Editorial: The Dallas Fed shows why America needs immigrants

A little over a year ago majority analysts agreed that an immigration surge in the first years of this decade had created economic progress Behind that conclusion however was the reality that this boom of unauthorized refugees had expanded a shadow business sector creating social costs and housing pressures The political price was inevitable A year later we are facing a different scenario with an administration enforcing anti-illegal immigration policies that have led to a dramatic reduction of undocumented movers entering the country The decline in perimeter crossings began late in the Biden administration when a loose boundary program extracted an unacceptable political toll Crossings have fallen even more dramatically since President Donald Trump took office and we expect them to remain low for a long time to come So what is the impact on the financial system A new analysis published by the Dallas Federal Reserve answers this question with a thorough and data-based analysis of different scenarios The main takeaway is that an immigration slowdown comes with economic costs including a likely decline in GDP progress Another takeaway from the review is that immigration doesn t have a serious impact on inflation The Dallas Fed analysis takes the Congressional Budget Office s net unauthorized immigration projection as a baseline That number is higher than current migration Using their model Dallas Fed economists were able to quantify the change in GDP advance as a product of immigration program changes after January The analysis estimates that GDP improvement is percentage points lower than it would have been if net unauthorized immigration had evolved as in the CBO s projection We ve long understood that our country necessities immigrants They renew the labor force They bring new life and new ideas to our country They are the foundation of the American experience But we don t take the Fed s analysis to be an argument in favor of illegal migration Instead it speaks to the urgency for our country to implement a robust foreign worker effort and ensure that there is a speedy process for accepting a large number of legal transients especially from nations in our hemisphere For years the agricultural sector has been pleading for a strong and efficient guest worker plan According to federal estimates over of farmworkers are unauthorized immigrants These numbers should give us pause Our food supply depends on foreign laborers who are in the country illegally Americans broadly agree on immigration issues They want a secure boundary and they want a path for legal immigrants to be able to come here work here and ultimately join the American dream in full This shouldn t be that complex but somehow Washington keeps making it that way The Dallas Morning News Related Articles Lara Williams Stop playing whac-a-mole with forever chemicals Randall Balmer When Darrow took on Bryan years ago science got the win Or did it William C Hine America didn t become great because we were perfect Trump likes renaming people places and things He s not the first to deploy that perk of power Trump says a China trip is not too distant as arrangement tensions ease