economic value, which is impossible to avoid doing due to the growing number of misleading economic arguments against Dreamers. “Hiding racism behind economics doesn’t make it less racist” (Covert). Even with these analytical papers and books on the economic benefits of immigration and specifically Dreamers, the deeply-rooted bigotry and xenophobia in multiple generations of Americans keep impeding the initiation of legislative reforms that are mandatory for this country to maintain both its political and economic power.
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