How Immigration Strengthens Us All
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The evidence is clear: immigrants play a vital role the social, economic, and cultural life of all American communities. Immigrants make significant contributions to the U.S. workforce and industries like agriculture, construction, food production, health care, and the service industry. Learn more below about the ways in which immigration not only helps—but is necessary for—a strong economy.
Immigrants Drive the Workforce across the United States
Both nationally and in Oregon, immigrants participate in the labor force at a higher rate than native-born Americans. For example, immigrants comprise approximately 10% of Oregon’s population but account for 13% of the state’s economic output. Based on conservative estimates, immigrants produce $33 billion of Oregon’s annual economic output—and this continues to grow each year.
“Immigrants are an important and growing part of Oregon’s economy,” said ICS Executive Director, Frank Garcia. “However, anti-immigrant policies directly oppose efforts to achieve a stable, productive workforce. Oregon must consider flexible immigration pathways that ensure immigrants have stability through permanent residency and/or citizenship.”
Because immigrants hold such an important role in the workforce, they have contributed to greater economic outputs and reduced the federal deficit. By contrast, restricting immigration would “shrink the economy, cost jobs, reduce the goods and services available to consumers, and cede the U.S.’s global economic leadership.”
Immigration Helps Grow the Economy and Social Services
Immigrants also make significant contributions to the economy and social services by paying taxes. Immigrants contribute $525 billion each year in federal, state, and local taxes. This includes contributions by refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants, who receive far less in benefits than they contribute and/or are unable to access benefits at all. In Oregon, undocumented immigrants pay more than $350 million in state and local taxes, making the state one of 15 where they pay at least $300 million per year.
The lack of work authorization and a pathway to citizenship not only leaves undocumented immigrants in limbo but also deprives the U.S. of an enormous growth potential. With these reforms, these immigrants would increase their contributions to the economy by $40.2 billion per year nationally, including nearly $135 million in Oregon alone.
Immigrants are Innovative!
Immigrants play a significant role in innovation in the United States, and—like their role in the workforce—immigrants drive innovation at a higher rate than their U.S.-born counterparts. Immigrants represent approximately 16% of all U.S. inventors but produced 23% of total innovation output.
Immigrants are also highly entrepreneurial and launch new businesses at twice the rate of U.S.-born individuals. Companies owned by immigrants provide millions of jobs for U.S. workers and generate billions of dollars in annual income. In addition, data shows that immigrant workers do not displace U.S.-born workers, and, in many cases, immigrants are associated with increased employment for native-born workers.
Immigration Helps Reverse and Care for an Aging Population
In recent decades, population growth has slowed significantly in the United States, resulting in fewer working-age individuals in the labor force and an aging population with 1-in-6 of people being 65 years of age and older.
Immigrants help counter these trends because they increase the size of the working-age population and build families in the U.S., contributing to future population growth. They are also strongly represented in industries that support aging adults, like health care. In Oregon, 1-in-7 frontline workers during the pandemic were immigrants, illustrating the important role immigrants play.
Take action today by supporting ICS’s statewide legal services that provide immigrants with work authorization and support their journeys toward citizenship.