One thing you will not hear during this political season is how immigrants to the United States—recall we are all descendants of immigrants—have helped make this nation great through the sweat of their labor and the content of their character.
Immigrants have helped build our cities, our transportation systems and our national infrastructure. They contribute greatly to the country’s economic health by working in important industries that help fuel growth and create jobs.
You would never know that, of course, by listening to our political discourse. You would think by how some of our politicians describe them that immigrants are subhuman and threats to the American way of life. The scapegoating of immigrants by some of our political leaders is wrongheaded and contrary to the facts. Let’s look at some of the evidence.
First, immigrants help the nation pay its bills. Based upon estimates from the American Community Survey (ACS), immigrants paid $382.9 billion in federal and $196.3 billion in state and local taxes in 2022. Undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion of that total, an amount that would grow to $136.9 billion if they received legal status. They also keep our public retirement plans solvent, having paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance in 2022—programs for which they are ineligible.
Second, immigrants help create jobs in the U.S. economy, not take them away. Despite making up about 14 percent of the population, immigrants represent one in five entrepreneurs nationwide, producing $110 billion in business revenue in 2022. A study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that immigrants have helped grow the post-pandemic economy, spurring job growth while keeping inflation down.
Third, immigrants will play an important role in the country’s economic life in the decades ahead. With baby boomers retiring, and birth rates declining, the shortage of workers in certain industries will only grow in the next decade. The U.S. surgeon general predicts a shortage of 3 million low-wage essential health-care workers over the next five years, a field in which immigrants currently already make up 15.6 percent of nurses and 28 percent of home health-care aides.
As the country deals with an affordable housing crisis, a study by the Associated Builders and Contractors recently found that the construction industry could face a shortfall of 500,000 construction workers as early as next year. And the agricultural sector will continue to rely upon immigrant labor, as today over 25 percent of agricultural workers and 54.3 percent of graders and sorters of agricultural products are immigrants.
Lastly, the contributions of immigrants to U.S. economic growth are immense. Because of a projected increase in immigrant labor over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will grow by $8.7 trillion.
Not only do they pay their way and more, immigrants also share the values that all Americans share—the importance of family, faith and freedom. Despite attempts to portray all of them as criminals and a threat to society, immigrant communities have been found to be safer than U.S.-citizen communities.
Instead of embracing the contributions of immigrants and proposing solutions to update an antiquated immigration system, many of our elected leaders continue to politicize the issue and offer the same old enforcement-only proposals—policies which have failed over the past 30 years.
To be clear, Americans have every right to be concerned about the U.S. immigration system and the need to repair it, including reworking how the nation’s borders are managed. As a moral issue, however, we cannot continue to accept the hard labor and taxes of immigrants while also exploiting them and blaming them for our problems.
A modern immigration system which enhances legal avenues for migration, brings undocumented workers out of the shadows, upholds the rule of law, ensures our security and prepares us for the future is achievable.
In short, immigrants are part of the solution to, not the cause of, our country’s social and economic challenges. We forsake them at our own peril.
Cardinal Roger Mahony is the archbishop emeritus of the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.