Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says he is backing an amnesty for 3 million ‘dreamer’ illegals because it is good for business and government revenues.
Synder laid out the business-first view in the Detroit Free Press, even as he ignored President Donald Trump’s populist focus on Americans’ pay packets, neighborhoods and civic priorities:
Dreamers are, and continue to be, drivers of economic growth. They are lawyers, teachers, students, entrepreneurs and small-business owners who help grow our economy in their own way. In fact, 5% of all Dreamers and 8% of Dreamers over the age of 25 have started a business, outpacing the American average of 3.1%.
It is clear that in Michigan, and in our nation, the economic benefits of passing the Dream Act significantly outweigh the overwhelming cost of deportation. That is why we should pass the Dream Act and ensure dreamers are able to remain here as productive members of our communities.
Snyder’s support for amnesty follows his steady support for more migration into the state and his reluctance to enforce immigration laws. In 2014, he asked foreign President Barack Obama for special visas to bring in 50,000 foreign workers into Detroit over five years, instead of relying on Americans to rebuild their city.
Snyder’s emphasis on benefits for Chamber of Commerce members was welcomed by business groups, such as the FWD.us lobby. The lobby was created by a group of information-technology investors who are trying to expand the supply of foreign white-collar workers for jobs also sought by American graduates. The business groups are pushing the GOP to quickly pass a no-strings amnesty for the 3 million ‘dreamers,’ without including any of President Trump’s safeguards to protect Americans from lower wages or a subsequent wave of “chain migrants.”
Snyder’s op-ed also said he had joint the “Dream Coalition” advocacy groups, which was founded by Steve Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. She is a progressive who is lobbying hard for passage of the Dream Act, which would benefit the 3 million illegal immigrants cited by Snyder. Powell Jobs recently met with the chief Democratic champion for the Dream Act amnesty, Sen. Dick Durbin.
In a September posting at her site, Powell Jobs argues that the children of immigrants — both legal and illegal — “are among our greatest assets.” She continued:
To hurt these children is to hurt ourselves, our society as a whole. The abolition of DACA represents a betrayal of both our values and our interests. We should be ashamed of what the administration has done. It is now up to Congress to correct this indecent mistake by passing the bipartisan DREAM Act. Is our common humanity so frayed in this country that we cannot agree even about the children?
Legal and illegal immigrants comprise roughly 7.7 percent of Michigan’s workforce, according to the American Immigration Council. Relatively few are illegal, and a greater proportion are skilled compared to the illegal and legal migrant populations in Texas and California. The immigrants comprise roughly 10 percent of Michigan’s manufacturing and professional services sector, and they simultaneously expand business revenues and shrink pressure for higher wages.
According to the council:
Immigrant-led households in the state paid $3.8 billion in federal taxes and $1.5 billion in state and local taxes in 2014.
Undocumented immigrants in Michigan paid an estimated $86.7 million in state and local taxes in 2014. Their contribution would rise to $113.9 million if they could receive legal status.
DACA recipients in Michigan paid an estimated $15.9 million in state and local taxes in 2016.
Legal and illegal immigrants boost revenues for businesses, said the council.
Michigan residents in immigrant-led households had $14.2 billion in spending power (after-tax income) in 2014.
Much of that revenue comes from federal transfers and aid. For example, a 2015 report by the Center for Immigration Studies showed:
In 2012, 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) reported that they used at least one welfare program during the year, compared to 30 percent of native households. Welfare in this study includes Medicaid and cash, food, and housing programs …
But the pro-immigration estimates from Snyder, Powell Jobs, and other progressives ignore the impact of immigration on investment patterns and on individual Americans and their per-capita wages, housing prices, taxes and job opportunities. For example, the National Academies of Science estimated that immigrants impose a 5.2 percent ‘tax’ on Americans wages via increases competition for jobs.
The nation’s cheap-labor immigration policy has also reduced investment and job creation in many interior states because investors know that migrants will move to their investments in the coastal cities that they prefer. For example, almost 58 percent of zip codes in Michigan had fewer jobs or businesses in 2015 than in 2000, according to a new report by the Economic Innovation Group. Roughly 19 percent of people in Michigan live in those distressed areas.
The estimates also downplay the taxpayers’ cost of accepting lower-skilled immigrants. In general, immigrants with university degrees pay more in taxes than they receive in federal benefits, but immigrants without college qualifications do not pay enough in taxes to cover the cost of aid and welfare programs. In 2016, the National Academies reported that immigrants cost taxpayers in states and local jurisdictions $57.4 billion each year.
Only four percent of the 690,000 ‘DACA’ recipients have completed college, far below the roughly 17 percent of similar-aged young Americans who have college degrees, according to data released by the Migration Policy Insitute, which favors immigration. The data means that average DACA beneficiaries are far less educated and less productive than Americans, and if ever awarded an amnesty, will be far more likely to rely on taxpayers’ aid throughout their lives. According to the MPI report:
While DACA recipients are almost as likely as U.S. adults in the same age group (15-32) to be enrolled in college (18 percent versus 20 percent), they are far less likely to have completed college (4 percent versus 18 percent).
However, the DACA beneficiaries comprise only one-third of the roughly 1.78 million young illegals who are aged 15 or older in September 2017, according to the MPI data. If the roughly 30,000 DACA beneficiaries with four-year college degrees are compared to this larger group of 1.78 million, then only 1.7 percent of young ‘dreamer’ illegals aged 15 to 32 hold four-year college degrees. That ‘dreamer’ graduation rate is just one-tenth of the 17.5 percent of similar-aged Americans who hold four-year college degrees.
Other data suggests that the DACA and ‘dreamer’ illegals have low skill levels. For example, a study released November 1 by the Anne E. Casey Foundation showed incredibly poor reading and math proficiency of fourth grade and eight-grade immigrants. According to a report in Breitbart News:
For children in the 4th grade living in immigrant families, only eight percent scored at or above the proficiency level in reading. In math, the proficiency rate is even worse, with only five percent of 8th graders in immigrant households scoring at or above the proficiency level.
Compare these statistics to that of children who are born in the U.S. to non-foreign families, where 38 percent of 4th graders scored at or above the reading proficiency level and 34 percent of 8th graders scored at or above the math proficiency.
In some of the nation’s largest urban areas, unskilled migrants outnumber skilled migrants by three to one, according to a 2011 study. The same study showed that the skill level among immigrants was one-fifth of that among native-born Americans. In California, only 12 percent of 590,000 “English Language Learners” met or exceeded standards in 2016, according to California’s test results. That score was close to the 2016 score for Latinos where only 24 percent met or exceeded standards, compared to 73 percent of Asians and 53 percent of “white” Americans.
In 2012, roughly half of immigrants aged 25 or above arrived with a high-school level of education or less, according to a 2o16 report by the National Academies of Sciences.
The 2016 NAS report also showed that recent immigrants are assimilating into the U.S. culture and economy slower than prior immigrants.
Business groups and Democrats embrace the industry-funded “nation of immigrants” polls that shame Americans to say they welcome migrants. But the alternative “fairness” polls show that voters put a much higher priority on helping their families, neighbors, and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy. The political power of the voters’ fairness priorities was made clear during the GOP primaries and again in November 2016.
Each year, four million Americans turn 18 and begin looking for good jobs in the free market.
But the federal government inflates the supply of new labor by annually accepting one million new legal immigrants, by providing almost two million work-permits to foreigners, by providing work-visas to roughly 500,000 temporary workers, and doing little to block the employment of roughly eight million illegal immigrants.
The Washington-imposed economic policy of mass-immigration floods the market with foreign labor and spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also encourages discrimination against American workers, drives up real estate prices, widens wealth gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, and hurts kids’ schools and college education. Furthermore, it pushes Americans away from high-tech careers and reduces the work activity rate below the rate in foreign rivals, which sidelines millions of marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.