Title: Immigrants and the Economy | American Civil Liberties Union
Headings: Immigrants and the Economy
Immigrants and the Economy
IN BRIEF

Content: A U.S. Department of Labor study prepared by the Bush Administration noted that the perception that immigrants take jobs away from American workers is "the most persistent fallacy about immigration in popular thought" because it is based on the mistaken assumption that there is only a fixed number of jobs in the economy. Experts note that immigrants are blamed for unemployment because Americans can see the jobs immigrants fill but not the jobs they create through productivity, capital formation and demand for goods and services. Immigrants pay more than $90 billion in taxes every year and receive only $5 billion in welfare. Without their contributions to the public treasury, the economy would suffer enormous losses. ACLU POLICY
The ACLU recognizes that the U.S., like every country, has the right to control who enters the country and to enforce the integrity of its internationally recognized borders. It also has the right to deport persons in the country who are not authorized to be here. However, the ACLU also believes that the power to exclude and deport must be exercised fairly, humanely and consistent with the constitutional norms of due process and non-discrimination, and believes that the government must comply with the legal and humanitarian principles of international law that bind the United States. ARGUMENTS, FACTS, QUOTES
In a 1990 American Immigration Institute Survey of prominent economists, four out of five said that immigrants had a favorable impact on economic growth. None said that immigrants had an adverse impact on economic growth. A 1994 study of unemployment and immigration by Richard Vedder and Lowell Galloway of Ohio University spanning 100 years (from 1891 to 1991) found that higher rates of foreign-born population historically have corresponded to lower unemployment rates.