Other experts argue that legalization has benefits. Opening a path to citizenship for almost 11 million people, seven to eight million of whom are part of the workforce, is equivalent to “an economic stimulus,” according to Giovanni Peri, professor of economics at the University of California, Davis.
Between 2005 and 2015, new immigrants represented almost half the growth of the working age population, and in the next two decades, immigrants will be the key to compensating for the aging population that is retiring. Demographers say that the increase in the education level of Americans, together with the shortage of workers, highlights the need for immigrants, in increasing numbers, to perform low-skilled jobs. About five million of them work in jobs considered “essential” by the government.
Among the biggest supporters of the Biden initiative are employers who depend on immigrants. Over the years, slaughterhouses, dairy farms and a multitude of other workplaces have been caught up in immigration raids targeting unauthorized workers.
The 1986 amnesty of the Reagan era caused only a temporary drop in the number of undocumented immigrants because it was not accompanied by a robust system to legally bring in low-skilled workers. Employers faced fines for intentionally hiring undocumented immigrants, but were not responsible for examining documents submitted by job seekers, generating a huge industry of fake Social Security numbers.
“The principle is simple: if you do extensive legalization, it will not freeze undocumented migration flows as long as the demand for work persists,” said Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego . “You need to increase the number of opportunities for legal entry for future migrants.”
The illegal influx started to increase again in the early 1990s.
“Migrants who arrived after 1986 would have preferred to come legally, not having to pay hundreds of dollars to buy fake documents,” said Cornelius. “But there were not enough legal tickets available.”
Economic imperatives prevailed, increasing illegal immigration year after year.
A construction boom in Sun Belt states like Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona has attracted hundreds of thousands of undocumented construction workers. And as the rural workers who had benefited from the amnesty aged and left the fields, undocumented youths came to replace them.