Sources for the following include: the American Farm Bureau
Federation, the Cato Institute, the Federal Reserve, the
National Academy of Sciences, the Social Security
Administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and
The Urban Institute.
1) The separation of family is a painful reality of
immigration, whether through the deportation of family
members or the separation of families apprehended at the
border. When families are sent to detention facilities, they
can be separated for years. No detention facilities, whether
government-run or privately run, allow families to stay
together.
2) Immigrants do pay taxes, whether income tax, sales tax or
property tax. Sources vary as to how much income tax
undocumented immigrants pay, but more than half pay state and
federal taxes, and they contribute billions of dollars per
year to the Social Security system.
3) Immigrants fill jobs in key sectors, often where the
response does not meet the high demand, such as in
agriculture, meat-packing plants and other low-skilled
positions. As the number of native-born low-wage workers in
the United States has declined steadily, unskilled immigrant
workers have helped offset the need for such workers.
4) Immigrants help put food on America’s tables. For years
U.S. agriculture employers have been unable to fill the need
for farm workers – labor that is physically and emotionally
draining. The American Farm Bureau Federation supports a
guest worker program that would allow employers to legally
hire a sufficient number of temporary farm workers to meet
their needs. Without guest workers, the U.S. economy would
lose as much as $9 billion a year in agricultural production,
and 20 percent of current production would go overseas.
5) Those immigrants who want to follow the process of
obtaining legal residency face long years of waiting for
their paperwork to be processed. The system is backed up and
the issues are complex. In the meantime, their lives are put
on hold, because they cannot marry legally, obtain Social
Security cards or continue higher education.
6) The U.S. government spends billions of dollars annually –
$17.9 billion last year alone – to detain (sometimes for two
years or more) and deport people who have no criminal record
and have crossed the border to reunite with families, find
employment, escape violence or simply to survive. In fact,
the majority of undocumented immigrants have not committed
any crime other than the civil offense of being in the
country without legal status. As one example, the border town
of El Paso, Texas, which is home to a large immigrant
population, has been named the No. 1 safest city in the
United States with a population of 500,000 or more.
7) Increased security at border points of entry, such as at
the bridge in El Paso, has delayed crossings by as much as
two hours and has hurt the economy, as long waits discourage
would-be shoppers and visitors to the United States.
8) An underground labor market not only affects wages and
working conditions, it enables workers to be treated
inhumanely and, as such, indirectly affects all human beings
as members of the body of Christ.
9) Putting more tax money into better securing the border may
deter, but will not prevent migration into the United States,
as long as the root causes of economics are not addressed.
10) Americans can help to improve situations that cause
people to flee their homes through informed awareness and
more conscientious consumption. For example, purchases of
free trade products such as coffee and chocolate will help
small farmers in Latin America stay on their land.
