This fall, Congress is expected to tackle comprehensive immigration reform. A Washington think tank says the best way to stop illegal immigration is with a guest worker program. KPCC’s Washington Correspondent Kitty Felde reports.
The Cato Institute says tougher border enforcement would reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. workforce. But the libertarian think tank says it would also increase the value of the illegal immigrant workers that remain.
It’s supply-and-demand: fewer unskilled illegal immigrant workers available for some of the grimiest work means their pay goes up. And Cato estimates that as their pay went up, everyone else’s income would go down by about half a percent.
But Cato says if the U.S. adopted a guest worker program for low-skilled immigrants, it would hold down their pay and increase everyone else’s by more than a percent. The Cato study says a guest worker program that offered temporary green cards to immigrant workers would eliminate smuggler fees and create higher immigrant productivity. The Cato Institute did not examine the economic impact of giving illegal immigrants permanent legal status.