• Read Talking Points on Immigrants and The Middle Class

• Read Talking Points on Immigration Policy

FACT SHEETS

• Read Fact Sheet: Immigrants' Economic Contributions

• Read Fact Sheet: The Exploitation of Undocumented Workers
  

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As Congress again prepares to debate comprehensive immigration reform before the end of 2009, the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy releases “Principles for an Immigration Policy to Strengthen and Expand the American Middle Class: 2009 Edition,” building on our earlier immigration research.

In the depths of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Americans have nevertheless rejected the impulse to blame immigrants for their economic woes and instead show strong and growing support for legalizing undocumented immigrants. This report was written to encourage a new immigration reform package driven by the needs of the nation’s middle class and low-income American workers striving to stay afloat through the economic crisis and earn a middle-class standard of living.

We reveal that the American middle class relies on the economic contributions of immigrants both authorized and undocumented, but also that the exploitation of undocumented immigrant workers threatens to drive labor standards down for current and aspiring middle-class workers. Based on these findings, we propose a two-fold litmus test for evaluating immigration policy:

DMI’s MIDDLE CLASS TEST:

In order to strengthen the American middle-class and expand it to more working people, immigration policy must:

2. Strengthen the rights of immigrants in the workplace.

• U.S. natives gain an estimated $37 billion a year from immigrants’ participation in the U.S. economy,according to the President’s Council of Economic Advisors.
  
  
• On average, immigrants pay more in taxes than they use in government services, and these taxes fund programs like Social Security that strengthen and expand the middle class.
  
  
• Undocumented immigrants alone contribute an estimated $7 billion a year in federal Social Security taxes.
  
  
• The middle class relies on the goods and services that the authorized and undocumented immigrants in the U.S. now produce.
  
  
• By increasing consumer demand, immigrants generate economic growth that benefits the middle class: immigration is a major contributor to the expansion of Hispanic and Asian-American consumer markets—which total an estimated 13.6 percent of the nation’s 2008 purchasing power.
  
  
• Immigrant consumers will be particularly critical in reviving the nation’s devastated housing market,according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. They find that immigration expands the demand for new homes, pointing out that immigration contributed to over 40 percent of net household formations between 2000 and 2005.
  
  
• Immigrants also stimulate the economy by starting small businesses and attracting investment capital from their countries of origin. For example, immigrant entrepreneurs helped to establish a quarter of all engineering and technology companies launched in the U.S. between 1995 and 2005, creating nearly 450,000 jobs.
  
  
• Based on these findings, we conclude that immigration policy should bolster—not undermine—the critical contribution that immigrants make to our economy as workers, entrepreneurs, taxpayers and consumers.
  

• Under current immigration law, immigrant workers compete with their U.S.-born counterparts on an uneven playing field—to the detriment of both groups.
  
  
• Because employers threaten undocumented immigrants with deportation, these workers cannot effectively assert their rights in the workplace by, for example, asking for raises, complaining about violations of wage and hour or workplace safety laws, or by supporting union organizing drives.
  
  
• As long as this cheaper and more compliant pool of immigrant labor is available, employers are all too willing to take advantage of the situation to keep their labor costs down, especially during the economic downturn when business margins are tight and profits are squeezed.
  
  
• U.S.-born workers are left to either accept the same diminished wages and degraded working conditions as immigrants living under threat of deportation or be shut out of whole industries where employers hire predominantly undocumented immigrants.
  
  
• The current recession logically increases both the desperation of undocumented workers and the temptation for employers to cut costs by dodging workplace protections. It is thus more important than ever to ensure that workplace standards are applied universally to everyone participating in our economy.
  
  
• Based on these findings, we conclude that immigration policy should strengthen the rights of immigrants in the workplace.
  

• Immigration reform is necessary. Current immigration policy fails the middle class because it is disconnected from our nation’s economic reliance on undocumented immigrants, and threatens to undermine the middle class because these undocumented workers cannot exercise workplace rights.
  
  
• Earned legalization for current undocumented immigrants is an effective way to both maximize immigrants’ economic contributions and prevent the workplace exploitation that makes it harder for American workers to earn a middle-class standard of living. It must enable hard-working immigrants to gain legal status relatively swiftly and without excessive barriers, or it will not succeed in absorbing the nation’s existing underground labor force.
  
  
• Establishing new guest worker programs would undermine the nation’s current and aspiring middle class by institutionalizing a permanent two-tiered labor market. The more jobs that can be transformed into “guest worker jobs,” the fewer domestic jobs will provide the wages and benefits capable of supporting a middle-class standard of living. As the economy begins growing again and demand for immigrant labor resumes, these workers and their families should be granted legal permanent residency, not contingent, temporary status.
  
  
• Increased enforcement of the nation’s current, flawed immigration laws endangers the middle class by both reducing immigrants’ economic contributions and driving undocumented immigrants further underground, where they become still more vulnerable to exploitation. Current enforcement only proposals are ineffective and costly to middle-class taxpayers. Better enforcement must wait until better immigration law can actually be enforced.
  

DMI Testimony on Immigration
Testimony Before the New York City Council Committees on Immigration and Civil Rights
DMI's Prepared Remarks for Congressional Staff Briefing on Immigration
DMI Immigration testimony before the New York City Council

Articles on immigration policy by DMI Staff
Immigration, Health Reform and Big Lies, AlterNetThe Real Economics of Immigration Reform, The American Prospect
Hey Conservatives: Immigrants Help, Not Hurt, Our Economy, AlterNet
Immigration Roundtable, WBAI Radio
An Inadequate Analysis of Assimiliation, El Diario
Immigrants and the Middle Class: Shared Interests, Shared Futures, DMI
Memo to the Netroots: Immigration and the blogosphere, DMI
Immigrant Drivers License Plan Unravels, The Nation
Pro-Immigrant Populism, The Nation
Immigration raid an 'economic dead end', Chicago Sun-Times
Labor Joins La Marcha, TomPaine.com
Dobbs the demagogue, NY Daily News
Bush's Half Measures, TomPaine.com
The Guest Worker Gamble, TomPaine.com
Look Here for Immigration Solutions, Newsday
Letter to the Editor: Illegals and Lost Wages, New York Sun
Beyond Guest Workers, TomPaine.com
Guest-Worker Caste System, TomPaine.com

Other articles discussing DMI’s immigration perspective
Report Urges Census Count to Include the Undocumented, New York Newsday
Reform to Help Economic Recovery?, Immigration Matters
Senator Gillibrand and Immigration, Blog of Rights
Middle-class' immigration test, Bangor Daily News
Toward a Sensible Immigration Policy, The Nation
Worker Protections in Immigration Proposal Questioned, The New Standard
Family Apart as Immigration Debate Goes On, The Miami Herald
Immigrants Are Not The Enemy, The Working Life
Guest Workers: What To Do?, The Working Life
Reimagining Immigration, Tapped, the blog of American Prospect magazine
Dealing with Immigration: Increase Immigrant Rights, TPMCafe
Underclass of workers is W's idea of reform, NY Daily News