Eric the Blue

Keeps happening, but I still feel startled to see a place I know well, including especially the people who work there, featured in national news spots. Here’s a segment from yesterday’s PBS News Hour on my place of employment, Valley View Elementary in Columbia Heights, Minnesota:

I’m eager to associate myself with Ms. Fultz and her friends–in Elementary Ed, our classmates and colleagues are “friends,” as in “Line order, please, friends”–over and against those who will think this is essentially a sob story. If, however, you’re wondering about facts relating to the impact immigrants are having on American life, the Cato Institute has done the research. The talking points of the Trumpistas concerning how immigrants are “sucking us dry,” etc., don’t stand up to the scrutiny supplied by “a prominent American libertarian think tank dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.” Some top line findings of the 30-year study:

• Every year from 1994 to 2023, immigrants paid more in taxes than they received in benefits.
• Immigrants generated nearly $10.6 trillion more in federal, state, and local taxes than they induced in total government spending.
• Accounting for savings on interest payments on the national debt, immigrants saved $14.5 trillion in debt over this 30-year period.
• Immigrants in all categories of educational attainment, including high school dropouts, lowered the ratio of deficit to gross domestic product during the 30-year period.
• Without the contribution of immigrants, public debt at all levels would already be above 200 percent of gross domestic product–nearly twice the 2023 level and a threshold some analysts believe would trigger a debt crisis.

The details are similarly arresting. On the topic of crime that one hears so much about, Cato finds:

Immigrants impose 44 percent lower costs per capita on prisons, felony policing, and courts than the average person. From 1994 to 2023, immigrants were about half as likely to be incarcerated as the US-born population, reducing the burden on courts and policing for serious crimes. This is despite the fact that a significant portion of incarcerated immigrants are incarcerated or detained for immigration offenses that the US-born population cannot commit.

Is it true that immigrants impose a burden on our educational system? Cato:

Immigrants cost the US education system 50 percent less per capita than the US population overall. Because of special programs for English-language learners, immigrants in school can be more expensive than other students in school. But because immigrants are much less likely to be in school, they cost the system much less overall. Most immigrants arrive in the US after they have completed their schooling. Moreover, in higher education in most states, illegal immigrants must usually pay full tuition. At the same time, most noncitizens enrolled in institutions of higher education are international students, and each international student at public universities covers the cost of enrolling two other students. As a result, immigrant students impose lower costs per student in higher education.

And so on. None of the anti-immigrant talking points turn out to be true, according to the research of a leading conservative-friendly think tank. Here are the first few sentences of Cato’s concluding statement:

Immigrants contribute to the United States’ economy in many ways. Their primary contribution is the goods and services they directly produce. However, they also reduce the burden of government spending for the US-born population. Our analysis in this paper shows that immigrants generated a fiscal surplus of about $14.5 trillion from 1994 to 2023, that the average immigrant is much less costly than the average US-born American, and that immigrants impose lower costs per person on old-age benefit, education, and public safety programs.

The entire Cato paper, including definitions, methodology, etc., is here.