Donald Trump vilified undocumented immigrants while riding white supremacy all the way to the White House, but the fact of the matter is that entire sectors of the U.S. economy would collapse without the ingenuity, passion, and sweat of immigrants, regardless of legal status. Even Trump’s precious Trump Tower in Manhattan wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without immigrant labor.
This Labor Day, as we continue the movement for permanent relief that would protect immigrant workers and families from exploitation and allow them to finally become a part of this country on paper, columnist Elaine Ayala reminds us to “thank the Irish, Chinese, Mexicans and others who risked so much for a U.S. job, even a low-paying one, and a chance for a better life. They made us greater than we would have been without them”:
Immigrants are ... consumers, spending proportionately more of what they earn. Their entrepreneurial spirit creates jobs, too. “Economists will tell you that immigrants create U.S. jobs and support the creation of jobs,” [the Migration Policy Institute’s Marc] Rosenblum said. “It has always been true.” It’s a fallacy to think immigrants take jobs away from U.S.-born workers.
Experts say immigrants have sustained the Social Security and Medicaid systems because they’re younger and healthier than the native-born population. Actuaries of the Social Security Administration have been quoted saying undocumented immigrants annually pay $13 billion into the system...
The reality is the United States always has depended on immigrant labor, and they’ll make up most of the nation’s workforce growth through 2050. By that time, 37 percent of the U.S. population “is projected to be foreign born or the children of immigrants,” a Migration Policy Institute report says.
It’s in our interest that immigrants become legalized and skilled to sustain U.S. competitiveness. Again, that’s only if we’re thinking selfishly.
“Our first skyscrapers? They were built by immigrants,” Ayala states in the column, written last year but all the more relevant in the face of Trump’s immoral mass deportation force and anti-immigrant agenda that seeks to tear families apart and rip them from the communities they contribute so much to.
“The Brooklyn Bridge? Immigrant labor. Mining and railroads? Immigrants, again and again. They came from Hungary, Poland, Russia, Ireland and Italy. Chinese and Mexicans took their turns, all playing vital roles in the nation’s history, culture and economic growth. On this and every Labor Day, we should thank them.”