Immigrants' Costs and Contributions: The Effects of Reform

Michael Fix, Vice President and Director of Studies, and Co-Director, National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means.

"Debate over immigration and proposals to reform it raise a number of issues that have been at the center of research conducted over the past decade on selected costs and benefits. In my testimony today I would like to raise several issues regarding immigrants’ costs and contributions. 

In sum, my points are as follows: 

• The 1996 welfare reform law substantially restricted new legal immigrants’ access to public benefits, limiting the federal government’s fiscal exposure in the short run. 
• The exacting character of proposed legislation would bar the current undocumented population from social welfare programs through 2020. 
• Since welfare reform’s enactment, use of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Security Income, and Food Stamps has fallen substantially among low income legal immigrant families with children. Medicaid for immigrants, like citizens, does not follow this trend, and corresponds to a general decline in extension of private health insurance benefits to low-wage workers. 
• During the 1990s many immigrants moved from states with comparatively generous public welfare programs for immigrants to states with strong economies but less generous programs, raising doubts about the strength of welfare magnets. 
• Cohorts of immigrants in the US 10 years or more had significantly higher incomes than those in the US less than 10 years – suggesting substantial income gains. Naturalized citizens in the US 10 or more years had higher average incomes than natives. Lower incomes were found among both recent and established undocumented immigrants, again suggesting that regularization would boost wages and taxes. 
• A study of taxes paid by immigrants in the Washington DC region revealed that immigrant households pay substantial taxes. Immigrants’ tax payments were proportional to their share of the total regional population.[...]"