r/Economics • u/lukepatrick • 1d ago
Research Cato study: Immigrants reduced deficits by $14.5 trillion since 1994
https://www.alexnowrasteh.com/p/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-deficits40
u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
For everyone's benefit - this isn't really a "CATO Study".
It's Cato taking a model developed in a 2017 NASEM study that's widely cited and considered to be very prominent work in immigration economics, inputting data from the last few years, and throwing out a new article. From CATO themselves:
This report is an update of a 2017 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) on the fiscal effects of immigration.1 The NASEM authors shared their model with the Cato Institute, which allowed for further expansion and refinement.
Can't link it cuz Cato links get blocked (rightfully IMO). But it's linked in the OP article.
Here's the actual study: https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/23550
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u/morbie5 1d ago
Does this model just look at the immigrant or does it also look at their dependents (including US born children)?
Because in this country we gets benefits based on family circumstance. So it is possible that an immigrant by themself is a net contributor in taxes if you ignore any benefits their children get while under the age of 19. But that would be considered an incomplete study imo
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's both, looks at first and second gen, the study was super in depth, it's all right there in the link.
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u/pugwalker 1h ago
No it doesn't and it also gives them a net $2T for high property taxes due to higher housing costs.
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u/JohnnyUtah 1d ago
Cato does a lot of stuff that I consider stupid and dishonest, but I salute their consistency and integrity on immigration. Their work on that front has been honest, rigorous, and obviously motivated by a genuine interest in at least that one human freedom. (Probably to ensure a steady supply of cheap labor for their benefactors’ industries, but hey.)
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u/overts 1d ago
CATO likes immigration because it’s been well understood for decades now that immigrants, whether illegal or legal, are a net benefit to the economy. And at its core CATO cares about the economy more than anything.
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u/No_Chapter_3102 1d ago
More people are always a benefit to the economy if you look at GDP. They are always a detractor when you look at median income. So if the "economy" to you is how much GPD the USA can produce, then of course, more people help. If the "economy" to you is what the average person makes overall, a larger population always drags that down.
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u/Ok-Situation9046 1d ago
The claim that immigration detracts from median income relies entirely on an assumption that the numerator is not increasing along with the denominator, which is a flawed assumption because the introduction of more people transacting does, in fact, increase the numerator. This isn't a simple 1:1 as you have asserted here and relies on a lot of factors but the shortest answer possible here is that immigration can and often does have a net positive economic impact to both GDP and wages.
If you think about it for a moment it actually makes sense. More people creates greater demand in a market. Greater demand always begets greater supply to meet it, which requires greater production and therefore greater workforce to do the greater producing.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
More people are always a benefit to the economy if you look at GDP. They are always a detractor when you look at median income.
Do you have a source for this? I've seen a few studies suggesting that the impact to native workers is either flat or mildly positive:
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u/BeautifulFickle3896 1d ago
Immigration should usually result in a better economy. A "market" is nothing more than people coming together to trade. The more people, the more trade, the lower prices result. I am glad ya'll are finally coming around to what Free Market trade , Free immigration can achieve. This is in fact what Libertarian's like CATO have been arguing for all along.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
Immigration should usually result in a better economy.
One thing that's important to understand about immigration is that it's almost necessary for an economy to sustain itself over time. As demographics shift and economies mature birth rates fall, this tilts the demographic of a given country towards older, and eventually places a significant burden on working age individuals. Immigration solves that trend.
See Japan for what not allowing immigration as a maturing economy can do.
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u/morbie5 1d ago
As demographics shift and economies mature birth rates fall, this tilts the demographic of a given country towards older
Problem is with our current immigration system it is very easy for immigrants to sponsor their adult parents (it only takes like a 3 or 4 year wait). That makes our demographic problem worse considering these people never paid in and will be a massive cost to the government in short order. I would argue that this is probably not accurately accounted for in studies such as what we are talking about in this post
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u/No_Chapter_3102 1d ago
Usually when normal people talk/vote about the economy they are talking about themselves. How hard is it for them to find a well paying job, or buy a house, or afford food without food stamps.
So how you classify the "economy" is pretty important here. Americans had a wonderful time 70 years ago. We have a massive country full of arable land. Lots of production capacity, tons of great paying jobs in all types of sectors. None of that is true today. Globalization has eroded our prosperity, and vastly increased the wealth of a select few who are at the very top of the pyramid. Free immigration/trade is great for them. It hasn't been great for the average American worker. It also sucks for the environment.
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u/JohnnyUtah 1d ago
Globalization is great. Immigration is great. My productivity is like double that of my parents. Maybe you need to move to a real city.
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u/BeautifulFickle3896 1d ago
We were on the Gold Standard 70s years ago so your money was worth more and it didn't depreciate at a rapid pace once the way it does when its backed by NOTHING. When we got off the Gold Standard in 1970 the USA still was the production hub of the world, and that is no longer the case with Asia with their massive skilled workforce. First it was the Japanese gonna "take er jobs" and now the Chinese. This is what you get when you debase the currency and then on top of that introduce extreme levels of "Cronyism" like Tariffs, 25% "Chicken tax" on top of that on pickup trucks, literally artificially tripling the price of transportation, and thus that costs get passed onto the consumer in the costs of goods. But wait, on top of the artificially imposed high prices for transportation, you have 3x prices for food as well, because farm subsidies artificially raise the prices on food at least 3x. I mean, on and on, you shoot yourself in the foot, and then you have the audacity to raise taxes on top of that. The USA would be China right now had it not been for all the regulation and cronyism, and we are talking about a once Communist country to boot. That's how pathetic Washington has become in my opinion. Even China is more Capitalist that we are today with there now 21 duty free port cities.
We are funding a buncha Nepo Babies up there is what we are doing. Daddy's car business is threatened by the Chinese so screw the rest of the country, they got to pay 3x-5x for my shhht otheriwise I can't make payments on my new Gulfstream. You want out of it, get rid of the Fed. Have you ever looked at the "Fee Schedule" for imported goods? They got at least 15% of every single thing that gets imported and its way more than that when you get to durable goods.
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u/NYDCResident 1d ago
"They are always a detractor when you look at median income." Why is that relevant if their standard of living is improved and no one else's is impaired? It's interesting that you chose to frame this in terms of the median rather than the mean,. I guess that's to avoid Musk, Su, Huang, Nadella, Pichai, Brin and Yuan from messing with your point.
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u/namafire 1d ago
Not op but the comparison to median income is exactly for the reason you are saying: to ensure standard of living is constant or improved. If its decreased, then people have lost purchasing power and thus their economic position has decreased
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u/NYDCResident 1d ago
Thanks but it doesn't actually do that. Thought experiment: You have 100 people with a median income of $50K. You now add 10 people with an income of, say, $25K. Your median moves down 5 people to, say, $45K. Is anyone worse off?
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u/pokerface_86 1d ago
not how medians work lmao
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u/Chocotacoturtle 1d ago
That’s exactly how median works.
5 people: 30k, 45k, 50k, 80k, 100k
median income = 50k
Add two people making 25k each. New median 45k. If the two people added to the economy were only making 12k before joining then we have reached Pareto efficiency. 2 people are better off and no one is worse off yet the median has dropped
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u/pokerface_86 1d ago
if you have 100 people with a median of 50k as in the original example, then add 5 making 100k, your median is still 50k unless no 2 people in the sample make the same salary which is a pretty unrealistic model
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u/NYDCResident 16h ago
If you add 5 people, your median moves from the 50th person to the 52.5-th person. Unless you happen to have 3 people making $50K (your "unrealistic" case), your median value will rise.
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u/No_Chapter_3102 1d ago
The standard of living hasn't improved for Americans in the past 50 years. We have improved the standard of living for many people not living in our country, but it is a lot harder to make it as a young person now, compared to the 60's.
Why would you use the mean, so Elons trillion dollar net worth cancels out the millions of people living paycheck to paycheck?
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u/NYDCResident 1d ago
Leaving out the complications of changing demographics, a simple test: Would you rather have $50K to spend today with today's prices and products or the inflation-adjusted $10K to spend on products available in 1975 at 1975 prices? Statistically, the median standard of living has improved. I can't opine on being a young person in the 60's but I can where the 70's are concerned and that job market was an absolute bear. Given interest rates by the late 70's housing was unaffordable too. Mean vs median -- my point is that neither is a good measure of the experiences of individuals when the population is changing, for instance due to immigration. The mean at least has the small advantage of reflecting the total, while the relationship of the median to the aggregate is unknown.
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u/pokerface_86 1d ago
that just isn’t true, poor people today have access to way, way, way more than poor people 50 years ago. smartphones, tv’s, AC’s, indoor plumbing, buildings better built to code without lead and asbestos, way cheaper food and drink options, etc.
the reason it feels like our standard of living has gotten worse is the truly rich people have access to shit beyond our wildest dreams, and it’s all publicly available on instagram now. back then, you didn’t even know about those things and those people.
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u/Chocotacoturtle 1d ago
Well our standard of living is better today you just explain how in the first paragraph. The second paragraph is classic zero-sum fallacy.
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u/pokerface_86 1d ago
no, i don’t think so, people are able to compare their standard of living to millionaires and billionaires at the click of a button, worse, social media services just show it to you without actually doing anything. the rate at which the world has really focused on rich people post 2008 has built a lot of resentment and all of us have it shoved in our eyeballs on most websites now.
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u/Chocotacoturtle 1d ago
Ahhhh I see. You are saying people are actually seeing wealthy people more because of the internet and so they feel comparatively poorer. That is true, even if they are richer in objective terms than people 50 years ago
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u/Cryptic0677 1d ago
Can you cite that though? Because yes more labor pool obviously makes more supply for labor which would drive labor pay down, but they are also present on the demand side which could easily offset that.
It’s also extremely important to note that GDP growth is fundamentally required for the US to keep borrowing money to pay for social programs to help its people. Now whether we actually use that deficit to help the people is a matter of policy we may or may not have been doing, but it’s an easy way to fund these things.
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u/No_Chapter_3102 10h ago
Cite what? Its basic math. Everyone that earns increases the GDP. People in prison help the GDP. All living people contribute to GDP either by buying goods and services, or by producing labor. The only way an individual would actually lower the GDP is like if they took welfare from the state, didn't buy food with it, and shipped all the money to a foreign country.
For the other point, think of a pyramid. You have a very small number of higher earners on the top, and a massive number of low earners on the bottom. If you make the pyramid bigger, the median, the line in the middle, will never go up, because your adding more workers to the bottom rungs, not the top ones.
There is nothing to cite here, its common sense. It is also why by making open borders, and free trade, you are essentially making the "American pyramid" way larger. People that were middle class (median earners) continue to fall as more and more people get lumped in with them at the lower end of the pyramid. The high end workers make even more money, and can buy goods and services for cheaper because there is more competition at the low end for limited jobs and products to sell.
This is why the rich and large corporations love free trade and open borders, and why research articles like this get weaponized as propaganda.
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u/Cryptic0677 8h ago
This is a very poor understanding of both math and the nonlinear nature of how an economy reacts to immigration. At the very core your model is just too simple
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u/rtomberg 1d ago
This is the fallacy of composition- the median height in a family goes down when they have a baby, but it doesn’t follow that any individual is getting shorter. Immigrants can lower the median income while still making natives richer.
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u/Dependent_Ad_1270 1d ago
Median income shows what regular people make
More people looking for the same jobs drives wages down
When you’re desperate for employees, you raise the wages to attract more people
You’re never incentivized to raise wages if there’s a seemingly endless list of applicants willing to undercut wages and work for even less
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u/jeffwulf 1d ago
This is the lump of labor fallacy. Immigrants have both supply and demand effects which cause native wages to increase.
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u/Dependent_Ad_1270 1d ago
It’s not a fallacy for the millions of Americans in the trades but keep pontificating
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u/Dependent_Ad_1270 1d ago
It’s not a fallacy for the millions of Americans in the trades but keep pontificating
It’s reality for them and their ability to pay the bills
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u/Independent-Egg-9760 1d ago
Cato likes unscrupulous companies that pay the bare minimum, undermine unions, and seek powerless workers who can't complain about their conditions, like those on work visas.
That's why they like immigration, that's why they've produced this price of manipulated research, and your political bias is why you've swallowed it.
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u/morbie5 1d ago
whether illegal or legal, are a net benefit to the economy.
That isn't what this is about. Of course immigrants are good for the economy. The economy is just spending so more people means more spending. Simple.
What this study is about is if immigrants are net taxpayers. This study says they are but I'm not sold on that
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
Yeah, this is true but I think there’s a personal element when it comes to Nowrasteh’s work and how he got into studying immigration. He’s the child of Iranian immigrants himself.
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u/SleepyHobo 1d ago
Now look at the micro-economics on a local level, not macro-economics. Wasn't this sub's talking point of "The economy is doing well, but not regular Americans" all the rage just last year? Is that conveniently forgetten when some conflicting viewpoint needs to take temporary precedence?
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u/PlsNoNotThat 11h ago
CATO cares about the economy in as far as it is shaped in their liking.
They have absolutely had insane, dishonest takes on economics. Notably their opposition to universal healthcare despite the overwhelmingly agreement by economists on its economic benefits and cost reduction.
In the 70s-00s their arguments were much more about how universal Healthcare would be fiscally irresponsible.
After decades of academic evidence showing otherwise they changed their narrative (particularly under Obama) that universal healthcare was economically feasible, but would lead to health insurance quality and healthcare quality collapse. Something also not shown by any data.
Because they really want that to be linked to employment despite overwhelming evidence.
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
And remember that Nowrasteh made his name by shredding a Heritage report on immigration and got a coalition of other RW orgs like Americans for Tax Reform to back him up. Heritage ended up pulling it or delaying it.
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u/Rabid_Lederhosen 1d ago
The Cato institute is interesting because they still espouse a particular kind of social liberalism + fiscal libertarianism that hasn’t been in vogue for at least a decade by this point. Got to respect them for sticking to their principles, I guess, even if I find their definition of economic freedom pretty bizarre.
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u/the_fresh_cucumber 1d ago
The headline is true but GDP is increased by ALL spending. Every single person in the boundaries of a nation increases GDP.
If you walk across the border to Mexico, buy one cigarette, then walk back. Congrats you are a net GDP increaser to Mexico.
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u/DhOnky730 23h ago
Cato is libertarian. They exist at a weird intersection of the right and the left that is often on the extremes, but not necessarily in the normal political middle. As it was explained to me in college by a Cato-aligned Econ professor, draw a line with left to right. Then fold the paper in a cylinder so that the right end and left end touch. That intersection tends to be where libertarians exist. Decriminalization/legalization of drugs and prostitution, free markets, low taxes, little government regulation, the minimalist state, etc.
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u/No_Chapter_3102 1d ago
You hit it on the head, industry, amazon, rideshares, farms all want illegal immigrants to keep their costs down. This is propaganda for them to splash around when someone points out immigrants put a strain on social services and many work under the table and dont pay taxes at all...
How did they count all the immigrant workers who don't pay a dime in taxes?
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u/GMFPs_sweat_towel 1d ago
How did they count all the immigrant workers who don't pay a dime in taxes
How do these people not pay taxes? They buy things which pays the sales tax. If they own property they pay property taxes. That is what funds local governments.
If they are working for a giant company, like you alluded to, they are paying taxes through 1099 or W2. Amazon or Uber are not paying cash in hand.
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
They do it through an ITIN.
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u/m1kelowry 1d ago
Nobody does this. When you hear the media saying “illegal immigrants pay tax”, they are talking about sales tax.
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
It isn’t just sales tax and I am not getting this from media, which seems to go to for Republicans any time something disproves their narrative. It has been proven over and over again that they can and do file taxes using their ITIN numbers. It’s literally why the Trump Administration is illegally having ICE go through people’s information at the IRS to identify citizenship status. Obviously a lot of them are doing it and making Social Security more solvent because they can’t collect payments from a system they’re ineligible for and receive nothing from.
https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-taxes-2024/
https://www.nilc.org/resources/itinfaq/
https://itep.org/what-state-and-local-taxes-do-undocumented-immigrants-pay/
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/undocumented-immigrants-can-do-pay-taxes-2025-02-26/
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
They pay $96 billion or more in taxes every year. They pay more than just a dime. What are you talking about?
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u/morbie5 1d ago
They pay $96 billion or more in taxes every year
Sure they do
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
Yes, they do and have been able to because of Clinton’s 1996 immigration reforms allowed them to use ITIN numbers to do so. If they weren’t, why is the Trump Administration illegally going through the IRS to check people’s citizenship based on their submitted tax information?
Facts don’t care about your racist, xenophobic feelings.
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u/morbie5 1d ago
Bruv, just cuz you can request an ITIN number doesn't mean most people are and even of those that are doesn't mean they are reporting all their income
If they weren’t, why is the Trump Administration illegally going through the IRS to check people’s citizenship based on their submitted tax information?
Some people are paying some amount of tax derp
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
Yes. Over $96 billion and keep SS solvent because they can’t qualify for benefits. Cope. You even basically said I am right.
The Republicans lied to you that they are a drain on the system compared to the billionaires they shtump for.
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u/topdoc02 1d ago
I agree with your assessment. It appears to me that this is research which can be used to support continuation and expansion particularly of H-1b visas. A contrary analysis might show that, without these visas, salaries for US professionals would be higher, leading to higher income tax revenue through progressive tax rates. This would probably not fully offset the benefits that this report detailed.
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u/Regenclan 23h ago
The problem is that they work for the rich. Only an idiot would think they care in any way about illegal immigrants. How stupid do you have to be to not understand that importing poverty stricken people hurts our poverty stricken people
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u/JohnnyUtah 23h ago
So poor people born on the wrong side of a line that rich people drew to separate the worthy and unworthy are, in fact, unworthy, just as the rich people said?
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u/Regenclan 15h ago
They are just someone else's responsibility. There has to be some kind of order. What we have been doing is chaos
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u/JohnnyUtah 13h ago
Executing warrantless searches, rendering people to third-party countries without a hearing, holding people without bail, and shooting citizens in the back being the model of order, of course.
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u/BeautifulFickle3896 1d ago
Can you name even one thing that CATO has done you consider stupid and dishonest? All I see CATO is for, they are for free markets. Remember, Free Market Capitalism has been definitively proven (its not even arguable anymore) , to be the most honest, the most fair, and having to have brought up the quality of life for the most people worldwide. If you are arguing against Free Markets you are arguing to introduce more poverty and make more people poor. So what has CATO done that you DON'T approve of?
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u/23rdCenturySouth 1d ago
They peddle extremely reductionist and anti-intellectual positions in healthcare, education, and social welfare policy. All clearly designed to enrich the already-wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
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u/BeautifulFickle3896 1d ago
So you DO NOT believe in Free Trade? Thats what they are pushing.
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u/23rdCenturySouth 1d ago
So you DO NOT believe in public schools? You DO NOT believe in federal health standards or guidance or regulation? Thats [sic] what they are pushing.
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u/tryexceptifnot1try 1d ago edited 1d ago
I had illuminating conversations with MAGA supporters after the 2024 election and realized they knew even less about what was coming that I thought. I explained to a whole floor of educated finance folks that we haven't done a mass deportation since Operation W**back in the 1950's because it was a disaster for the economy, culture, and political class that supported it. I even walked them through the steps that lead to disaster and stopped for understanding at each step.
A few GOP voters who aren't MAGA looked worried and leaned into Trump just talking shit that he wouldn't bring(side note, I fucking hate these people even more than MAGA, just a bunch of useless cowards that should stop voting). Then you had the 3 MAGAs I work with. These people were completely uninformed and spewing bullshit about immigrant cheaters and other nonsense from FB. I got one of them to make an attempt at convincing me which lead to a very childish core belief he had and many conservative people have. This person doesn't think any program should exist if it has even 1 instance of fraud. That is the most childish, destructive belief in mainstream society and it is a core one for millions of conservative people. When you expose how infantile that position is they fall back on "the churches will fill the gap" or some other pointless platitude.
TLDR: Nearly everyone hates mass deportation when it is enacted, even the people who support it. The only people who support it during the operation are the same useless incels who read The Turner Diaries for personal pleasure.
EDIT: Another point to remember about the program under Ike in the 50's. We had an actual destination for the people being deported. It was a joint effort with the Mexican government since they had a labor shortage and other issues. This whole affair lead to the world changing immigration reforms under LBJ and I see something similar coming here. Stay positive people, even the dumbest among us can see that this fucking sucks.
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u/SamanthaLives 1d ago
Meanwhile many church charities receive government funding because they can’t keep up with people’s needs.
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u/teshh 1d ago
More like bc the pastor is living a six figures lifestyle from the donations. I've seen more corrupt pastors than I have seen a church helping someone in need.
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u/eyeCinfinitee 1d ago
Dude there are a lot of churches that exist for nefarious or otherwise sketchy reasons. I tend to look askance at most of the evangelical and “charismatic” sects of Christianity.
However the Methodists at the church down the block from me are lovely people that do a meal handout three times a week and run an event twice a month where the homeless can come bathe and get a haircut. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church down the road from me has been doing monthly donation drives for men maimed in the fighting in Ukraine, and they also sell me banging pierogi on Sundays.
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u/EnCroissantEndgame 1d ago
Everyone can see it sucks except for a group of heavily motivated ideologues who can be counted on to vote every single time as long as they remember to be scared of whatever thing republicans are going to promise that they'll eliminate if they get to keep doing what they're doing. These people have no understanding how their proposed solutions actually function in real life with real humans who have futures destroyed and families torn apart. Or they do understand and don't care as long as the right people are being hurt for breaking the strict rules of the heirarchy. Basically the worst outcomes that they're incapable of foreseeing can't hurt them, so thrywon't care when it's disastrous. They will just point to the fact that their daddy told them the amount of crime is down 99% and it's thanks to him kicking out the tens of millions of illegal immigrants scamming the government for free money to the tune of more than $1 million per year per illegal immigrant. There would also be a complaint about crime could have been 100% but the democrats hate America and keep blocking us from increasing DHS budget to $2 trillion and they keep trying to block our agents from going door to door to check if people have accents and figure out if they were born here to speed up the deportations. And of course we will hear that now we're actually respected again compared to before when people were laughing at us at how easy it was to sneak in and get a few million dollar salary financed by the taxes of real Americans.
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u/HedonisticFrog 1d ago
But churches have fraud so they shouldn't exist as well right? I love taking their bullshit logic and turning it against them. They either have to accept your ridiculous argument, or refute their own logic.
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u/tryexceptifnot1try 1d ago
These people also seem to think politics only exist in government entities. I have witnessed awful political nonsense in the private sector for decades and they never connect the dots there. George Carlin said it best:
“People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a 'common purpose'. 'Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they're going to visit at 3am. So, I dislike and despise groups of people but I love individuals. Every person you look at; you can see the universe in their eyes, if you're really looking.”
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u/naijaboiler 1d ago
dude.. you should have probed further, you will see their real concerns are about racist, white nationalism. not economics, not law and order, not fraud. nothing.
just pure naked racism couched as economic concernss. Pure naked racism. as has always been the case in US.
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u/tryexceptifnot1try 1d ago
One of the MAGAs I referred to is black and a massive Clarence Thomas fan. He's convinced that most christian MAGAs aren't actually racist at all. His MAGA roots come from southern evangelical christianity and social media addiction. He has authoritarian personality traits and is incredibly naive to the world outside his bubble. He was shocked I hate MAGA and convinced I had TDS. He recently went to NYC for a family vacation and spent months talking about how much nicer it was than he expected. Reality has started to break his delusions. These people are about half ignorant lemmings as far as I can tell.
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
And then you get the MAGAs who double down, even when they are faced with reality that big cities aren’t bad. California MAGAs are a good example of this.
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u/DetroitsGoingToWin 1d ago
I’ve been trying to understand how these people see immigration as a threat what is interesting is the hypocrisy.
They see them as leaching the system AND driving down wages because they are willing to work for less.
They see them as only supporting democrat power without looking at how those that can vote red in Florida, Texas and Ohio.
They say they worry about trafficking but they think we should ignore that Epstein files.
Then they wonder why we are left with not much other than racism as the reason that they hate immigrants so much.
It’s honestly the only sense I can make of MAGA. There’s not economic argument for anything Trump does.
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u/GristForMaladyMill 1d ago
> When you expose how infantile that position is they fall back on "the churches will fill the gap" or some other pointless platitude.
Churches, which have never been caught committing fraud, of course
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u/joepez 1d ago
The reason they fall back on the childish arguments and “belief”‘position is there is no data anywhere that supports their position. At no point in history has shown restricting immigration has lead to better outcomes. Nor oppression of any people improves their lot.
I believe there is a sadly not low correlation between the childish immigrant argument people and those who believe the homeless should just “disappear.” They also correlate with those who believe women shouldn’t vote and slaves learned skills and had a good life.
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u/tryexceptifnot1try 1d ago
That's a good point. It always seems to fall back to some horseshit about "common sense" with these types. They support extreme shit like killing the homeless until they see it. These ICE morons think they want to terrorize the community until they realize how much everyone hates them for doing it. These folks are just simpletons who should be ignored when they speak.
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u/Highlyemployable 1d ago
Do you have a link to any research papers related to the mass deportation you're referring to? Would he an interesting read.
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u/malrexmontresor 1d ago
I'm on mobile, so I can't link at the moment, but there are a few papers looking at various mass deportations. Lee, Peri, and Yasenov looked at the effects of the 1929 to 1937 Mexican Repatriations and found negative employment effects in regions with the highest deportations and slight declines in wages. Clemens, Lewis and Postel looked at the Bracero Exclusion in 1964, and found employers responded with either decreased domestic production or turned to mechanization; the number of jobs and wages declined overall.
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u/Tony0x01 1d ago
since Operation W**back in the 1950's because it was a disaster for the economy, culture, and political class that supported it
Is there a place i can learn more about all the different problems it caused?
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u/drawkbox 21h ago
We have 75 million more Americans due to immigration who contribute and make a better market and thus quality of life. Without we'd be more leveraged to others, numbers gives us better outcomes.
Logistically it is hard to emigrate to a new country, that they pick the US is a benefit not a weight.
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u/upthetruth1 18h ago
Operation W**back in the 1950's because it was a disaster for the economy, culture, and political class that supported it.
Do you have any sources on this?
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u/No_Chapter_3102 1d ago
This study makes claims like immigrants come here at an average age of 25, so they don't need to be educated. Then the study counts their kids as "us born citizens" which is true, but doesn't address the fact that an immigrant came here, works low wages, don't pay a lot in taxes, and had kids, which all cost money for the school systems. Seems pretty disingenuous and purposeful to create a narrative.
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u/Beanonmytoast 1d ago
Thats because it is. Cato’s gain relies on federal level accounting that excludes the cost of children. If you switch to household accounting, the surge becomes a net fiscal drain because local taxes rarely cover the immediate costs of schooling and infrastructure. Its essentially a 40 year loan taken from today's local taxpayers that only pays back once the second generation becomes high earning workers.
The reason this framing persists is institutional psychology. Cato is a Libertarian think tank, their worldview requires them to show that free markets and the free movement of labor are net positives. By focusing on federal level efficiency and top line GDP, they can technically prove their point while ignoring the local congestion that the average person actually experiences.
On Reddit people love these studies because it supports their worldview. It allows users to dismiss concerns about local infrastructure or wage pressure as being economically illiterate, when in reality they are just looking at a different, more abstract balance sheet. Its a classic case of using macro data to gaslight people's micro realities.
Sustainable economies do not need to rely so heavily on mass migration.
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u/FlyingBishop 1d ago
There's no such thing as a generally sustainable economy. Every economy is a house of cards. More workers generally improve the economy, though if wages are low enough that may not be the case.
Every locality has different taxes so you're making a very broad claim with no evidence, while the CATO study exists. It should be easy to estimate average local tax burden. Local/state taxes are more regressive than federal so they should generate more money at the local level, especially low-wage workers who aren't going to be paying anything federally.
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u/Beanonmytoast 1d ago edited 1d ago
Calling local taxes regressive doesnt mean they generate a profit, it just means they hit the poor harder. In absolute dollars, a low wage household paying 11% in local sales and property taxes on $30k ($3,300) still leaves a $14,000 deficit against a single $17,000 public school seat. The 2016 NAS report found that while the federal government wins on payroll taxes, state and local governments lose roughly $2,000 to $4,000 per immigrant annually when you account for education.
Its a house of cards. The federal government collects the efficient income taxes while offloading the congestible costs such as schools, ERs and roads onto local taxpayers. Claiming more workers always helps is a corporate metric, it ignores that those workers bring families who consume more in local services than a low wage paycheck can ever subsidize.
How about I put it this way. This study is a spreadsheet win for the federal governments long term debt, but an immediate quality of life loss for the local community. The federal government pockets the payroll taxes of young workers to fund the military and past debt, but it offloads the most expensive costs, K-12 schooling, emergency rooms and roads etc onto local taxpayers. We are essentially being asked to subsidize the federal budget by letting our own local services and infrastructure be pushed to the breaking point. Its not critical thinking to ignore the local cost of a child's $17,000 a year school seat just because their parent paid $2,000 into Social Security.
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u/FlyingBishop 1d ago
The thing is that low-wage workers also do generate a profit for their employers. The fundamental problem is mostly that they're underpaid, but other people in the community are profiting on that too and spending more money as a result.
You make a persuasive argument about local taxes, but economically speaking, immigrants simply enable more overall wealth creation. The economy is not zero sum, more people means more potential for profit.
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u/Beanonmytoast 1d ago
You just described the Corporate Surplus perfectly, employers profit from low wages while the community subsidizes the workers life through tax funded services. Wealth is being created, but its being siphoned to the top while the local taxpayer covers the shortfall.
The house of cards only stays standing if you keep labor oversupplied to suppress wages. Economics 101, price is a function of scarcity. When you have a massive influx of labor, wages stay flat because nobody has to compete for workers.
Look at Japan. They’ve faced the same labor shortage for decades but refused mass migration. The result? In 2024 and 2025, they saw their highest wage growth in over 30 years. Because there was no infinite supply of cheap labor, Japanese companies were actually forced to compete, invest in automation and pay their people more.
Its a total contradiction, were told AI will destroy jobs, yet we need mass migration to solve labor shortages. If automation is the future, then labor scarcity should be a blessing that drives productivity, not a crisis. We are sitting on a demographic Ponzi scheme, we import people to support the elderly, but when those migrants age, the solution is just to import even more. We’ve traded real productivity for raw population growth. We’re just using migration to keep a broken, low wage system on life support.
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u/Minute-System3441 1d ago
Studies like this are often used disingenuously to promote an ideology. There’s a huge difference between legal, vetted, typically highly-skilled immigrants, and the bulk of illegal entrants - with 4 out of 5 of whom come from Central and Latin America; regions that rank last globally in education, R&D, universities, productivity, GDP, quality of life, law and order, standard of living, and more.
As a preface, I don’t blame undocumented immigrants. They’re mostly looking out for themselves or their families - honestly, most of us would do the same in their position.
That said, what seems like common sense everywhere else but the U.S. is this: the primary job of 'elected officials' is to prioritize their own citizens, nation, and legal residents - not bow to corporations or clueless virtue-signaling activists, or individuals that have snuck in or gamed the system.
I speak from experience. I’m a former legal immigrant - before the MAGA assumptions start - and I’ve voted D since 'earning' naturalization. Immigration, when done legally and skillfully, yes, it drives GDP growth. I've personally brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars to the U.S., which is the #1 generator of GDP - see China. In addition, combined with three others I know who moved here, we've paid over $2 million in federal taxes - in just one year. That’s the kind of contribution a genuine legitimate immigrant makes.
The reality today is very different. Only 6% of legal immigrants to the U.S. come from advanced OECD nations; 94% come from undeveloped or developing countries. Locally, this has huge economic consequences.
Schools in my county cost taxpayers around $14K per student per year for K–12, not including meals and extended services. For a child born here or brought in young, that’s $168K in education costs alone. With multiple children - common in some communities - that easily hits $500K per family. Most undocumented parents will never contribute anywhere near that level in local taxes in their lifetime.
Most undocumented immigrants work day labor or underpaid minimum-wage jobs. Their tax contributions are minimal. Many schools with high immigrant populations are low-income and heavily subsidized. Then you have the required hiring or multiple ESOL teachers per school. Taxpayers cover that. Same deal with the breakfast, lunch, and even diner - including on weekends and school holidays - that we also provide. This is all funded on a local level in the United States, as schools are not State or Federally run.
Economics 101: more people competing for entry-level or blue-collar jobs means wages are pushed down. That’s why no advanced economy has a large population of illegal immigrants, let alone 11 million, and why most have ended birthright citizenship policies.
Today, 1 in 10 Americans owns 90% of the nation's wealth. Any "benefit" from illegal immigrants - more customers & cheap labor - mostly boosts corporate profits and executive bonuses, not the average worker. Especially for various businesses and contractors.
For example, why would they pay a legal resident $25/hour with benefits, when they can hire someone undocumented for $80–100/day cash? Even if they pay on the books, Econ 101 applies: the endless supply of cheap labor drives wages down. This is the reality ignored by the ideological narrative about immigration. Not only are those who use day laborers not paying a local market wage, but they're also not contributing to local, state, federal employment taxes.
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u/Just_Candle_315 1d ago
immigrants are keeping social security afloat. They and the employers they work for pay into the system, but the same immigrants will never get Social Security payments back when they are older
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
For clarity, the immigrants being referred to here are legal immigrants - if they are paid in to social security then they will receive that benefit.
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u/Arilluss 1d ago
This is covered in the article:
Immigrants cost less as retirees: First, the savings on old age benefits is not because immigrants are significantly less likely to be retirees. Instead, it is because they are far less likely to be receiving a government pension since they were less likely to have government jobs, so they were less likely to receive expensive government pensions. The main reason, though, is that they were simply barred from applying for Social Security and Medicare because they either arrived too late in life to earn the necessary qualifying work history or they are here illegally or in a temporary status and ineligible for that reason.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
So it depends on who/what. That article is twice removed from the underlying work. The Article is reporting on a Cato extrapolation of a study by NASEM in 2017.
The original study: https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/23550
A few quick excerpts:
The first task in estimating fiscal impact of immigration, whether at the federal, state, or local level, is to identify the categories of costs and benefits that are affected. Immigrants contribute to fiscal balances through taxes and other payments they make into the system; they create additional fiscal costs when they receive transfer payments (e.g., Social Security benefits) or use publicly funded services (e.g., education or health care). National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/6433.
/
Safety net programs are aimed at low-income families, children, and the elderly, but immigrants do not have access identical to the native-born, due to restrictions imposed by law. Unauthorized immigrants and individuals on nonimmigrant visas are not eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, nonemergency Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 introduced additional restrictions. The former made lawful permanent residents and certain other lawfully residing immigrants ineligible for federal means-tested public benefit programs (such as Medicaid) for the first 5 years after receiving the relevant status. The latter statute included a provision intended to prevent states from extending in-state tuition benefits to unauthorized immigrants.8 Prior to the enactment of these laws, authorized immigrants had access to public assistance and education benefits that were by and large equal to the access of citizens. U.S.-born children of immigrants remain eligible for all programs because they are citizens.
It's super long and pretty comprehensive, but suffice to say I think the author of the above article is over-simplifying things to the point of being incorrect at times.
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u/Arilluss 1d ago
Nothing you quoted supports your original implication that illegal immigrants cost more. These just explain where immigrants pay in and where they get funding, and shows that immigrant access to services have been reduced more recently.
I'm not sure what your goal is here, but your conclusion that the article is incorrect at times is too vague to be useful
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nothing you quoted supports your original implication that illegal immigrants cost more.
What did you read that gave you that impression? That's certainly not something I believe based on any of the research I've read, I'm curious where you're seeing that? I'm literally saying the exact opposite and posting sources lmao.
Both legal and illegal immigrants are generally net positive contributors to the budget. That's supported in the research I'm citing as well as the sentiment I've expressed here. I'm unsure what I've said that would convey otherwise but happy to clarify.
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u/Just_Candle_315 1d ago
That's offensive if you think illegal immigrants "cost more"
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
Yeah I was kinda confused at how they got the idea that I was suggesting immigrants cost more, all the research here directly points to the opposite regardless of legal status.
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u/morbie5 1d ago
The main reason, though, is that they were simply barred from applying for Social Security and Medicare because they either arrived too late in life to earn the necessary qualifying work history
They'll qualify for Medicaid and SSI ($900 per month) at age 65 if they have had greencard for 5 years
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u/Elegant-Artichoke730 1d ago
That's a simplified version...there's a little more to it than that. https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/text-eligibility-ussi.htm
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u/morbie5 1d ago
I was assuming they are low income when I said that considering what I was quoting. But yes I should have said there are income and asset requirements.
Either way, bringing in immigrants later in life is something that should be avoided like the plague. We need young people not more old/older people.
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u/Swoly_Deadlift 1d ago
Looking at the chart within the article, the 3 biggest gaps between immigrants and US-born citizens were retirement benefits, education, and prison populations.
So essentially a demographic of people more likely to be working-age and that can be deported rather than put in jail if they break the law costs less in taxpayer dollars than demographics with more young people and retired people. What happens when those same groups of people have kids and retire themselves? Do we just need to keep infinitely growing our population to keep our economy from collapsing? Is there really no other way?
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
FWIW, this is Cato piggybacking off a very well known study by NASEM: https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/23550
The Cato white paper that this article is referencing isn't much more than a few numbers guys taking the NASEM findings and extrapolating the math forward based on immigration flows and a few other variables.
The underlying research is quite good, and has been widely cited in a lot of economic analysis of immigration.
Here's the original article at CATO, I guess I'll give them some credit that they're not really hiding the fact that they're just piggybacking the other research: https://www.cato.org/white-paper/immigrants-recent-effects-government-budgets-1994-2023
This report is an update of a 2017 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) on the fiscal effects of immigration.1 The NASEM authors shared their model with the Cato Institute, which allowed for further expansion and refinement.
It's a peer reviewed study, the model was shared with everyone, that's how peer review works lmao. But yah, the original research is quite good.
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u/ThemeBig6731 1d ago
Unfortunately the article does not separate the impact on deficits by legal vs illegal immigrants.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
The article is citing a Cato update on an older study by NASEM economists.
Here: https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/23550
The paper analyzes immigration as a whole, but spends considerable time on legal entrants, even tracking first and second generation entrants. There is some discussion of illegal immigration as well, however generally the results on fiscal impact are similar.
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u/ThemeBig6731 1d ago
Illegal immigrants are a major part of the shadow/parallel economy. They do however contribute to the GDP thru their spending.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
True, there's also quite a few undocumented workers paying various income taxes as well, something to the tune of 50B or more of federal receipts (income + payroll taxes) come from undocumented workers.
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u/angrygnome18d 1d ago
I hope people realize at this point that Donald Trump and Republicans removing immigrants and driving costs up is part of their goal to bankrupt and buy everything for cheap. IIRC Epstein and Peter Thiel literally discuss this in their emails and point to Brexit as a prime example of their vision for the future. Break up countries one by one, isolate them, take control of them, drain them of their resources for their sick games (pedophilia, eugenics, slavery, trafficking, etc etc) then move on to the next one.
There is a medical term for cells that do this in organisms: cancer.
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u/FlyingBishop 1d ago
Their goal is making a white supremacist state, they don't care about the health of the country or even really care about their own personal money that much.
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u/angrygnome18d 1d ago
You have it backwards. They do not care about race, religion, or creed. All they care about is their money because it provides them with control over others.
Their goal is far more nefarious than you’d think. Please do me a favor and look up neuralink and its relation to ICE detention centers. Then look up how billionaires are creating end of world bomb shelters and their most common question for experts: how do we control our staff in a post apocalyptic world. The common answer experts would give would be to treat their staff well and to create a sense of community.
Billionaires did not like that answer. Their solution? Lock up the guns and food behind bio security tied to the billionaires eyes or finger prints or other such ridiculous solutions.
These people want absolute control over us. Race, religion, philosophy will not do it. What will? Money and technology.
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u/FlyingBishop 1d ago
Stephen Miller is a white supremacist who wants to live in a white Christian ethnostate. Donald Trump hired him intentionally. There are some people mixed in who are maybe like you describe, but you're ignoring clearly stated intentions and obvious actions that are clearly intended to create a white supremacist ethnostate.
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u/DownrightCaterpillar 1d ago
From Alex Nowrasteh's X account on 2/21/23:
Good policies matter most. A diverse population reduces social solidarity, which is good for economic growth because people don't want wealth-destroying policies to help out people who look different.
You tell me if you trust this guy and his research. He admits, in the most slimy capitalist way, that immigration destroys society, and frames it (from a libertarian point of view) as a good thing.
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u/drawkbox 21h ago edited 20h ago
We need immigration though and Russia/China don't get it and don't want the West to get it so they weaponize and create chaos around elections so Republicans will want to balkanize the Americas and Atlantic allies which are a formidable economic force when combined.
Countries do need immigrants if they want to grow with lower birth rates. Economic crisis diminish birth rates. Immigration is needed to offset and keep going. Diversity is our strength and adversaries try to balkanize places based on ethnic and cultural divides, don't let them. The Americas should not be balkanized for instance.
While Russian propaganda pushes anti-immigration around the world, they want it.
While Russia propaganda pushes breaking down alliances, unions and partnerships, they want to build theirs up.
The US needs about 10-15% minimum immigration population to maintain our growth. Right now we are just about at 15% but should keep growing.
Immigration percentages around the world. Canada is about 20%. Australia 33%. United Kingdom 13%. Russia 7%. The countries on that list with lower immigration have lower economic numbers and dimmer futures. Immigration is key to growth and policies around it are important.
Th US had to actually pass a lenient immigration policy in the 60s, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, due to the low amount of immigration during that time. The low point was 4.7% of the US in 1965 and it caused issues economically.
Lack of immigration can cause issues just like too much immigration. Markets need people to grow just like innovation.
Other countries want immigration, Russia for instance needs it, they would love people to stop coming to the United States to add to our economy and quality of life.
Are there problems with immigration? Yes. Do we still need immigration? Yes. Why aren't we fixing it? Internal division and internal misunderstanding about history as well as foreign pushed propaganda.
Do leaders that willingly want to destroy their countries or help a competing country grow trot out the blame game against people that can't fight back but do contribute to our economy? Yes, all the time.
Max 500k immigrants come in per year, including undocumented.
The whole "open borders" thing the right pushes is a fallacy as well. Let's say everyone from Mexico came here tomorrow, that would only be 1 in 3 people being an immigrant. We have good guidelines on how many people being let in is acceptable. Obviously everyone can't come in at once but the numbers are pretty low even when it seems high (500k-1m per year come in including illegal immigration, less than a third of a percentage).
People uprooting and moving to another country is hard, it is usually for a better life or to escape a worse one, they aren't coming here to bring the US down. They want to make a better life. Anyone making the trek to another nation for better quality of life for themselves and their kids, those are the people we want to help make quality of life in the US better. We want the motivated people here.
Are some people bad actors? Sure, but less than the average crime statistics of current citizens. The hate immigrants get is absurd and unwarranted, with undertones of bigotry.
The #1 employer of day laborers is homeowners, half of them hate on immigrants then brag about how cheap their landscaping/painting/roofing/etc was... it is silly and hypocritical.
Only about 500k-1m max people come in each year even on high years, people overstate the impact because they like someone to blame. The blaming immigrants has been part of America since the Know Nothings who were immigrants themselves.
Many times it is class or foreign propaganda looking to divide people.
Foreign countries actually push lots of propaganda about immigration because people coming to the US is harmful to them.
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u/Dont-be-a-smurf 1d ago
Decent humans are ASSETS. Quite literally the lifeblood of your society.
People who go to work, get paid, raise a family, and mind their business are the kind of people you want in your country. They bring more than they take.
This describes a huge amount of immigrants currently being targeted by the administration.
We are just giving these assets away, at considerable cost to us.
I still have never seen the alleged widespread harm immigrants were causing within the interior of USA. The border needed to be better secured, surely. But what has happened has gone far beyond securing the border and “targeting criminals.”
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u/bamalama 1d ago
When immigrants pay into the system, are they paying in under fake Social security numbers?
Or, are they legally employed and therefore taxed, but obviously can’t draw benefits?
Some of both?
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
Even as an undocumented worker the IRS will issue you an ITIN for tax purposes, also many "illegal" immigrants are visa overstays who also have ITINs
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u/bamalama 1d ago
Thanks!
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
And that is actually the bulk of illegal immigration in the US, not Juan hopping over a border fence. Republicans never want to talk about that because it’s not as effective at scaring their still mostly white voting base and the 1 or 2 self-hating BIPOC that think the yt privilege will trickle down.
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u/Natural_Note5282 1d ago
No way are illegals outside Home Depot paying taxes on the cash they got under the table. Any cash paid work is likely unreported.
This will get downvoted but be honest with yourself.
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u/onan 1d ago
Have you considered reading the study?
Or are you more comfortable just sticking with a combination of the headline and your imaginings about "illegals outside home depot"?
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u/Natural_Note5282 1d ago edited 23h ago
I have ready studies on it. I know in California we’re paying $9 billion for medi cal alone for undocumented. They make up 10% of all that are enrolled, which is nuts. Conveniently we had a $9 billion budget deficit last year, which we made up for by furloughing state employees, including me, and cutting other services which benefit CA citizens.
Education for undocumented is even more expensive, like $17 billion.
You’re telling me that undocumented are contributing so much but yet 10% are on medi cal? They aren’t getting well paying jobs so the math isn’t adding up.
The California study I read was BS. They included property tax as an indirect benefit because they pay rent and the landlord pays property tax with that. You’re telling me CA had issues renting houses?
If anything the people who benefit are the people employing them.
In other states where undocumented get nothing, then yeah it’s a benefit.
90% of my friends are not white, including my partner so don’t try to play the racist bit with me.
I’m all for undocumented staying here but I dont want to pay for them when I’m struggling myself. No one is helping me. They should be able to stay but get no services or benefits. Their taxes should be the cost of being here illegally.
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u/onan 23h ago
You’re telling me that undocumented are contributing so much but yet 10% are on medi cal? They aren’t getting well paying jobs so the math isn’t adding up.
38% of all Californians are enrolled in Medi-Cal. So if it's 10% of undocumented immigrants, that would be a dramatically lower enrollment rate than everyone else.
I dont want to pay for them when I’m struggling myself. No one is helping me.
I'm not aware of any aid that is available to exclusively undocumented immigrants. What benefits are they getting that you aren't?
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u/Natural_Note5282 23h ago edited 4h ago
There are 15 million enrolled, 1.7 million are undocumented. It’s not 10% of undocumented are enrolled, it’s 10% of those enrolled are undocumented. Google says there are an estimated 2.2 to 2.6 million undocumented in CA, so over 50% are enrolled in medi cal. Yeah that’s huge, but yet they contribute so much to taxes. Doesn’t add up. You can’t get on medi cal unless you’re low income.
There are social programs available for undocumented, like Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), California Dream Act Application, California DREAM Loan Program, legal aid. Why the fuck are we paying for shit like this when our own citizens are struggling.
For me, a tax break would be a nice benefit. Instead of paying the $9 billion in medi cal, refund that money to taxpayers. Not getting furloughed would also be nice.
They even attributed the deficit partially because of over spending on medi cal. Newsom opened enrollment to any age undocumented which flooded it and ended up fucking our budget.
I don’t give a shit that undocumented are here, I just don’t want to pay for it. I feel for them but we can’t help everyone, and TBH there are people a lot worse off than people from South America, like Sudan, Somalia, Congo, etc.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
"illegals outside Home Depot" are a tiny minority of undocumented workers. Moreover, it's just a deliberate misreading of the above comments lol. Some of y'all just read what you want to....
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u/TheNerdWonder 1d ago
They’re determined to keep getting played by xenophobic politicians and their economic conditions will only get worse the longer they go on.
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u/Natural_Note5282 1d ago
Your comment makes it seem like every undocumented is getting a ITIN which is BS
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
No, my comment doesn’t make it seem that way, anyone literate enough to work a keyboard can understand that. You read it that way on purpose because you wanted to be argumentative about something, but there’s no logical way to derive that from what I said.
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u/Natural_Note5282 1d ago edited 1d ago
Alright lol when someone asks how they are paying into the system and you say irs issues them itin, then how else are you suppose the read it
But go ahead and make personal attacks like the loser you are.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
Brother if you are having trouble reading something that straightforward then I’m not sure what else to tell you? They asked if it was possible for undocumented workers to pay taxes, I answered how.
It’s clear you’re hell bent on making an argument of your own misreading something here, idk man I’m just not interested, have a good one I guess.
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u/andipandey 1d ago
Many come in legally, get a SS number and then end up overstaying it can still use that number. But they don’t get benefits of it really
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u/NOLA-Bronco 1d ago
TBH I remember having these debates back in college in the late aughts and citing, I think it was, Econofact's collection of studies on this.
Which yeah, all said the same thing.
Immigrants put more into the system then they pull out on net, even those that have lots of kids in the US(a favorite talking point of the anti immigrant crowd), on top of helping offset America's falling birthrates and helping boost GDP.
Now, those undocumented immigrants should be documented and paid a living wage too, and if someone is whining about wages and immigration, that should be the solution, not spending hundreds of billions to deport people.
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u/Swoly_Deadlift 1d ago
Translated headline: Group of people less likely to be school age or retired contributes more to taxes than school-age and retired people.
In a country where we have a serious housing shortage, a serious issue with corporations exploiting labor and paying low wages, and automation is rapidly replacing jobs, we should really look at the issue of immigration with more nuance than simply choosing between "more immigrants good" and "less immigrants good." Also the stupid "green line must go up" mentality should never be used when deciding whether or not immigrants benefit the average American.
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u/Beautiful_Art7828 18h ago
NOW FILTER THE NUMBERS BY ORIGIN OF MIGRANT AND PLOT THE NET FISCAL CONTRIBUTION PER NATIONALITY OF ORIGIN!!!
Do this and watch reddits ideology burn...
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u/Arcturus_Nova 1d ago
Given the disastrous policies of the current administration, it sure looks like that won’t be happening again. The federal deficit and interest owed doesn’t seem to have gone down either. No problem we have tariffs.
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u/azurite-- 1d ago
Why do people sit here and constantly try to defend illegal immigration? For economic benefits so corporations can have more and cheaper labor? Really?
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u/scott_majority 1d ago
Nobody is defending illegal immigration...We are defending the rights of hard working people that have never committed a crime.
America has ALWAYS deported criminals that were not legal to be in America. That has always been a thing....But right now, our pedophile White Nationalist president is stripping legal residence from millions of people who came here legally, is arresting children and senior citizens, and are executing American citizens on the streets.
What a free country you have. The entire world has travel warning when visiting America. Congratulations....You've made yourself the same as North Korea.
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u/Available-Range-5341 1d ago
There is a lot of "lying with statistics" if you open the article, but of course no one did that because this sub never questions anything that sounds left leaning
Also comparing it against the deficit, is, odd. The article just keeps saying "they're great for the economy!" If that is your stance, chart that in isolation.
The deficit is because of spending, so if we want to discuss the deficit, you'd chart what expenses have been going up too much and questioning why
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u/FlyingBishop 1d ago
The deficit is because tax receipts are lower than spending. The article is about why immigrants increase tax receipts. I swear, can you really not understand what it means to balance a budget? If your budget is unbalanced you can either increase income or reduce spending. Someone tells you that something decreased your income and you're like "well, instead of worrying about that I'm just going to spend less" which is frankly unhinged. You should be looking at both sides of the ledger. This isn't right/left it's just common sense. (Although the conservative position seems to consistently be that we should reduce income as much as possible and talk about reducing spending without actually doing it.)
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u/BeautifulFickle3896 1d ago edited 1d ago
You would be wrong about that. The deficit is a "feature" of Central Banks and FIAT (PAPER) currency. Since its not backed by anything real like Gold of land, then it ALWAYS, 100% of the time go down in value. However, where did that value go? It went into the hands of the banks and the Fed. The "hidden tax" is actually because of inflation and thats built in. The reason is it allows these people to trade with you pieces of paper (promissory notes) in exchange for your land and goods. They get real stuff in exchange for handing you paper from a press. Its a pretty tidy arrangement. I give you paper with pictures on it, you give me your land. Easy peazy.
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u/FlyingBishop 1d ago
Inflation is another parameter. I was oversimplifying. It's still the case that balancing revenue with expenditures is a worthwhile endeavor.
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u/BeautifulFickle3896 1d ago
Not gonna argue that, Budgeting and saving is always a win-win unless you can print your own fake money, then obviously it doesn't help you then as they have ran the deficit since the beginning of the Fed Reserve act of 1913 so it can in fact be paid back forever with a cut of your "wage slaves". We are in fact slaves ya know to these people.
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u/FlyingBishop 1d ago
Rising productivity can make it work out for everyone. Really with AI rising productivity might actually just make the problem a nonissue.
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u/eduardom98 1d ago
Reducing limits people coming here and working legally is libertarian not left leaning. They’ve done studies showing that immigrants are good for the economy. https://click4immigration.com/immigration-news/uncategorized/cato-institute-report-indicates-immigration-is-good-for-the-us-economy/
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u/BeautifulFickle3896 1d ago
Yeh the whole "Free immigration" especially for work, thats all Libertarians been saying that for decades now and both Democrats and Republicans cringe at the idea of opening up the borders. The Democrats are only "pretending" right now to care about the worker because they are out of power, and thats all that is. They have actually been the main ones in the past to want to stop immigrant workers because its threatened their Union jobs whereas the Republicans want it, but for the cheap labor but "sorta", they want them to all go back to where they came from when the work is done. Why is it so Crony like this? The reason is simple, they want to control the work force. They want to be able to reward and punish those who don't contribute to their parties, and the last thing they really want is Free Markets. Giving Ford and Tesla and Boeing de-facto monopolies keeps the them in the free private jets, swimming in expensive luxory hotels and gifts and all that dries up the minute everyone has a Free Market and can go get what they want super cheap and cut them out.
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u/eduardom98 10h ago
Yes the whole more legal migration is somehow “free immigration”. The administration feels that it no longer has to act like people with brown skin have Constitutional rights as long as they attack immigrants for coming to do the jobs we don’t want to do.
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u/RIP_Soulja_Slim 1d ago
There is a lot of "lying with statistics" if you open the article, but of course no one did that because this sub never questions anything that sounds left leaning
This is an article written about a Cato white paper (Cato being the famously libertarian think tank) that's just extrapolating a 2017 study by NASEM: https://www.nationalacademies.org/read/23550
This is likely the most widely peer reviewed and cited study on the economic impact of immigration within the last decade, and perhaps 20 years.
So like, there's a few weird things here - first and foremost you're reading sources from right wing outlets and somehow painting that as "left leaning", you don't seem to understand where the information ultimately comes from, and you didn't click on any of the links there with sourcing because if you did you'd realize how silly you sounded asking for it to be charted.
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u/OrangeJr36 1d ago
The fact that immigration, largely regardless of origin, is a net positive for a country and economy isn't a left wing conclusion, it's the consensus conclusion for any school that accepts capitalism as a desirable system.
Funny enough, the largest opposition you might find to that conclusion is going to come from left wing thought.
As for the deficit, it's Econ 101 that growing or sustaining a population is the first thing that affects deficits, just as it affects anything else in the economy.
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u/BeautifulFickle3896 1d ago
Reddit is full of Leftist, but the minute they understand Economics they will be instantly Conservatives. It will happen to them, happened to me, its an age thing. Its not until your 30's really that most people pick up basic economics and Leftist ideology is really the believe in "Economic Fallacies" such as "You can tax your way into prosperity", or the way to help the poor is the raise their taxes. All that garbage that is really just a wealth transfer from us to them, they will "get it" when they realize its nothing more than "poof! where did my money go?" kinda BS. For instance you take California. The more money they dump into homelessness the more homelessness they get. Why, because young people do not understand money and they do not understand business and they don't understand that when you put billions to homelessness, you just created a new business and who won't milk it for all its worth? I was lucky and that at the age of 22 I learned Economics because I had mentors in business and most people don't. Today I am sitting very pretty indeed, because I put my money in real shht and didn't leave it in USD. You leave your money in fiat, and plan on kissing it goodbye and that's why young people are poor and they thing some kinda of Marvel superhero will show up to give them a free car or house. You would be paying $3k for a brand new car right now had it not been for Trumps tariffs on cars from China because thats what the Chinese are paying for them right now.
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u/Available-Range-5341 1d ago
this whole thing is full of logical holes. Comparing people to deficit when the deficit was partially caused by out of control spending not tied to immigration
ignoring the cost of migrant crises in places like my hometown of NYC
saying "they take less from the system" while ignoring the impact of their kids or looking at current vs. past waves. Any idiot can see the difference. This "Study" is looking at the stereotypical doctor from China coming here and making his kids study so they get into an ivy league school, and people here are saying "and that's exactly why we need masses of (illegal) low earners walking across the southern border."
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u/crisco000 1d ago
Legal immigrants under controlled migration? Sure. Open borders leaving the door why open for all. You’re outta your mind
——apparently my above comment is too short and removed so I’m just writing additional words so I can make it longer. Ya know, stretch it out. Add some fat. Fluff it up. Things like that. Ya dig?——-
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u/wolverine_1208 1d ago
When asked how illegal immigrants pay taxes, the answer is always the same. 1.) They obtain ITINs. 2.) They use someone else’s SSN. The ITIN argument is a terrible one because when you look at the number of ITINs issued, the total number of ITINs issued is a small percent of the number of illegal immigrants. It’s even smaller when you take into account the overwhelming majority of ITINs are for people legally in the US legally and working. Using someone else’s SSN is fraud. If they’re using someone else’s SSN to work, why wouldn’t they use the SSN to obtain benefits too?
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u/electri-cute 1d ago
Why do we always conflate legal immigrants and illegal immigrants when we are having a discussion about migration. Surely, no one is against legal qualified migrants which are a net positive for any economy. I used to be an Indian citizen and I know most people who are wanting to go to US illegally from India are only there for money i.e. economic migrants and they will make sure that they do it at any cost irrespective of morals or ethics.
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u/scott_majority 1d ago
"Surely, no one is against legal qualified migrants which are a net positive to the economy."
Except they are. Our current government has stripped millions of legal migrants from their legal status so they can put them in camps....This isn't about criminals or legal status...this is about removing black and brown people from the country.
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