Capitalism's Beef About Immigrants

Saying our borders are "not open to illegal migration," Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Monday opened in Dilley, Texas, what is billed as the largest U.S. family detention center to hold those caught entering the country illegally.
Johnson also used the occasion to criticize congressional Republicans he said failed to fully fund his department in the budget bill approved this past weekend.
"If Congress is interested with me in supporting the border security measure we are outlining here today, it should act immediately on our budget request for fiscal 2015," Johnson said.
The budget legislation funds most government agencies through September 2015. The Department of Homeland Security will be treated differently, getting a funding extension only through Feb. 27, by which time Republicans will control both chambers of Congress.

Republicans insisted on the shorter leash for DHS so that they can try to deny the agency any funds for implementing President Barack Obama's recent order easing deportations for millions of immigrants without proper documents.
The facility, which Johnson toured, is a former camp for oilfield workers located in a dusty and remote spot about 100 miles (160 km) north of the Rio Grande border with Mexico. It will hold up to 2,400 people, mainly women with children.
Johnson said its presence will send a message to desperate people south of the U.S. border.
"It will now be more likely that you will be apprehended, it will now be more likely that you will de detained and sent back," he told reporters.

An official of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency told reporters the cost of operating the center, which will be largely managed by the Corrections Corporation of America, will be $296 per person per day.

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Contrary to the myth advanced by opponents of reform that illegal immigrants don’t contribute their fair share in taxes, and drain government benefits, the reality is that undocumented workers are helping to keep the social security trust fund in the black. They do this because they are paying into the system typically with false social security numbers, which means they will never collect benefits. Their money, often collected for many years, helps keep the system afloat and benefits flowing to aging baby boomers.

This is not an insignificant amount of money. When payroll contributions cannot be credited to a verifiable number, they go into what’s called the “Earnings Suspense File.” A study that was done last year by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, found that this file is estimated to have accumulated one trillion dollars worth of tax contributions.
Not all of that “unmatched money” is from illegal workers, says Marshall Fitz with CAP, but he felt comfortable saying, “A significant portion of that suspense file has been funded through undocumented workers who currently will never see those benefits.”

Here’s how the math works. Five percent of the U.S. work force is undocumented, which is some 8.1 million people. Thirty-eight percent of the 8.1 million pay social security taxes, which comes to roughly $12 billion a year, according to CAP estimates.

Obama’s executive order would allow newly legalized workers to eventually collect benefits when they reach retirement age. But that’s a long way off for many of them, and any potential loss would be more than offset by the millions of young workers who will be brought into the system to pay taxes for three or four decades before they can collect benefits.
“The biggest problem we have with social security is there are fewer Americans to pay into the system to support people who are currently retired or about to retire,” says Ornstein, “so the more people working and paying into the system is better for everybody.”

Henry Aaron, an expert on social security at the Brookings Institution, says that looking ahead 75 years into the future, the legalization of some five million immigrants by executive order would be “like a boost in population—and a higher population is typically good for the (social security) trust fund. It’s equal to an increase in net migration, and when people enter the system, and that group is young and working, that’s positive.”

This is because immigrants are the lifeblood of the U.S. economy. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the bipartisan Senate bill passed last year with 68 votes would cut the deficit by $820 billion over 20 years.
“Opponents of doing anything but deport or self-deport say these are people who are relying on government benefits, taking jobs from hardworking Americans,” says Ornstein. Immigrants without legal documentation are forced to work “off the books,” or “under the table. This is an arrangement that suits more employers than probably would care to admit it, because they avoid paying their fair share of taxes on those workers.

Common sense is too often in short supply in the emotional debate over immigration reform and Obama’s executive action. But as America faces two great demographic shifts taking place simultaneously—the graying of America and the browning of America—the economic benefits of legalizing millions of people are clear for those directly affected and for the country as a whole.
What is less clear is how workplaces accustomed to exploiting workers will adjust to newly empowered immigrants less afraid to stand up and be counted and claim what they’re entitled to.

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Whichever way you look at it, it's all about money, taxes and the formal or informal economy. Someone, something has to be blamed for the shortcomings of how the system is standing up in the eyes of the population at large. Immigrants, and especially illegal immigrants, are a convenient fall guy - but that's because we're mostly kept ignorant of the real facts. Targeting a minority, in this case immigrants, may be convenient but it's the wrong minority. We need to keep our eye on the ball and target the small minority who seek to keep the rest of us in servitude with wage slavery - the capitalists.