Obama adviser: Reform would be economic boon for Arizona
Attempting to put a pocketbook spin on the immigration debate, a top economic adviser to the president said Wednesday that Arizona would see an economic boon if Congress passed legislation granting citizenship to illegal immigrants and additional worker visas for industries such as farming and engineering.
The sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration system would boost Arizona’s employment, tax revenue and even
housing values as soon as next year, said Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council. The cost of inaction, he said, would be high.
“Immigration reform is the right thing to do, but it is also very clear from a variety of independent sources, it is the economically smart thing to do as well,” Sperling said during a conference call with reporters.
The White House’s new offensive comes as momentum for immigration reform appears in danger of stalling in the House of Representatives. Months of wrangling in the Senate produced a comprehensive reform package in June. But since its passage, the lower chamber has approved nothing.
The Senate bill included tighter border security, checks on businesses hiring illegal immigrants, visas for highand low-skilled workers and a path to citizenship for the country’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, among other provisions. The pathway to citizenship would require undocumented immigrants to pay fees and back taxes and wait at least 13 years.
During Senate negotiations, President Barack Obama largely played a behind-the-scenes role, preferring to allow reform-minded Republicans, like Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, cajole members of their own party to get on board. But as Congress prepares to leave Washington on recess for five weeks, the president may be applying greater pressure to prevent immigration from becoming a distant memory.
In Arizona, the pathway to citizenship and expanded worker programs would increase the state’s economic output by $676 million and create 8,000 new jobs by 2014, White House officials said, citing an analysis by the independent research firm Regional Economic Models Inc. The economic impact of giving citizenship to the undocumented immigrants in Arizona is estimated at $265 million and 3,250 jobs.
While all states would see job growth and higher economic output, Arizona would be one of the10 that would benefit most, the study found. Health care, retail and construction would see the biggest gains in employment.
Other states with the largest projected increases in jobs were California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The states projected to see large job growth have large numbers of undocumented workers.
While the Obama administration, which has made immigration reform among its top priorities, had political motives for pointing out the financial benefits of immigration reform, lesspartisan studies have highlighted similar potential economic benefits.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, for example, found immigration reform would reduce the deficit. Economists, including Douglas Holtz- Eakin, former chief economic-policy adviser to McCain during his 2008 presidential campaign, forecast benefits to the U.S. economy from new immigrants, such as a rise in entrepreneurship.
Conservatives opposed to the Senate plan, however, say it would hurt the economy. The Heritage Foundation issued a report that said the bill would cost $6 trillion, arguing newly legalized immigrants would collect more in government benefits than they pay in taxes.
On Monday, the White House used numbers from the Regional Economic Models report to spotlight the boost to farm production in Arizona. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said legalizing undocumented farmworkers and expanding a guest-worker program would keep food prices low and create jobs. The report said that by 2020, the temporary-worker program proposed in the Senate bill would create 993 new jobs for U.S. citizens and immigrants.
For high-skilled workers, the report estimated expanded H-1B visas would generate at least 790 new positions at companies such as Intel Corp. in Arizona in 2014. The economic ripple effect would mean an additional 3,200 new jobs throughout the state.
White House officials highlighted the state-by-state findings as part of a strategy to solidify public support for the president’s agenda ahead of the summer recess. If members of Congress feel pressure from constituents at town halls, officials hope House Speaker John Boehner would be forced to hold a vote on the Senate’s comprehensive immigration package come September, despite saying for weeks that he would not.
“The economic case we’ve laid out here is pretty persuasive,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “Why are Republicans in the House opposed to this? I’m not really sure why.”
House Republicans have held hearings on legislation to deal with immigration reform on issues popular with conservatives, such as border security, but so far elements such as a path to citizenship have been missing. It’s unclear when the House will act on any bills.
Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, a professor of economics at San Diego State University, said she wasn’t surprised by the positive figures in the report cited by the White House. Her research focuses on labor and immigration.
With immigration reform, “you are simply allowing what might have been an underground activity to surface, flourish and contribute to gross domestic product and taxes,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Why wouldn’t that create employment and increase (economic output)?”
Arizona businesses hope such reports will move the needle in Congress, said Garrick Taylor, a spokesman for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which is lobbying for reform.
“When you find analysis after analysis indicating positive results, that might provide the information that certain fence-sitting members of Congress need to move their vote into the ‘yes’ column,” he said.