California economy depends on undocumented workers
The video is difficult to watch, even for the hardest heart. A dash-cam video published in The Intercept shows a young mother weeping and pleading with a Texas state trooper who has just called the Border Patrol on the father of her 5-month-old daughter.
“No, they are going to take him, sir,” she begs the trooper who pulled her over for a broken taillight, but to no avail. “They are taking everybody.”
As Texas state troopers seem eager to help enforce President Trump’s racist-driven deportation policies, employers and economists there are bracing for the impact. In 2014, undocumented immigrants comprised 8.5 percent of the Lone Star State’s total workforce and paid $1.6 billion in state and local taxes.
Back here in the Golden State, I introduced SB 54, the California Values Act, to prevent that from happening in our communities. Drafting local police into Trump’s immigration crackdown undermines public safety and is a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars. It became law Monday and will prevent the Trump administration from hijacking our state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws.
Not only does SB 54 protect our honest and hard-working mothers and fathers from being torn from their children, it also protects the backbone of California’s economy.
In California, one in 10 workers is undocumented, approximately 3 million in all. They pay an estimated $3 billion in state and local taxes. They contribute $180 billion annually to our GDP. To attack them, as the president has, is to attack our economic prosperity.
Their work touches nearly every industry, from agriculture to food preparation to manufacturing and technology.
The California Values Act will prevent Trump from sacrificing the very people who have helped make our economy the sixth largest in the world.
And while the Texas Department of Safety unleashes state troopers to act as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deputies in communities with large Latino populations, other states that have also enacted “get tough” laws targeting undocumented residents have learned
hard and costly lessons.
In 2011, the Republican Legislature and governor in Alabama enacted HB 56. The measure made it a crime to rent a house or give a job to an undocumented person. Police were deputized to demand documentation as were school officials.
More than 80,000 Latinos bolted, costing Alabama up to $10.8 billion in lost income and tax revenue.
Georgia enacted legislation, HB
87, in 2011 to discourage undocumented immigrants from entering or living in the state. Again, local police were given the green light to demand documentation while employers faced stiffer penalties for hiring or harboring undocumented workers.
As a result, farmers fell 40 percent short of the labor needed at harvest time, triggering an estimated $140 million in agricultural losses. Despite Georgia’s high unemployment, state officials in 2012 sent prison inmates into the fields and orchards to avoid repeating 2011’s debacle.
There were 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States in 2015, according to Pew Research. Of those, 8 million accounted for 5 percent of the nation’s work force. Study after study has concluded their contributions to our economy and resulting benefits are indisputable.
For instance, their contributions to Social Security without the expectation of drawing benefits helps keep the program afloat. In 2010, undocumented workers contributed a net gain of $12 billion to the program while getting nothing in return.
The California Values Act is our statement to the White House and the rest of the nation: We won’t go down that racist rabbit hole with you. California lost its way in 1994 with Prop. 187, but that tragic episode gave birth to a new California consciousness; one that will now do everything within its power to protect our diversity and the economic power it has created.