6 ms·

Immigrants Reduced US Deficits by $14.5T Since 1994

30 points by throw0101c 8mo ago

antibull 8mo ago
[dead]
almosthere 8mo ago
[flagged]
- kelseyfrog 8mo ago
  The biggest one was let in Jan 20th. 2026. Let's start there.
- bdangubic 8mo ago
  we should start by kicking out murderes and rapist and pedophiles elected in 2025
hasidim 8mo ago
Let's tell Singapore, a high-trust country with exceptional quality of life and extremely strict, borderline eugenic immigration policies, I'm certain they're missing out!
- hshdhdhj4444 8mo ago
  Your comment implies that the CATO study results are not true due to the Singapore example. However, pointing to a different country that achieved success with “eugenic” immigration (it’s not even clear what you mean given that Singapore has had very high immigration but for the sake of argument let’s assume it’s the opposite of whatever the study here found) does not invalidate or disprove that the U.S. deficit reduced due to U.S. immigration. It’s the kind of logical fallacy one would hope a 4 year old would grow out of, and yet…
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- jimz 8mo ago
  Singapore's immigration system is fundamentally different from what the modern American system have morphed into. It is far easier to enter Singapore without a visa when compared to the US, and while the EB-5 investor visa program caused an absurd moral panic in the US and ended up getting limited to such an extent that it basically is no longer a real viable path to gain legal permanent residency in the US, Singapore's government has broad discretion - which it exercises in reality, so it's not something written just for show - to significantly shorten residency requirements (from 10 years down to 12 months in some cases) and allows for highly skilled or investors to gain citizenship, not the convoluted visa-change-of-status-adjustment-of-status-naturalization train that privileges European countries first and foremost while making it extremely difficult for even skilled or even US educated nationals of Mexico, the Philippines, India, and China to gain permanent residency. On the lower-skilled side neither country allows a pathway for migrant laborers to stay regardless, although perversely the American system implicitly encourages not just marriage but consummation as proof of validity which is brought up in interviews for adjustment of status. The immigration system automatically equates marriage with sex and heavily privileges "family-based immigration" to such an extent that it basically incentivizes marital rape via official policy. Singapore doesn't do that, and countries that have marital-based immigration systems don't tend to be this explicit about it. I don't know how you get "eugenic" out of the Singaporean nationality law, full stop. Income or skill is not genetically bound, after all. The US, in fact, does have explicitly eugenics-based criteria in its naturalization process in that it retains the quota that existed in some form since 1882 but simply added a step in front so that it can claim to have removed to quota from where it was while maintaining a de facto quota system that only affects four nations - one it once colonized, two it has a history of vilifying in overt racist terms. In addition, even though USCIS employees are not doctors and are not trained in diagnosing or determining mental illness and its potential impacts or lack thereof, one is frequently asked at the citizenship interview if one had been diagnosed with a mental illness, and since stating an untruthful answer is grounds for removal and also a minor but extremely easy to prove felony, even erroneous diagnoses or conditions that pose no danger like ADHD may result in rejection of otherwise eligible applications. Since there's no "cure" for many of these conditions it puts the applicant in a sort of limbo, and this is asked after background checks and a ridiculously thorough vetting process that essentially had been going on for 8-10 years had been passed. On that front, I think America has Singapore beat.
neilwilson 8mo ago
So immigrants earn so little they can’t put aside any savings? Or somebody is. Not the flex Cato thinks it is. The government’s red ink is our black ink. The trouble is “safe savings” doesn’t have the same air of doom about it.
- javascriptfan69 8mo ago
  Where did you get that assertion? The article literally says that they earn more because they work more hours on average.
  - neilwilson 8mo ago
    For the deficit to reduce we overall have to be saving less.
    - javascriptfan69 8mo ago
      Are you talking about trade deficit? This is about deficit in government spending. Immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits.
      - neilwilson 8mo ago
        For the deficit in government spending to reduce the private sector has to save less. They are one and the same thing. The immigrants are spending all they get. Nothing to do with taxes. Learn how the accounting works
        Starman_Jones 8mo ago
        On the surface, there's absolutely zero connection between public debt and private (personal) savings. If there's a hidden connection, you're going to have to explain it, because it's not clear at all how they are one and the same.
        8mo ago
dismalaf 8mo ago
Is it really necessary to have reverse colonialism to maintain a high quality of life? We're essentially offloading the cost of raising people from childhood and much of their education to get fully grown workers who will accept lower wages. This in turn becomes a Ponzi scheme that no doubt has economic benefits but is also unsustainable without ever increasing immigration and does produce negative externalities (inflationary plus social disarray). Also, even if we are on board with this reverse colonialism, are all immigrants contributing to the same degree? Surely the benefits could be maximized...
blockmarker 8mo ago
I will not read anything the Cato Institute puts out, they are disingenuous partisans. They do not include the cost caused by the children, such as education and healthcare, they do not even include the cost of welfare to the children or to the household, since the children are legally citizens. It's very easy to say that immigrants are good for the economy when the greatest expenses are attributed to non-immigrants. Do not listen to Cato or read their articles, you would just be feeding yourself lies.
- javascriptfan69 8mo ago
  Why would you include costs incurred by children? That would be constant between natural born citizens and immigrants. This critique makes no sense.
  - blockmarker 8mo ago
    The costs incurred by the children of immigrants are obviously a cost of immigration, but in Cato's analysis, the more expensive the children of immigrants are, the better immigrants look in comparison to natives. If every child of immigrants increased the deficit by 50 million dollars, Cato says that immigration should be increased because citizens increase the deficit so much. This is clearly deceit to supoort their favored conclusions.
    - Starman_Jones 8mo ago
      How is this calculated for citizens? Does my "cost to society" include my education, etc. or was that factored in to my parents' costs? The former seems like a much more natural way to calculate it, but I'm unfamiliar with how these are done in practice.
      - blockmarker 8mo ago
        It's generally the former, your net fiscal impact includes your education and other childhood expenses. That is a reason why immigration is supposedly so good, another country spent their money raising them but your country gets the tax contributions from the worker. (This does not necessarily mean that the immigrant is actually a net taxpayer, as many european countries have found out.) Such analysis generally distinguish between non-immigrants, first generation immigrants, and second generation immigrants. Rarely third generation too, and also separates based on the education level, legal or illegal, and country of origin. Given than in western countries immigrants generally remain and have children who will get government assistance such as free education, one should take into account second generation data as part of immigration. I am no erudite who has read a million papers, but I haven't seen any analysis for Europe that compares citizens and non-citizens, and for good reason, it's not informative. Here for example two different groups are mixed, non-immigrants and second generation immigrants. Given the lower socioeconomic status of most immigrants, the greater aid given to the second generation might eliminate any savings caused by the first generation, but in this article the cost of second gen is used to make the first generation look better compared to non-immigrants. This might have been a mistake, but people on Twitter explained it to senior Cato members, and their answers make it clear that it was not a mistake but a deliberate decision. So they are deceivers, even if they do not technically say anything false.

30 points by throw0101c 8mo ago

antibull 8mo ago

[dead]

almosthere 8mo ago

[flagged]

kelseyfrog 8mo ago
The biggest one was let in Jan 20th. 2026. Let's start there.
bdangubic 8mo ago
we should start by kicking out murderes and rapist and pedophiles elected in 2025

hasidim 8mo ago

Let's tell Singapore, a high-trust country with exceptional quality of life and extremely strict, borderline eugenic immigration policies, I'm certain they're missing out!

hshdhdhj4444 8mo ago
Your comment implies that the CATO study results are not true due to the Singapore example. However, pointing to a different country that achieved success with “eugenic” immigration (it’s not even clear what you mean given that Singapore has had very high immigration but for the sake of argument let’s assume it’s the opposite of whatever the study here found) does not invalidate or disprove that the U.S. deficit reduced due to U.S. immigration. It’s the kind of logical fallacy one would hope a 4 year old would grow out of, and yet…
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
jimz 8mo ago
Singapore's immigration system is fundamentally different from what the modern American system have morphed into. It is far easier to enter Singapore without a visa when compared to the US, and while the EB-5 investor visa program caused an absurd moral panic in the US and ended up getting limited to such an extent that it basically is no longer a real viable path to gain legal permanent residency in the US, Singapore's government has broad discretion - which it exercises in reality, so it's not something written just for show - to significantly shorten residency requirements (from 10 years down to 12 months in some cases) and allows for highly skilled or investors to gain citizenship, not the convoluted visa-change-of-status-adjustment-of-status-naturalization train that privileges European countries first and foremost while making it extremely difficult for even skilled or even US educated nationals of Mexico, the Philippines, India, and China to gain permanent residency. On the lower-skilled side neither country allows a pathway for migrant laborers to stay regardless, although perversely the American system implicitly encourages not just marriage but consummation as proof of validity which is brought up in interviews for adjustment of status. The immigration system automatically equates marriage with sex and heavily privileges "family-based immigration" to such an extent that it basically incentivizes marital rape via official policy. Singapore doesn't do that, and countries that have marital-based immigration systems don't tend to be this explicit about it. I don't know how you get "eugenic" out of the Singaporean nationality law, full stop. Income or skill is not genetically bound, after all. The US, in fact, does have explicitly eugenics-based criteria in its naturalization process in that it retains the quota that existed in some form since 1882 but simply added a step in front so that it can claim to have removed to quota from where it was while maintaining a de facto quota system that only affects four nations - one it once colonized, two it has a history of vilifying in overt racist terms. In addition, even though USCIS employees are not doctors and are not trained in diagnosing or determining mental illness and its potential impacts or lack thereof, one is frequently asked at the citizenship interview if one had been diagnosed with a mental illness, and since stating an untruthful answer is grounds for removal and also a minor but extremely easy to prove felony, even erroneous diagnoses or conditions that pose no danger like ADHD may result in rejection of otherwise eligible applications. Since there's no "cure" for many of these conditions it puts the applicant in a sort of limbo, and this is asked after background checks and a ridiculously thorough vetting process that essentially had been going on for 8-10 years had been passed. On that front, I think America has Singapore beat.

neilwilson 8mo ago

So immigrants earn so little they can’t put aside any savings? Or somebody is. Not the flex Cato thinks it is. The government’s red ink is our black ink. The trouble is “safe savings” doesn’t have the same air of doom about it.

javascriptfan69 8mo ago
Where did you get that assertion? The article literally says that they earn more because they work more hours on average.
- neilwilson 8mo ago
  For the deficit to reduce we overall have to be saving less.
  - javascriptfan69 8mo ago
    Are you talking about trade deficit? This is about deficit in government spending. Immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits.
    - neilwilson 8mo ago
      For the deficit in government spending to reduce the private sector has to save less. They are one and the same thing. The immigrants are spending all they get. Nothing to do with taxes. Learn how the accounting works
      - Starman_Jones 8mo ago
        On the surface, there's absolutely zero connection between public debt and private (personal) savings. If there's a hidden connection, you're going to have to explain it, because it's not clear at all how they are one and the same.
        8mo ago

dismalaf 8mo ago

Is it really necessary to have reverse colonialism to maintain a high quality of life? We're essentially offloading the cost of raising people from childhood and much of their education to get fully grown workers who will accept lower wages. This in turn becomes a Ponzi scheme that no doubt has economic benefits but is also unsustainable without ever increasing immigration and does produce negative externalities (inflationary plus social disarray). Also, even if we are on board with this reverse colonialism, are all immigrants contributing to the same degree? Surely the benefits could be maximized...

blockmarker 8mo ago

I will not read anything the Cato Institute puts out, they are disingenuous partisans. They do not include the cost caused by the children, such as education and healthcare, they do not even include the cost of welfare to the children or to the household, since the children are legally citizens. It's very easy to say that immigrants are good for the economy when the greatest expenses are attributed to non-immigrants. Do not listen to Cato or read their articles, you would just be feeding yourself lies.

javascriptfan69 8mo ago
Why would you include costs incurred by children? That would be constant between natural born citizens and immigrants. This critique makes no sense.
- blockmarker 8mo ago
  The costs incurred by the children of immigrants are obviously a cost of immigration, but in Cato's analysis, the more expensive the children of immigrants are, the better immigrants look in comparison to natives. If every child of immigrants increased the deficit by 50 million dollars, Cato says that immigration should be increased because citizens increase the deficit so much. This is clearly deceit to supoort their favored conclusions.
  - Starman_Jones 8mo ago
    How is this calculated for citizens? Does my "cost to society" include my education, etc. or was that factored in to my parents' costs? The former seems like a much more natural way to calculate it, but I'm unfamiliar with how these are done in practice.
    - blockmarker 8mo ago
      It's generally the former, your net fiscal impact includes your education and other childhood expenses. That is a reason why immigration is supposedly so good, another country spent their money raising them but your country gets the tax contributions from the worker. (This does not necessarily mean that the immigrant is actually a net taxpayer, as many european countries have found out.) Such analysis generally distinguish between non-immigrants, first generation immigrants, and second generation immigrants. Rarely third generation too, and also separates based on the education level, legal or illegal, and country of origin. Given than in western countries immigrants generally remain and have children who will get government assistance such as free education, one should take into account second generation data as part of immigration. I am no erudite who has read a million papers, but I haven't seen any analysis for Europe that compares citizens and non-citizens, and for good reason, it's not informative. Here for example two different groups are mixed, non-immigrants and second generation immigrants. Given the lower socioeconomic status of most immigrants, the greater aid given to the second generation might eliminate any savings caused by the first generation, but in this article the cost of second gen is used to make the first generation look better compared to non-immigrants. This might have been a mistake, but people on Twitter explained it to senior Cato members, and their answers make it clear that it was not a mistake but a deliberate decision. So they are deceivers, even if they do not technically say anything false.