Since an already-desperate Republican Party is going to try to stop their bleeding of voters by scaring them with "BROWN IMMIGRANT FEARS", let's look at what immigration has done for the country in the Biden years, and whether it'll cost us more or less today, as well as down the road.
Fortunately,
the Congressional Budget Office recently released a report on this. CBO says there has been a sizable wave of immigration to America in the last 3 years, and it's well beyond what was expedcted as President Biden took office.
The number of people entering the United States has increased sharply in recent years. Most of the increase comes from a surge in people whom the Congressional Budget Office categorizes as other foreign nationals. Some of them have received permission to enter or remain in the country, and some have not; more detail on the composition of immigrants in that category is provided below. On the basis of pre-2020 trends, CBO would have expected the net immigration of people in that category to average around 200,000 per year. In the agency’s projections, the net immigration of other foreign nationals exceeds that rate by a total of 8.7 million people over the 2021–2026 period.
And unlike what the longtime trope of “immigration hurts our services and costs us” claims, the CBO says the 2021-2023 increase in immigrants is going to have a mostly positive impact on our economy and overall budget situation. This is mostly due to increased tax payments and economic activity.
CBO estimates that the immigration surge will add $1.2 trillion in federal revenues over the 2024–2034 period. The annual increase in revenues grows over time and reaches $167 billion (or 2.2 percent of total revenues) in 2034 in the agency’s projections. Individual income taxes and payroll taxes paid by immigrants who are part of the surge are responsible for most of the effects on revenues. In addition, the surge is projected to boost economic activity and, in turn, tax revenues.
The immigration surge adds $0.3 trillion to outlays for federal mandatory programs and net spending for interest on the debt over the 2024–2034 period in CBO’s projections. Annual outlays for certain mandatory programs increase over time as more immigrants in the surge population and their children who are born in the United States receive benefits. In 2034, those benefits add $23 billion (or 0.4 percent) to total mandatory spending. In addition, the economywide effects of the surge boost annual spending by growing amounts that reach $27 billion in 2034. Most notably, spending for interest on the government’s debt increases, primarily because of the higher interest rates resulting from the surge in immigration. In total, projected outlays in 2034 are boosted by $50 billion because of the surge.
The “higher interest rates” part seemed odd to me, but the CBO argues later on in the analysis that the increased economic activity causes more demand for housing and capital needs, and squeezes rates higher by 0.1%. On the flip side, the CBO says the lower budget deficits due to immigration will lower debt costs in the later 2030s and early 2040s.
The CBO concedes that there may be other parts of the US budget that will require more funding for US Border Patrol and other agencies to deal with the higher amount of costs needed to encounter a larger number of immigrants, and that a higher overall population in America likely would lead to more costs for services.
But CBO says the biggest effect of the increased amount of people coming to America is that our economy and total wages paid grows by quite a bit more over the next 10 years.
says that the early 2020s' jump in immigration means more jobs have been able to be added in recent years beyond what we would expect.
This also seems to help explain how the US could be adding more jobs than we were in the 2 years before the COVID pandemic broke out, but are seeing unemploynment rise above 4% instead of staying at the sub-4% levels that we had for most of 2018 and 2019.
Even with slightly higher (albeit still low) unemployment, I'd argue that the better growth and larger capacity from our early 2020s immigration surge is a good thing, both for keeping growth going now, and for our future economic outlook. It beats stagnation from low population growth and a lack of workers to replace the large population of Baby Boomers that have already retired, and the large number that will retire over the next few years.
Lastly, the fact that we've had a large number of new immigrants coinciding with
should be pointed out by anyone that hears Republicans trying the "IMMIGRANT CRIME" scare tactic. And isolated incidents and stories from GOP hacks don't override the boost to the economy and the overall increase in public safety that we've seen in the last 3 years of surging immigration.
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