Let’s look at the issues
As a follow up to the Hotel Voice editorial of two weeks ago that criticized those members of Congress who are not acting on the important issue of immigration reform, we’d like to explain the benefits of fixing our country’s broken immigration system.
All of us understand that especially with the current difficult job market many are afraid of immigration reform because of the mistaken belief that it would make it even more difficult to find work. But the truth is that every responsible study has said that immigration reform would not cause a loss of jobs. Instead, it would benefit everyone in the U.S. Everyone!
How can we say this? Well, for one thing the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) believes that immigration reform will make the entire U.S. economy improve. In fact, the CBO estimates that immigration reform with a path to citizenship would generate an additional $1.5 trillion for the U.S. economy over 10 years. The CBO and other credible studies also say that immigration reform will raise the wagers of all low income workers. Not only that, but fixing our nation’s broken immigration system will create more jobs. “Raising the Floor for American Workers,” a comprehensive study on the potential impact of immigration reform, says this kind of legislation would generate up to $36 billion in net personal income and enough consumer spending to support 750,000 to 900,000 new jobs.
There’s more. By repairing our country’s broken immigration system and allowing undocumented workers to remain here and embark on a path to citizenship our country would enjoy enough added tax revenues from new jobs and higher wages to help states and local communities improve public services, including education. It is estimated that immigration reform would add over $100 billion in extra tax revenue for federal, state and local governments over the next 10 years. It would also result in a sharp reduction in wage theft for not only immigrant workers but even for U.S.-born employees, according to the Immigration Policy Center.
In New York, Los Angeles and Chicago alone, low-wage workers in immigrant-dense industries lose about $56 million a week in wage theft, according to the study “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers,” which notes that the abuses are not limited to undocumented workers. “The best inoculation against workplace violations [wage theft] is ensuring workers know their rights and have full status under the law to assert them,” the study says. That $56 million a week in wage theft adds up to $3 billion a year, and that’s just accounting for the three largest cities in the U.S. On a national level, it is estimated that wage theft amounts to more than $15 billion a year.
There are other benefits for all U.S. workers in repairing the immigration system. Workers’ rights — including the right to join a union — will be strengthened, because undocumented workers would no longer have to fear being reported to the authorities for exercising their workplace rights. This, in turn, would also strengthen unions. After all, legalizing the estimated 11 million undocumented workers in the U.S. would also provide them with the protections offered by U.S. labor law.
Another benefit of immigration reform is that U.S. workplaces would become safer. The AFL-CIO reports that researchers at UCLA found that a large percentage of undocumented workers who experienced workplace-related injuries or illnesses failed to report them out of fear of being deported.
Still another benefit of immigration reform is that businesses that play by the rules, like the hotels and restaurants that employ our members, will no longer have a competitive disadvantage with unscrupulous employers who use undocumented workers to pay low wages and to avoid paying F.I.C.A. taxes and unemployment and workers compensation insurance.
And as we have said often before in Hotel Voice, immigration reform would mean that some of America’s best and brightest students — the sons and daughters of undocumented workers — would have the opportunity to realize dreams and contribute to all of us as teachers, doctors, lawyers, scientists etc. In our own Union, many of the winners of the scholarship competition and the writing contest are children of legal immigrants or are themselves legal immigrants. They show that accomplishment and valuable contribution to American society are national assets that are certainly not limited to those born in the U.S. Current U.S. immigration policy breaks up families, creates low-wage and unsafe jobs, stifles opportunity for millions, hurts our economy and weakens our tax base. These are all reasons we need immigration reform now!
