Torch, Spring/Summer 2012

state’s economic health, Arkansas would know. Instead, Arkansas experienced an economic boom with simultaneous record high immigration, which was the case in most of the southeastern U.S. before the recent recession. Paying Their Way If, as those resistant to immigration insist, immigrants are coming here to take advantage of our social welfare programs, why are they disproportionately flocking to states with skimpy benefits for the poor? Social welfare spending in Arkansas is among the lowest in the country, well below the national average. The same holds true in South Carolina, Utah, Georgia, Arizona, Tennessee, Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa — states experiencing big increases in immigrant populations. In addition, there appears to be no correlation between generous welfare benefits and growing immigration populations. If Arkansas is the Scrooge of welfare benefits, then California is the Santa Claus; yet it’s California’s immigrant population growth that is slowing. In 2006, the state of Texas, home to our second-largest illegal population after California, issued a report on how undocumented immigrants affect the state budget. The study, conducted by the state controller’s office, looked at gross state product, revenues generated, taxes paid, and the cost of state services. Education was the largest cost, while, somewhat surprisingly, state-paid health care for illegal immigrants was “a small percentage of total health care spending.” The most interesting finding was that illegal immigrants in Texas generate more in tax revenue than the state spends on them. The report concluded that the absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas during 2004–05 would have created a $17.3 billion loss to the state’s gross product. The controller’s office estimated that state revenue collected from illegal immigrants in Texas exceeded by $424 million what the state spent on services. In short, Texas is economically better off with illegal immigrants. I don’t deny there is a cost component to immigration. Some immigrants are net contributors, others are net beneficiaries. But in the end, fiscally speaking, immigrants don’t make a big negative impact on the nation’s purse. What does it even mean to cite “welfare costs” as a reason to restrict immigration? Those who do are suggesting a person’s worth to society is nothing more than the sum of his tax payment. Can we measure a person’s worth on what he pays for taxes versus what he receives in public benefits? By that standard, most U.S. citizens aren’t worth the trouble. More than 60 percent of us collect more in government services than we pay in taxes (the phenomenon can be attributed to our tiered tax system with the top 1 percent of earners paying 37 percent of federal tax payments). It would be foolish to argue that 60 percent of Americans are financially expendable and that the U.S. would be better without them because they don’t “pay their way.” This idea ignores the propensity of foreign workers to save and start new businesses at higher rates than native-born Americans, contributing to the economic welfare of the nation. Lower income workers, whether American or foreign-born, enable large sectors of our economy — including farming, construction, manufacturing, and health care — to function and grow. In the process, they create job opportunities for the rest of us. Ultimately, immigrants are catalysts for economic growth. They increase the number of economic agents in the marketplace who earn, spend, and invest, thus increasing the amount of economic activity. Any analyses of immigration’s fiscal impact that leave out these contributions are not telling the whole story. 26 TORCH | Spring-Summer 2012