Does Bernie Know Dems Need A Miracle?

[Dill]

(03-09-2020, 03:54 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Well, not costs necessarily, but there an approximately $8 trillion loss to our GDP over 14 years were undocumented immigrants deported. That's about $571.4 billion per year during the time.

Source: https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/gdp

Yes. Last week someone on Fareed Zarakia was explaining the hit our annual growth rate will take if we continue to slow immigration as Trump has. I believe he was refering to this UPenn/Wharton study:
https://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2017/8/8/the-raise-act-effect-on-economic-growth-and-jobs

LOL and of course, someone in the Center for Immigration Studies has already found that while all immigrant labor adds about 1.7 trillion to the economy (writing back in 2013),  American workers who compete with them experience a (guesstimated) 2% loss in wages, as much as 402 million a year, so they realize little benefit from the expanded GDP.  https://cis.org/Report/Immigration-and-American-Worker

One of David Roodman's blogs from the same year suggests the workers who "compete" with illegals are mostly other migrants.
https://davidroodman.com/blog/2014/09/03/the-domestic-economic-impacts-of-immigration/

So that set me to wondering what the larger effect of anti-immigration policies might be, fueled as they so often are by fragmented or comparmentalized data that ignore the national or global context.  How much would the US "save" if it kicked out 10 million illegal consumers? Or even a quarter of that?

A huge labor market would open for native-born Americans capable of picking a ton+ of lettuce a day.  Day labor in many cities would drop.

I'm not an economist. Just wondering. People present that "immigrants cost our economy so much!" argument as if such costs were clear and easily measured against the cost of welfare and healthcare and the like. I have a strong suspicion that Americans as a group do greatly benefit from the low pay undocumented workers get for their labor, but squawk at the other costs that attend such low pay, when immigrants can't pay for illness or feed their families without help.  Ok if our social services socialize the cost of low wages for Americans (thereby increasing profitability of private enterprise), but not for foreigners.