Just Listen To The Experts: You Can’t Have Economic Growth Without Immigrants
Ignore the ugly rhetoric and just look at the facts: immigration is not only good for our country, it’s necessary to our economic growth and vital to essential industries. Part of that reason is because as U.S.-born workers get older and retire, making immigrant workers even more critical in helping maintain a strong labor force and positive economic outlook.
But without immigrant workers, that economic growth will be a lot tougher to achieve, new findings say.
Documented broke down a new report from the nonpartisan thinktank Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which analyzed federal data and found that the federal government’s “reported plans to deport 1 million people per year from the U.S. could undercut its own future projections of high gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the country,” the outlet said. Documented notes that while “the average pace of GDP growth since 1969 has been 1.66%,” the federal government has claimed a very sunny 2.89% rate of growth.
But under current immigration policies that have already resulted in significant job losses in essential industries like agriculture, “this seems unlikely,” Documented said.
“If the number of work hours falls because the labor force shrinks, this essentially translates one-for-one into slower aggregate growth,” economist Josh Bivens writes in EPI’s report. “Policymakers who do not want to see the pace of GDP growth shrink relative to the past history of U.S. growth really only have one option: allowing larger flows of immigration.”
“The growth of the U.S.-born labor force has slowed significantly in recent years, according to the analysis,” Documented noted. “Between 1948 and 2007, the baby boom and an influx of women into the workforce spurred significant growth. Between 1948 and 1979, the labor force rose by an average of 1.79% a year. But as workers began to age, growth dropped by over half to 0.55% between 2019 and 2024.”
“With low immigration, EPI projects that the entire U.S. population size would decrease by 5% over the next few decades. And without it, they forecast the U.S. population would contract by over 30% by 2100.”
This will be dire for essential industries that are already hurting for qualified workers, such as healthcare, which could see a shortage of about 100,000 critical health care workers by 2028, the American Hospital Association said. “The impact of the shortages will be uneven and an added burden to a system strained by geographic and demographic disparities in access to care,” with states like California, Texas and Pennsylvania “expected to weather the storm” while states like New York and New Jersey are expected to face acute shortages.
Immigrants are key to sustaining industries like healthcare. Currently, about one in six hospital workers are immigrants, according to research from KFF. Thousands are home health aides, including Gina Policard, who is originally from Haiti. She previously told Documented that after arriving in the U.S. in 2022, she began to train as a home health aide. “I had to do something, because I have bills to pay,” she said in August. “But I love the job because I love taking care of people the same way I do for my family.”
And let’s not forget about the contributions that America’s immigrant communities, regardless of legal status, make every single year. These tax payments help sustain vital federal programs like Medicare and Social Security, fund our public schools, libraries, and fire departments, and boost our overall economy. Their vast contributions make our nation stronger, more vibrant, and more prosperous.
“Analysis of the 2021 American Community Survey shows that immigrant-led households paid $524.7 billion in total taxes in 2021, a slight increase since 2019,” the American Immigration Council said in 2023. “This includes $346.3 billion in federal income taxes, and $178.4 billion in state and local taxes. These tax contributions made up 15.9% of total tax revenues governments received from U.S. residents in 2021, yet immigrants make up just 13.6% of U.S. households.”
Last year, research from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) also revealed that undocumented workers contributed an astounding $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022 alone. Billions of this went to help subsidize federal programs that these same workers are legally barred from accessing due to their legal status.
“More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing,” ITEP said. “Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022.”
Meanwhile, refugee communities “enter the workforce at high rates, often filling labor shortages in critical industries,” the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said, and are natural-born entrepreneurs who strengthen communities through their resilience and skills. “Entrepreneurship is a key driver of economic growth, and refugees excel in this area. In 2019, 13% of refugees in the U.S. were entrepreneurs, surpassing the 11.7% rate among non-refugee immigrants and the 9% rate among U.S.-born citizens. This amounted to nearly 188,000 refugee-owned businesses across the country.”
But, refugee admissions to the U.S. are now expected to be slashed to a historic low.
Once again: immigration benefits our country. Policies slamming the door shut on this vibrant and entrepreneurial community only hurts us in the long run – and that’s the opinion of the experts. “Without changes in immigration policy, GDP growth will likely slow,” Documented said.