Immigration is argued in America as a question of borders, crime, and culture. It is actually a question of labor supply and the people who feel that most directly are the ones trying to staff a job site, a hospital floor, a kitchen, or a fabrication. This series makes the economic case, one argument per episode, in the language business owners already use: head count, cost base, compliance risk, competitive position. It does not relitigate the politics. It reframes the problem as a workforce problem and ends with what an employer can actually do about it. The theme of the entire series is: America has spent forty years treating its largest economic asset as a liability, and the bill is now coming due in wages, prices, and growth.
In this Episode 3, host Tom Fox and Author Loren Steffy look at the fiscal argument runs the opposite direction from the political one: immigrants are a net contributor at the federal level, and the country has already declined to collect on it once.
Key Highlights
- What is the top-line federal number.
- Why is Social Security the one people care about.
- In 2013 Congress had a bill scored as a major deficit reducer and didn’t pass it. What happened?
- Why doesn’t this land politically?
- Does this objection hold water “Immigrants are a drain — they use services they never paid for.”
Key Takeaway
“It requires no new taxes, no benefit cuts, and no austerity. The work has already been done by the people doing the work.”
Listener Challenge
The ask of the audience: when a member of Congress talks about the deficit, ask them where they stood on the last bill CBO scored as a trillion-dollar deficit reducer.
Resources
Purchase Reconstructing Immigration