money -- real issue, but central?

Money

The nation’s major anti-immigration organization, FAIR, focuses on the cost to taxpayers.  They put a lot of effort into this green eye-shade labor, but accountants better than I have scrutinized their work elsewhere.  I offer five responses, not about their worthy details.

1.       Obviously, for many people, if it seems possible to discern what God asks of us, and we come to believe that God has asked us to welcome immigrants, the cost is interesting but not terribly important.  We’ll do it.

2.       Same point, slightly revised. Obviously, for many people, if it seems possible to help good people in real need, and we come to believe that many immigrants fit that description, the cost is interesting but not terribly important.  We’ll do it.

3.       The arguments made about the costs associated with Latino immigration were made about the Irish in the middle of the 19^th century.  While the Irish were fleeing from famine and poverty, and for a generation after the disaster, they (we) were a burden, including an economic burden.  But since then, we have proved ourselves to be a huge benefit to the nation.  So for people who are careful and thoughtful about history, the arguments about cost suddenly seem transparently bogus, unless FAIR can explain the difference between Latino immigrants and Irish immigrants.

4.       The United States is a shrinking country, except for immigration.  Average family size for people born in the USA is already below replacement level.  So Social Security is certain to fail unless we permit immigration.  Assuming for the moment that all of FAIR’s numbers are right, and immigration is a financial drain (I don’t accept it, but assume for the moment), what cost in their whiny list comes close to balancing off the financial catastrophe of destroying Social Security? 

5.       Just Maryland, for the moment: Maryland’s Dream Act is about in-state tuition rates for students who have: (a) settled in Maryland (at least five years), (b) paid taxes for five years (they and/or their parents), (c) shown themselves to be serious students and likely successful citizens by three years in a Maryland high school, earning a high school diploma, and performed successfully in college for two years, earning at least 60 credits.  Maryland taxpayers have already invested in these students for at least five years.  Now, we are two years away from cashing in on the investment, when they enter our workforce with a college degree.  Will we help for the last two years?  Not only justice, but also finance suggests we should!  Isn’t this a no-brainer?

Protect Social Security!

Congress and the President have dared each other to get serious about reforming Social Security to ensure that it works in the future. I wish them well. But I do want to focus on one much-neglected piece of the puzzle. You can’t fix Social Security if you don’t fix immigration.

I don’t believe the charge that Social Security is a fraudulent Ponzi scheme, but I agree completely that it is depends on a growing population and economy. If a population shrinks, then the number of old folks grows as a proportion of the whole. In one generation, you could have ten healthy young people supporting each retiree; then in a later generation, you might have three. That’s not sustainable; it can’t work well for long. Social Security depends on population growth.

The birthrate in families of people born in the United States is already below replacement rate. That is, if you don’t count immigrants, we are already a shrinking country. When our population decline began, it was not obvious, because two things happened at about the same time. While families got smaller, medical care improved and people lived longer. Keeping older folks around longer kept our population up, which hid the drop in the birthrate. But still, for locally grown Americans, we are already below replacement: we have fewer children than parents. That could destroy Social Security.

Immigration keeps the nation growing, vibrant, young, and healthy. It’s better than Cheerios, better even than Guinness. Our population is NOT declining, despite our catastrophic birthrate, because people are flooding in by the millions.

I’m not saying that we should exploit our immigrants. I’m just pointing out that immigrants are paying for Social Security, like the rest of us, and that their contributions mean that the system can work (if Congress and the President, whoever they are whenever they get around to it, will get serious about reform).

On the other hand, if you want to guarantee that Social Security breaks and stays broken, just throw out 12 million immigrants, and tighten the border. That will break our hearts and bust the bank, both.