Immigration Note

I'm blogging this Facebook post for future reference. 

As Title 42 comes to an end the big news is that big numbers of hopeful migrants will very likely be added to the already great multitude of undocumented immigrants in America, many of whom have been here entire lifetimes. 

The numbers are impossible to know, of course, since they do not officially exist. But those of us who have depended on hourly workers know perfectly well that our economy would not be the same if these people were not here, working, paying taxes, spending their money, making investments and quietly making significant contributions to the American Dream.

Wikipedia cites a number of estimates but the one that turned up in my post was this:

➡ A 2018 paper by three Yale School of Management professors estimated that the undocumented immigrant population was in the range of 16 million to 29 million, however the methodology presented in this study has been criticized as leading to vastly overstated results.

The USA population is something over three-hundred million, so even fifteen-million would be about five percent of the country. 

Five out of every hundred people is still a bunch of people. 

(Who knows what would happen if Congress once again took a stab at comprehensive immigration reform? Now that's another interesting article. Take a look at "Immigration reform in the US" and see what a mess it is.) 

In any case, as I see screaming headlines about immigrants, I'm confident that the numbers are trivial compared with the number of undocumented Americans already here which is a much larger number.

And yes, I consider them Americans - with or without documents. They have been a vital part of my working life, enabling me to enjoy a comfortable retirement.