Guest Post: ROBERT GITTELSON — Conservative Closing Argument: Why Congress Must Pass a Comprehensive Immigration Reform Economic Stimulus in the 2010 Lame Duck Session

The other day, I was honored to be able to participate in an important debate on Comprehensive Immigration Reform, (CIR). The debate took place in the inner city of Los Angeles, at the Faithful Central Bible Church, a very large predominantly Black church in Inglewood. What is particularly noteworthy, is that my debate partner in representing the pro-CIR argument was Maria Elena Durazo. It is certainly not often that a labor champion, (Ms. Durazo is the Executive Secretary of the AFL-CIO, and former Co-Chair of Obama for President), and a pro-business conservative, (I am the Co-Founder of Conservatives for CIR, a coalition of conservative business and Evangelical leaders), are on the same side of anything. And yet, there we were, united in our belief in the urgent need for CIR, and standing toe-to-toe against two anti-CIR opponents.

However, what really struck home for me was the urgency in which CIR is needed to help heal the palpable black-brown economic rift that was so clearly in evidence among the constituents of that church. The inner city of Los Angeles is truly ground zero in the societal outcry for jobs, jobs, jobs. I tried very hard to speak persuasively when it was my turn to speak, but more importantly to listen attentively when it was my opportunity to listen. The members of that audience were not afraid to compete in the marketplace for jobs. However, they wanted to be able to compete on an even playing field for fair wages, and not against undocumented immigrants that could potentially undercut these citizens in their quest for a living wage. Their demand is reasonable. It is one of the many pro-economic arguments to immediately pass CIR.

That brings me to the topic of when and how will Congress get to the urgent business of fixing our broken immigration system? I say emphatically that the right time is right now.

Today, election day, is the eve of opportunity. While there is no such thing as a free pass for Congress to address our nation’s most difficult and politically complex issues, Lame Duck is the closest thing to it. Indeed, there are several members of Congress, (some returning, some not), that would like to address either CIR or the DREAM Act in lame duck. I want to make the case for the former, while expressing my appreciation for the latter.

The DREAM Act is an important piece of socially progressive legislation that is compassionately conservative, and enjoys a measure of bi-partisan support in Congress. It would serve to bring hundreds of thousands of upstanding young men and women out of the shadows, if they fall within a narrow range of requirements, such as arriving with their parents prior to their 16th birthday, graduating high school, and either completing 2 years of college, or serving 2 years in the military.

However, while helping even a small percentage of the undocumented to emerge out of the shadows is a positive step, it is only a small step. It doesn’t address the needs of those undocumented residents that came after their 16th birthday, weren’t able to graduate high school, or have aged out of the prescribed group. More importantly, it doesn’t in any meaningful way address border security, which for many Republicans is a non-starter.

I would argue that in addition to border security, we are shooting ourselves in the economic foot if we don’t address all of the pressing economic concerns that CIR addresses, such as; interior worksite enforcement, the future flow or restriction of legal immigration or temporary worker visas, the intentional attrition of foreign college or postgraduate students in science and business that come here to earn the world’s best educations – but then must leave to work or start businesses in their home countries, and perhaps most importantly our urgent need for agricultural workers.

I believe that American Capitalism fuels economic prosperity. I believe in free market solutions. I believe that lower taxes would stimulate our economy. I believe that American Exceptionalism stems from our work ethic, and our principals. I believe that comprehensive immigration reform would speed, enhance, and add intrinsic value to our economic recovery. I believe that these five statements are entirely consistent, and inexorably unified.

I also believe with complete certainty that the more capital that circulates throughout our private sector, the healthier our economy will be. That is why I believe in lower taxes. When America has more money in our private sector free market, our economy expands, accelerating job creation, and fueling continued GDP growth.

What does any of that have to do with comprehensive immigration reform? Quite a bit. I intend to state the case that CIR is sound, conservative, common sense economic policy. The Congressional stimulus of 2009 should have been larger than $787 billion over two years to achieve the growth that our economy needed. However, the stimulus was mitigated by the fact that we had to borrow the money, increasing our budget deficit to over $1 trillion. Last month, we had our worst ever trade deficit, over $50 billion. Because we import so much more than we export, we are supporting foreign economies at our expense. All three of these reasons are hindering our recovery.

The $393.5 billion per year Congressional stimulus wasn’t sufficient. However, the non-partisan Immigration Policy Center commissioned a study by UCLA documenting that CIR would increase our GDP by $150 billion per year.  The CIR stimulus of $150 billion in GDP per year – roughly 40% as large as the Congressional stimulus – would result in the creation of almost 100,000 citizen jobs per year, which would then feed on itself to create even more jobs in a cycle of sustainable economic growth. The CIR stimulus also doesn’t stop after two years. It continues and grows indefinitely.

The CIR Stimulus is self funded, creating no increase to our deficit. In fact, since CIR would require all of the undocumented to be brought out of the economic shadows and pay their full share of taxes, it would – especially in concert with the increase in GDP – actually substantially reduce our federal deficit. Please note that the argument against continuing the Bush tax-cuts is that they aren’t paid for. The inherent tax revenue increase through CIR would help to pay for continuing the lower tax rates.

This brings me to the whole deficit argument about the Congressional stimulus. It was hard to build consumer, not to mention institutional confidence in our economy, when we had to raise our deficit to over a trillion dollars to create the stimulus. However, let’s take a look at the effect of CIR on the deficit. The amount that immigrants contribute is several times the amount that they cost. This takes into account the fact that their business productivity contribution results in subsidiary tax revenue, (think, for example, about how grocery store chains rely on selling produce picked by the undocumented that account for some 60% of all agricultural field work).

This leads me to the fact that last August our trade deficit was a record $50 billion. I want to point out that our largest export category in this country is agribusiness. Today, due to the failure of our current immigration system, and even with unemployment at 9.5%, our nation’s farmers are operating at only a fraction of their potential. An alarming amount of tillable farmland in lying fallow – over 2,000,000 productive acres – simply because farmers can’t afford to risk planting crops that they don’t think that they can bring in at harvest. Also, much of what our nation’s farmers can produce is not labor intensive – such as wheat and corn. Those crops bring in less than $1,000 per acre, as opposed to high labor agri-production such as strawberries, that bring in close to $20,000 per acre. This could represent a huge boost to our GDP, simply by being able to switch to more profitable crops because we could have the workers available for our fields. The obvious solution is to fix our immigration system, so that farmers can hire the labor that they need to maximize their industry’s contribution to our GDP. This leads to job creation here at home, and to less of our dollars being shipped overseas to our competitors. Experts say that agricultural farm labor positions each add 3.1 additional “downstream” jobs to our economy.

In economic terms, we can’t pass CIR fast enough. Every day that we sit on our hands and don’t deal with CIR, is a day of lost production and tax revenue that we can never get back. Not passing CIR is costing us at least $411,000,000 per day in lost GDP. Not passing CIR is costing us at least 8,000 jobs per month in lost potential job creation to our currently unemployed citizen population, and those figures don’t even calculate in the potential increases in GDP and job creation to our nation’s agribusinesses through CIR.

Now, in terms of politics, we must note that several potential Republican yes votes, (as well as several Democrat yes votes), including several Senators that have voted for CIR in the past, are retiring or will have lost their elections after this lame duck session. If the experts are correct, some very anti-CIR Republican ranking committee members are about to become the Chairmen of the committees in the House that deal with CIR, thus creating a serious roadblock to any CIR solution, no matter how vital to our economic interests.

The fact is that if we fail to pass CIR in this lame duck, it may be a very, very long time before we have an opportunity to pass this urgent legislation. At a time when we are suffering so badly economically as a nation, it is unconscionable that we are delaying such an obviously beneficial private sector economic boost. We must unite as a nation behind the clear and convincing urgent need to pass the CIR-Stimulus in the lame duck session of 2010.