Laura Collins says immigration is good for the economy
George Mason:
Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I am your host, George Mason, and I'm delighted to continue our conversation about immigration, a human problem that we have begun and we'll be talking about over the course of the next weeks. And it's a great privilege to have Laura Collins with us. She is director of the Bush Institute, SMU Economic Growth Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute, and has previously served also as the Director of Immigration Policy for the American Action Forum. Laura, thank you so much for being with us today.
Laura Collins:
Thank you so much for having me on. I'm really excited to talk to you.
George Mason:
Well, great. So I want to begin with the fact that we know that we have this incredible challenge of immigration that, while it feels relatively new to us, is really a longstanding struggle for how we think about what kind of country we are, what a border means, what our relationships to people who are migrants, who are aspiring to come to our country, what kind of approach we should take about all of that. And so immigration has been an ongoing thing for the entire history of our nation. It just feels like right now that it's been really right in our face because of, admittedly, enormous numbers of people who have in recent times been coming and seeking asylum and trying to come across our border. So I want to begin by asking you a political question since you have worked in politics and immigration, I'm going to read you a definition of a wicked problem.
Laura Collins:
Okay.
George Mason:
And tell me if this, in your mind, is a wicked problem. In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fixed, where there is no single solution to the problem, and wicked denotes resistance to resolution rather than evil. Okay. Immigration, what do you think?
Laura Collins:
I think you can make the case for a lot of policy issues that they're wicked in that way. And the reason is because when I listen to you define it that way, you're really talking about trade-offs. There isn't really a right or wrong answer in terms of policy. There's just trade-offs that we make. And so if you're looking at it through a purely policy lens, when you make a choice, there's going to be a winner and there's going to be a loser. I don't think that every policy has to have complete and total winners and losers. Those are things that can happen on the margins. You can have policies that tend to be more win-win, but ultimately you're still going to have to make hard choices. And so I guess, you could probably say that immigration policy is wicked.
Laura Collins:
I like to say it's more sticky because I do think that there's ways to move forward. I do think there are good solutions that can be mutually beneficial, not just to the United States and its people, but also to many of the migrants who seek the same opportunities that we have here in the United States. But we're still going to have to make hard choices and we're still going to be unable to take everybody in, even though we have a great capacity here in the United States to bring in as many people as deserve our protection.
George Mason:
So, we can get to some of those trade-offs and some of the things that would humanize this and make it better. But I guess I want to push you just a little bit on the the possibility of getting a solution or making progress, because it seems to me, looking at the politics of it, that no matter what change we have in immigration policy, it will open the door for people getting primaried, for people losing elections, and the may main thing we seem to have in our political system is people who want to hold onto the power that they have. So how do you get something passed into law by a Congress that is so self-interested that they don't seem to have any motivation to make changes in immigration?
Laura Collins:
I think there are a lot of pieces to this question and I'll start with the idea of being primaried or for some of these votes. And I think one of the things that's really interesting about immigration is it's a very politically hot button topic. But most voters don't have it on their top two or three issues that they vote on and so it feels very much like, if you're a politician and you take that tough vote, that you might get punished for it, but also that there's very little upside. You probably aren't going to win a lot of voters based on this issue, just because it just generally doesn't affect the vast majority people in the United States so it's not top one of their top priorities.
Laura Collins:
That gets a little bit of a different tone if you characterize it as border security versus immigration. But generally speaking, I think of them together because they go hand in hand. How do you get past these impasses though? And immigration over the history of the United States has always been about the long game and how you build coalitions and how you build that sort of support. And so, we can really see this when you go back to the quotas of the 1920s that were passed and that essentially we barred most Eastern Europeans from having a way to migrate to the United States. That had some really horrendous effects when we started looking at, for example, the refugee situation, post-World War II, or even pre-World War II when Jewish people were trying to flee Europe and we had these really hard and fast quotas, and it really did bar a lot of people from seeking refuge here. We didn't have this sort of robust refugee resettlement program then that we have now.
Laura Collins:
And it took 40 years to roll back those quotas. There was a smaller adjustment to immigration law in the 1950s, I believe, but it didn't roll back the quotas, but it made some other gains. It gave some different types of Asian immigrants some more rights that they didn't have before, but it wasn't until the 1905 Immigration Nationality Act that we saw big systemic change to the way we do immigration policy and law in the United States. So anytime these really sticky political fights come up on this topic, I just remind myself, this is really about how do we lay the groundwork for what we know are going to be policy changes in the future that are going to have to happen. Eventually we get there, but it does take a long time.
George Mason:
Okay. So right now we seem to have an enormous number of people who are coming to the border, moving across the border and seeking asylum. Now, I think a lot of people have the sense that what they should be doing is they should be petitioning for legal status before they come and going through the process. But we seem to have a sense of urgency on the other side of the border, that there's not a logical reasonable path for them to stay where they are and go through deliberate administrative bureaucratic processes to do something legal. So you understand, I guess, the desperation that we find. So currently we have a remain in Mexico policy still that started with the Trump administration, the Biden administration has continued. And do you see any humane alternatives to that in the short term that we should be pursuing through our advocacy work and the like?
Laura Collins:
There's some interesting policy proposals to make asylum work faster. And I think when I think about remain in Mexico, there are hosts of arguments for it. There are host of arguments against it. But what I think about is, it's just really a symptom of how we don't have the capacity to process asylum seekers in a timely manner and so that forces people in government to make choices, some of which are less desirable than others. I probably would not advocate for that sort of program because I do believe the United States has a leadership role to play in humanitarian migration, of which asylum is one of those pieces. And I do believe asylum is a legal right for people to try to request, but it is because asylum doesn't work quickly enough. We have an enormously backlogged system.
Laura Collins:
And so there is this sense that we just can't process the number of people who are here. And so if we let them in through ports of entry and we have to detain them temporarily, or we have to release them with an alternative to detention, like an ankle monitor, maybe a wrist monitor, a notice to appear in court. And then there is a sense that they just disappear into the country, which we know it's not the case. We know that these are people who want to show up to their court hearings, and if they have legal representation, they do.
Laura Collins:
And we know that there are faith organizations and community organizations that really do help these people navigate that system. But that fear that, oh, they'll never show up or, oh, it's going to take 4 years for their case to be heard doesn't happen if we have a system that has the capacity to process them in a timely manner and give them a decision quickly. And I'm very sensitive to the arguments that say that we don't really need asylum to move quickly because it might deny someone a right. But I also think it is extremely inhumane to let a family remain here and put down roots and start a new life and then in four years, tell them, sorry, you just don't qualify for asylum. You have to go home.
George Mason:
Right.
Laura Collins:
They need an answer quickly so that they can then evaluate what are better options for them, if there's somewhere else that they can seek refuge.
George Mason:
So shifting a little bit to what our motivation ought to be in all of this, you work for the Bush Institute, and I think our former president is famously known for his desire to integrate his faith and his public life and public policy, as a matter of fact, too. Clearly one of the things that people of all faiths bring to matters like this is an assertion of the essential dignity of all persons and that there is at the same time a spiritual mandate that we are given by God that we should work and that we should flourish. And it seems that when someone is found in a place where they are no longer able to do that, the idea that they might go to another place to try to fulfill their spiritual mandate seems like a faithful decision, not an unfaithful one. What say you about that?
Laura Collins:
When president Bush talks about immigration, one of the things he says over and over is, we're all children of God. And I think that that just sums it up really well, and that we all have the ability to contribute in our own ways. And we have this great privilege living in the United States. And we're not a perfect country, right? I mean, we've got our own warts and issues that we're working through constantly as we should, but we have this enormous amount of freedom and opportunity compared to many parts of the world. And we do have a lot of job opportunities, and we know that people can support their families here in a way that they can't necessarily in a or home countries. And I think that when I think about the migrants coming to the border, I think about what I would do if I were in their shoes and I wasn't able to make enough money to support my children, if my kids had to go without things that were basic necessities, if life was really dangerous where I lived and what are the steps, I would stop at nothing to make sure my kids had a future.
Laura Collins:
And so that is how I really view this too, is each and every one of those people has an inherent dignity. They have something to contribute and we have something to offer as well. And so how do we balance those two things? And some of this is about us opening our own doors and some of this is about other countries opening their doors as well. It is a shared responsibility of all of us as human beings to try to make sure we are protecting each other in that way.
George Mason:
Thank you for that. I think it might be helpful, especially because of the work you do on the economic side of all of this, to maybe address some of the questions that people have about what is the economic impact to the United States of people coming and living among us and finding work and that sort of thing. I think there's, first of all, an obvious question about whether they're taking Americans' jobs by doing so therefore we should prohibit them coming and limit the number of them coming.
George Mason:
Second would be perhaps that we have an enormous challenge in the agricultural industry and in the unskilled labor market and that sort of thing that we're not fulfilling without immigrants. And then there's the question of, do they pay taxes because we're going to educate their children, we're going to pay for emergency room care. And what about those remittances that are going back home and not staying here? So I think there's a lot of those questions about whether this is purely altruistic on our part or whether there's really a positive economic impact that we are not recognizing. Could you parse through all of that for us and give, I know that's throwing a lot at you, but-
Laura Collins:
No, it's fine. It is not purely altruistic. We benefit greatly, our economy benefits greatly. And I like to talk about this in a couple of different ways. And if you don't like immigration, there are a couple of things you can do. You can retrain the current workforce that you have, or put different change what the workforce pipeline looks like for the children who are now in school, who are going to graduate to the jobs of the future. You can have more babies, which is a long-term play, and doesn't necessarily work in most nations with highly developed economies. You can outsource the labor that you need or you can automate it. And I think each of those policy proposals has obvious trade-offs. And when you talk about it in terms of education of the workforce and outsourcing and automating, those are all sort of equal trade-offs.
Laura Collins:
Educating the workforce is going to be a longer-term play. If you really do want to deal with that population boost, that's an even longer term play. But immigration is one of those things that in the immediate, it's a short-term way to boost that economic growth. It's a short-term way to fill the open jobs. And then it also helps you in the medium to long-term, because we know that a lot of the immigrants that move here tend to have larger families. So they're settling here, they're putting down roots, they're having families who are going to join the workforce of the future. We also know though that just that pure demographic thing, when you start to have negative population growth and that demographic slide, you're just shrinking your labor pool in such a way that you're going to hurt your economic growth.
Laura Collins:
We know we absolutely benefit from immigration in terms of economics. I think too often, when we talk about labor markets and jobs, we think about it as a fixed number of jobs, but anyone who's lived in a state like Texas, where you see people moving in from other states, that in-migration isn't seen as a negative, we like that. That's something we want to promote because we know that's going to create more jobs. We know that's going to create more housing. We know that's going to create more businesses because every time you move a person in, they're not only taking a job and working, they're taking that income that they have, they're spending it on goods and services that drives the demand for other jobs. Maybe they're starting a business. We know immigrants are very entrepreneurial. They're twice as likely as a native-born American to start a business.
Laura Collins:
The average immigrant-owned business has about 11 employees. So we know that they're creating jobs-
George Mason:
Yeah.
Laura Collins:
Just by being here and so it's important to remember that. Too often we think of it as a fixed pie, but they're making the pie bigger every time they arrive here. And it's such a difficult part of the conversation, I think, because we know that this, in terms of economics, there's overwhelming support for it. Most economists would agree it's a good thing, but it's just really sticky for people to try to wrap their brains around that piece of it, because it just feels very much like it's a one to one, like if I win, you lose. And we know that on the economics, it tends to be more of a win-win.
Laura Collins:
In terms of the benefits mean entitlements and such and the taxes, obviously, for legal immigrants, they pay taxes, they have work permits. They're doing sort of all the same things we are, but they don't qualify for most entitlement benefits. There's a waiting period for them once they're naturalized citizens, so same as you and me, same rights and responsibilities. For the undocumented, they are entitled to basically nothing. There is emergency room care, obviously, depending on the state, there might be a few benefits here and there. Their children are allowed to enroll in public schools, but they pay taxes just like you and me, particularly in a state like Texas, where there's no state income tax, they are paying the same taxes we are. They're paying sales tax. They pay property tax, even if they're renters, that's built into the rent. And we know that even in places where there are income taxes, a lot of undocumented people actually do pay taxes. You don't have to have a social security number to file a tax return.
Laura Collins:
And some people are unfortunately working with stolen social security numbers. And because of that, we know those taxes are being taken out of their paychecks that way. An estimate is anywhere from 50 to 75% of the undocumented population pays taxes, but it's hard to pin down for obvious reasons, but we know that this is something, a lot of people know that they're here and they're working and they want to contribute to this government too. And they want to contribute and be good members of society and so paying taxes is one of the ways they do that.
George Mason:
So you've made a really compelling economic argument, I think, in, in all of those ways, which I think brings us back to culture probably, doesn't it? The resistance is often couched in economic terms, but probably this sense of America changing is a much bigger part of this than we actually want to say out loud, isn't it? What do you think
Laura Collins:
This has been an argument from the beginning of America. You can go back and look at Benjamin Franklin complaining that German immigrants were never going to fully become American. And they look different than the rest of us. And they spoke different than the rest of us. And we saw that with every successive wave of immigrants. But we also know that we benefit greatly from the contributions that those immigrants have made. And we also know that integration and assimilation process, people come here because they believe in the idea of America, just like we do. And if you've ever been in a naturalization ceremony and you've heard what that oath of citizenship looks like, it's very strong. We ask people to completely renounce their home countries. And so, you're not going to do that unless you're really bought into the ideals of this country and you really want to make this work.
Laura Collins:
And one of the things that I find so interesting about migration here is the number of things that have come from cultures outside of America that we take for granted as very American or that we've just sort of seamlessly adopted. I think it was sometime in the mid-nineties that salsa started out selling ketchup.
George Mason:
Right.
Laura Collins:
Right. And we all, chips and salsa is what you have when you're sitting there watching the Super Bowl or another sporting event, or sometimes just when you're like making dinner and you're not supposed to be snacking, but you're doing it anyway. Everybody eats that here and it not considered to be different or un-American. And these things, there is this nice sort of blending, and we don't have to abandon who we are as Americans to fully embrace and appreciate the contributions that people from other cultures have brought here.
George Mason:
Well, being a New Yorker, that salsa commercial that-
Laura Collins:
The Pace one?
George Mason:
The picante sauce, yes, right. Yeah, that says not from New York. I get it. I'm now a Texan and have given up my ketchup on my eggs and put salsa on them. It is what it is. It's an adjustment that you make and you actually can really learn to enjoy it.
Laura Collins:
Yeah, definitely.
George Mason:
That's great. The dreamers. Let's talk about the dreamers. Boy, back and forth again on this. Where do things stand now? Define dreamers, first of all. And where do you think we're going to end up with this?
Laura Collins:
Gosh, dreamers. This is such a sad issue. Dreamers are the people who were brought to the United States as children, by their parents. They either were brought here illegally, or maybe their parents came on a visa overstayed the visas so now they're undocumented. And there's another category of folks they call the legal dreamers. And those are people who, their parents are still here illegally, but because they are stuck in such a long green card backlog, these children age out of the system and so they are no longer allowed to get a green card on their parents' application and they become undocumented. They have no basis to stay here on their own. We know there's a whole population of people that this is a problem all because we have a legal immigration system that is not adequate to meet the needs of these people.
Laura Collins:
So in 2001, I believe was the first time that a bill to give dreamers legalization and an eventual path to citizenship was first proposed. It's always been a bipartisan proposition and it's never managed to make it through Congress. So 20 years later, we are still waiting on that to be a policy solution that is made into law. And in the meantime, what we've had is deferred action for childhood arrivals. It's the program that was done under the Obama administration that gives a work permit to people who apply, pass the background check, demonstrate the different hurdles that they put in place in program, basically demonstrating that you're going to school or you're in the military. You're working, that you're a functioning good member of society, according to what the US government wants you to do. And there's a high fee involved in this if you have to get it renewed every year, but it gave dreamers a little bit of flexibility.
Laura Collins:
For many of them, they were able to have a job for the first time that met their skills and ability. Many of them had gone to college, but didn't have the ability to work legally so couldn't work at a job that they had gotten an education for. Some of them hadn't been to their home countries in 20 plus years. And so they were able to travel to visit family they hadn't seen, or maybe didn't even remember meeting, especially grandparents and aunts and uncles. It gave them just a bit of breathing room. They could sort of start their lives. But the problem with an executive program like DACA is it's not permanent. So we know that a successive administration can take it away. And we saw that start to happen under the Trump administration, which challenged it obviously court. That was stopped.
Laura Collins:
And so there is this sort of back and forth. It's still in jeopardy. It's still sitting in court and could be taken away when the ruling and the opinion come down. So we really do need that permanent legislative solution. And this Congress has put it forward. The House passed something called the Dream and Promise Act, which would give that sort of legalization and path to citizenship to dreamers, but also would include a couple of other categories of immigrants. The Senate hasn't taken it up yet. It remains to be seen if there is any urgency here for Congress to actually do this. It's publicly very popular, it's got wide bipartisan support. And we think of dreamers so often as kids, but many of them are my age. They're in their mid to late thirties, they have children, they have American citizen children. They've been working and contributing in this country for a long time and they've been waiting 20 years for Congress to take some action here and actually provide some relief.
Laura Collins:
And they didn't make any of these decisions. They're here because of decisions their parents made. We don't typically punish children for the decisions their parents made. And they're just a victim of laws that just don't work. And so, instead of continuing to punt this issue down the line, we really do want to see this permanent legislative solution because if a law is not good, it should be fixed. Right. And so how Congress goes about fixing that is so important. And I would love to see some movement, but there's not been any indication that the Senate has any appetite for doing that right now.
George Mason:
So you can't generally accomplish something that you haven't imagined. You have to have an imagination for what's different. So speaking of dreamers, let me be a dreamer with you for a moment as we kind of wrap up this conversation and say, the amnesty word is one that just sends givers up the spines of so many, because it seems to be kind of rewarding people for breaking the law and that sort of thing. But we did have amnesty during the Reagan administration, something that Reagan was actually more positive toward immigrants and immigration and what it could represent to us. And yet, Ronald Reagan has been historically among Republicans who tend to be now the most oppositional to more generous in the immigration policy.
George Mason:
He's been a hero of the Republican party for decades now. So wouldn't it be in the interest of our country and finally helping us to create the systems necessary to address the problems we have, that we get rid of the backlog to a large extent through an amnesty policy that says, okay, here's the date and this is the time and if you've been here this long, but now we're going to build our asylum network, our system, all of that in the future and make this work. But if we tried to do it without that, we're just years and years, maybe decades from being able to get through the backlog. I realize that's a dream, but isn't something like that going to be necessary to get comprehensive immigration policy changes?
Laura Collins:
We believe that we should change the whole system. We believe America fundamentally benefits from immigration, but we have a system that is not designed to really meet our needs as a country. And so we do want to see changes to ensure that future prosperity and vitality and security. We don't take a strong position on whether you do every piece together in a big comprehensive bill, or whether you do it in piecemeal fashion, we just know that each piece needs to happen. And so the way we look at it is legalization or an amnesty, if some will call it that. That's not a word that I use because we put so many different hurdles in place that people have to meet, so many checks and goals that they have to meet. So it's more like a restitution than it is an amnesty, but a legalization is a piece of this.
Laura Collins:
And border policy is a piece of this and a better asylum system is a piece of this and a broader legal immigration system that allows more people in, that allows different categories of people with different job skills and education in. Those are all different pieces. And so we have to do all of it. In recent memory, we've tried to do it in comprehensive bills. We've seen this as an attempt in 2006, 2007. We saw it as an attempt in 2013. And even the Biden administration's plan that they issued earlier this year was a comprehensive plan, but we also know from history that sometimes this doesn't happen that way. And when you talk about that bill during the Reagan era, that was the legalization piece. A couple of years later, there was an expansion of employment-based green cards. And then a few years after that, there was a big border piece with a crackdown internally on the types of benefits that immigrants are eligible for.
Laura Collins:
So we know that Congress has the appetite sometimes to take this up piece by piece. We just really want to make sure that no matter which piece they take up first, and which one they're able to get across the line, that they don't lose sight of the fact we have to do the rest of it, or we will not have a functioning immigration system. We'll be doing a legalization for the next group of dreamers in another 20 to 30 years, because unless you fix the underlying problems, these symptoms of a broken immigration system aren't going to go away.
George Mason:
So if someone wants to read up on this more from the Bush Institute's point of view, where should they go?
Laura Collins:
They should go to bushcenter.org/immigration. We have some short policy papers there. We have some other resources. You can also check out the exhibit. We're open through the beginning of January. You can come see President Bush's paintings and some of the policy proposals we have at the museum. It's called, Out of Many, One. And that's really the way that we show, not just the policy side, not just how the law should change, but also the stories of the people who really have come into this nation and contributed all in their own ways and what immigration brings to this nation.
George Mason:
Laura, thank you for being part of an organization like this, that is moving beyond the partisanship that exists so deeply in our society right now in our politics, and really humanizes all of this and tries to call us together as one nation. We're grateful for your work in it. And thank you for coming on Good God and sharing your views with us.
Laura Collins:
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'll come back anytime you want.
George Mason:
Yay. Thank you so much. All right. God bless you and thanks again for your work.
Laura Collins:
Thank you.
Speaker 3:
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