New Immigration bill can end exploitation of undocumented workers

MALIBU, Calif. - Nov. 8, 2013 - PRLog -- WASHINGTON: The bipartisan immigration reform Bill in the US is expected to improve the lot of millions of undocumented workers in the US. The bipartisan bill S-744 or the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is all for comprehensive reform. It tries to show itself not as an amnesty trade off for the illegal immigrants in which the majority is Hispanics.

Ending Exploitation

In the US, undocumented workers are subject to many types of exploitation. Facing odds like unpaid wages, dangerous working conditions, uncompensated workplace injuries, discrimination, and labour law violations, they are at the receiving end of abuse including physical and immigration-related threats and retaliation. There are about 6.5 million undocumented immigrant workers in the U.S (http://www.immigranttaxgroup.org/undocumented-workers-in-the-us) working in sectors such as services, construction, manufacturing and agriculture sectors.

Lending tactical support to the proposal of assimilation of the illegal immigrants including the undocumented workers is a report prepared by the Congressional Budget Office outlining many economic benefits on the way.

Economic benefits

According to the CBO report, the legislation when passed would boost direct spending by $36 billion A research study argues that legalizing significant proportion of the undocumented immigrant population would not burden the economy or the social insurance system. Rather legalization would lead to increased benefit payouts for social insurance programs to make a portion of the current undocumented population eligible for benefits. On the positive side, bringing undocumented immigrants into the legal labour pool would boost capital accumulation in the U.S. economy. Compared to legal immigrants, undocumented workers spend more of their savings to their home countries as remittances.

Therefore a path to legal immigration would increase labour productivity as legalized immigrants would scale up to match their skills without manoeuvring through the shadows of the grey labour market.

Impact from Undocumented

Calculated rationally it can be seen that even if 50 percent of undocumented immigrants are made legal immigrants the positive effects of the former will outweigh the welfare costs with increases felt in following areas,

Capital stock
Output
Consumption
labor productivity

Positive macroeconomic effects would consequently improve the finances of the social insurance system. As a result, the overall costs would be negligible in terms of supporting new beneficiaries of Social Security and unemployment insurance tax rates. It can also be assumed that all current undocumented immigrants pay Social Security and unemployment insurance.

Macroeconomic improvements would mean an overall contribution of $36 billion per year to the U.S. economy. That is why the comprehensive immigration reform bill has a silver lining despite fears of an alleged economic burden by way of citizenship.

As far as the illegal workers are concerned, the new Bill means a lot. On the one hand it will curb the exploitation and ensure fair wages. It will also lead to the opening of non-profit worker centres for empowering and defending their rights and restore dignity in the workplace. So it will be a new dawn for illegal workers with a real commitment coming from the public and private sectors in terms of protecting their rights in a legitimate way.

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http://www.immigranttaxgroup.org/undocumented-workers-in-the-us