'Critical To The Growth Of The United States': Alex Padilla Celebrates Immigrants' Contributions

4 months ago

During a Senate Budget Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) questioned Congressional Budget Office Director Phillip Swagel about immigration's impact on the economy.

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00:00for your accommodation and your consideration. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity.

00:07Mr. Director, how are you this morning? Yeah, thank you very well.

00:10Good. Thank you for being here. I'm pleased to have this opportunity to talk to you about

00:16a subject that I've been familiar with for a long, long time. And I'm speaking specifically to

00:23the dynamic of immigration and its impact on our economy. Coming from the state of California,

00:33not just the most populous state in the nation, the most diverse state in the nation,

00:37home to more immigrants than any state in the nation. And it has the largest economy of any

00:44state in the nation as well. So we know full well that immigration and the contributions of

00:49immigrants is critical to the economy and critical to the growth of the United States.

00:56And now, thanks to the hard work of the CBO, you've all crunched the numbers and now project

01:04that U.S. revenue will be $1.2 trillion higher over the next 10 years because of the impact of

01:14migrants and migrants in the workforce as we see it today. And I would imagine that given

01:21my Republican colleagues' obsession with our debt, that they would welcome the news that CBO also

01:29found that this increased immigration, migrants, and their impact on the workforce leads to lower

01:36deficits. So it seems like it's something that we ought to embrace. So would you please speak to

01:42how the CBO was able to quantify the economic benefits of immigration and what the impact

01:48would be on revenues to the federal treasury if more than 10 million undocumented immigrants,

01:55many of the workforce, were to be deported? Yes. So we haven't analyzed the deportation,

02:04but there's a sense in which it would be the opposite of the immigration increase that you

02:09mentioned. And so we said there's about a $9 trillion increase in GDP from the immigrants

02:14coming in. They add to the labor force, they pay taxes, they fill jobs. And so deportation would

02:22in some sense reverse that, that there'd be a big negative hit to GDP, the labor force would shrink,

02:28and revenue would go down. That seems pretty logical to me, so thank you for that. I know

02:35you're from the CBO, not the Department of Labor, but I also think if we look at the data that is

02:42out there, even with the level of migration we've seen in the course of the last decade,

02:48we are experiencing record sustained low levels of unemployment and wages continue to rise. So

02:58for those concerned, those who spread the false rhetoric that immigrants are taking American jobs

03:04or they're a downward force on wages, that has proven to be false. Do you have any data that

03:13would suggest otherwise? No, that's right, that there's a sense in which the immigration surge

03:19explains how our economy continued to grow rapidly and create jobs, even when the labor market,

03:25say two years ago, looked to be tight. It's the added, the immigrants adding to the labor force,

03:30these are additional jobs and additional income. Right, so I also want to ask about a related

03:37dynamic that is a priority concern for this committee. We've, Senator Brott has joined us

03:42and he's always one of the first, if not the first, to raise concerns about the debt.

03:47We're talking about the contributions of immigrants to the workforce and to the economy

03:53and the net benefit that there's been on revenues, debt reduction, etc. But we also speak in this

04:00committee regularly about the solvency of our social safety net programs, particularly Social

04:06Security and Medicare. Now between 2010 and 2020, the U.S. saw its lowest population growth of any

04:13decade since the 1930s. And it presents a huge challenge to those social safety net programs

04:19that rely on current workers to fund the benefits for America's retirees. And we know that immigrants

04:27help sustain the programs like Social Security and Medicare, even though they don't benefit from

04:32those programs themselves. In 2022 alone, immigrants paid over $570 billion in federal,

04:39state, and local taxes. So would you please discuss the impact on the solvency of our social

04:46safety net programs if, due to potential change in our immigration policies, there's a, that we

04:54would realize a significant reduction in our workforce? Yeah, and so we looked carefully at

04:58the composition of the immigration surge and they're very heavily skewed toward working-age

05:04adults. It's, these are, immigrants have a high propensity to work and they have a strong incentive

05:11to work on the books once they receive authorization, generally within six months.

05:16You know, many of them will face a, you know, a hearing in seven to ten years and working on the

05:22books will let them in some demonstrate attachment. So all that means more revenue for Social Security

05:28increases the financial, improves the financial situation of the Social Security system.

05:35And yeah, and that's, again, it's just like the overall revenue. Some of it goes to Social

05:41Security. Couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

'Critical To The Growth Of The United States': Alex Padilla Celebrates Immigrants' Contributions

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