Higher wages for immigrants and American-born alike are being touted as economic benefits of President Barack Obama's controversial executive action that will legally halt 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation and provide them with work permits in the United States, according to a new analysis by Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.
The move, which is expected to increase productivity, expand the workforce and reduce the deficit, will be advocated by the president during a visit to Chicago, The Hill reported.
Not only will the new steps boost GDP between $90 billion and $210 billion over the next decade, but native workers will also see an average wage increase of 0.3 percent due to improvement in the economy stemming from the immigration action, White House officials estimated.
Mainly, the move will boost annual earnings because it will make it easier for high-skilled immigrants to work in the country, leading them to start companies and innovate, CNN Money reported. This in turn will raise wages for all skilled workers, said Stan Veuger, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning group.
In addition, immigrants receiving work permits under the program will also boost the government's tax revenues without having any impact on employment of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, the White House stated.
"Individuals potentially eligible for deferred action under the president's executive actions are in the country today, but roughly two-thirds of them don't pay taxes and the president is changing that by ensuring that both workers and employers will be able to come out from the shadows and contribute payroll taxes, just like all American citizens," a White House official said.
However Republicans have contradicted the claim, saying that the president's immigration plan will instead allow workers to seize jobs that would otherwise have gone to American workers, according to The Hill.
"The White House order will pad the labor market further with millions of illegal workers, pushing wages down for large corporations who benefit from an outsized ratio of jobseekers to jobs," said Stephen Miller, a spokesman for ranking Senate Budget Committee member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).
"This will mean illegal workers will be competing directly with American workers in an-already slack low-wage labor market," he continued, citing a study by Harvard Professor Dr. George Borjas estimating current immigration rates would reduce wages for competing American workers by $402 billion annually.
But according to economic experts on both sides of the political spectrum, the immigration action will most likely not hurt American workers. "The larger point is that it's not negative. This is not harmful to native-born workers," said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal group.
Meanwhile, the White House is hoping that the series of presidential trips and interviews will help build pressure on congressional Republicans to pass a farther-reaching immigration bill.
"The president will note that these common sense actions are only the first step and that Congress must finish this job," a White House official said.
